You work hard on keeping your blog current. You post frequently. Your blog is optimized. You comment on other blogs and, on occasion, you get a few comments on your blog. You’ve even listed yourself in blog directories.
If you’re like many people blogging for business, there’s always that question in the back of your mind: Who is reading my blog and how many people are repeat visitors?
If you don’t already have an RSS feed on your blog, it’s time you got one.
Having the RSS feed option on your blog is key if you want your blog to gain large readership and have a solid base of followers. An RSS feed will also allow you to track how many subscribers read each post in their feed and if they click through.
RSS feed is a powerful marketing tool because . . .
**The more subscribers you have, the more you increase your online exposure and likelihood that a larger number of people will visit and leave comments on your blog.
**As mentioned above, a RSS feed allows you to easily track subscribers. Tracking allows you to see how many people visit your blog from their readers and how many times they click through your blog. From this, you can see what posts are the most popular. The more you follow your stats, the easier it is to cater blog posts to what your target market is hungry for.
**Your search engine rankings can increase dramatically with an RSS feed. Google detects if your blog is high quality based on how many people subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed. The more subscriptions you have, the better your blog will rank in the search engines.
**Your subscribers can easily share their favorite blog posts / pages with their friends, colleagues, and clients via email or social media sites. In turn, when subscribers share your posts, they are creating a viral marketing campaign for your company.
**People who subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed save the time and aggravation of going through all the websites they enjoy, to search for newly added posts. It’s a tool that easily allows subscribers to constantly view your new posts because you’re already in front of them. That’s the power in getting readers to subscribe.
Tips for adding a RSS feed to your blog:
1) I suggest offering readers a choice to sign up via a regular feed or through email. People like choices.
2) Next to the RSS symbol, include a powerful call to action. Don’t just say subscribe–it’s boring and it doesn’t stand out. Brainstorm and come up with something your target audience will respond to.
3. Put your RSS subscribe call to action and button up-front-and-center. Don’t hide it.
If you love what you read here and are so inclined, I’d love for you to subscribe to Copy Doodle.
4 Comments
You didn’t mention the best reason to have RSS–so people don’t forget you. I know the first thing I started using a RSS feeder for was webcomics. Prior to that, I tried to keep up with all my comics, but if a comic had a slow period, took a hiatus, or just wasn’t on my mind, I’d stop checking it and soon basically forget that it existed. When using RSS, once I’d added a comic t my list, it just stayed there. Comics would go away for months and I wouldn’t even notice, and then they’d come back and I’d still be reading them because I was subscribed. Even if a comic wasn’t that great for awhile, I read it because it was on my list, and quite often it would get better again.
The same is certainly true for blogs. RSS readers are likely to be more forgiving than readers who have to put forth the extra effort to come to your site to read your blog. If you miss a couple of posts without RSS, readers may completely forget you exist and move onto the next big internet thing, whereas with RSS they may not even notice you were gone. They’re also more likely to stick with you through a few more uninteresting posts (though they won’t be forgiving forever–eventually they’ll delete you from their list, so having RSS isn’t an excuse to stop putting effort into your blog).
You are on the money here. If you have a blog, you HAVE to have a feed.
Ugh, I liked! So clear and positively.
Joker, Thanks for the nice comment! Glad you got something out of it.
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