How do you get your subscription reading rate up and keep it up? There are a lot of factors involved, and a lot of various methods for getting the word out about your blog, but this is quick and easy and greatly impacted my subscription rate within a week.
- I created a sitemap using the WordPress sitemap plugin. This baby worked like a charm. Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress v2 Final
- I went back over my query results of last week and put those words into my keywords list in the header.
- I started using more terms and keywords in my posts that I know people are interested in at the moment. If they come to the site through a search and like the site, they have a chance of subscribing.
- I started up like crazy on MyBlogLog for some community.
Now for the meat and potatoes of my post. Once you get a subscriber for the first time, they will have you on their list of feeds and now it is up to your post titles to get them to come back. They may never visit your site again or even delete your feed if they don’t read the feeds or visit your site.
Titles Grab Your Attention…
and get people reading your feed to click-through to your blog. I am a big fan of Netvibes and I have it all sorted and set up just the way I want. When I get to the office in the morning, while I’m still eating my breakfast sandwich (breakfast #2, usually) I open up Netvibes and scan the daily headlines.
This is no different from the past when people went out to the driveway (or bushes) to grab the morning paper to read at the table. They’ve got their morning beverage and some food and do what? Scan the headlines to see if they want to read any more.
With Newsreaders, you get 1 chance to grab someone’s attention. There are no graphics or fonts or colors to pull someone in. Here, more than anywhere else in your post, words matter in a very precise and real way. Unless someone has a newsreader that shows the title and a short excerpt, you have between 5-10 words to get people to click.
Here are some examples of some very good titles I have seen this week:
- If No One Reads What You Write, That’s Because It Sucks
- The P.T. Barnum Guide to Online Publicity
- Do You Hold Your Clients Up to High Standards
- Is Digg just for traffic?
- WoW’s Greatest Little Items You Have Never Heard Of
- Just Because You Love An Idea Doesn’t Mean It Will Sell
After you get that initial click, the rest is easy. Assuming your title matches the content of the story, and you have something to offer the reader on your site, they will go all the way to your blog, all because of the title.
Hey Jesse – Thanks for highlighting my post. Honestly, that’s a wonderful compliment to get. I work at making sure my titles are intriguing enough to catch a reader’s attention, but also that they capture the essence of the story. Nice to know that I am doing that, at least with this one.
How could I ignore a title like that? LOL.
BTW, I simply LOVE your cartoons! I especially like the chicken that came to work sick. I printed that out for our cubes.
Thanks for visiting.
Heh, Gitr u got me hooked up onto Tony’s site now…thanks =D
No problemo. 🙂
I think yall are crazy. I also dont have a clue what your talking about as I use my blog *I laugh at me calling it a blog* for journal purposes. I have acess to it at work and don’t use it at home since I am usually playing or DL music. That you can a do put so much work into this deal is cool though since its one of the few things I can read at work and no one knows what I’m doing.
I’ve been called crazy before, and I’ll bet it will happen again. 😀
I have thought many-a-time about making a RL journal, but my RL doesn’t have that much happening. I can’t imagine coming up with anything interesting enough about my life to get anyone to read it.
I like to mix a little of what I learn and things that happen in RL in this blog, that way I have a readership AND people will actually know when something interesting happens or pops into my head.
I tend to leave some of my best thoughts on other blogs in comments, funny as that is.
Glad you keep coming back, though, even though I am crazy.
I dont mean Batsh*t crazy. Its more like the “Don’t you have enough to do that you have to pour huge amounts of effort and time into this thing?” DOn’t get me wrong its really shows in how this site is handled and maitained. Excellent work.
I’ll take that as a compliment, then. 😀
er Mindkiller I am struggling to find any link to a blog of yours…any pointers? LOL…
I asked him for his URL. He has a blog, but it only touches on WoW. It’s nice, but blogging is not his pastime like mine. 🙂 I totally go for that, because he still knows what he talks about when he puts in his two cents on the game. We’ve e-mailed and such. He’s real. 🙂