6 Ways to Increase Blog Readership and Subscribers

Running a business blog is a constant balancing act: Churning out new posts, responding to comments, tweaking your site’s design and a host of other details can easily occupy the majority of your time, leaving little room for you to focus on the all-important task of growing your blog readership. Cultivating a growing subscriber base is one of the most important efforts you can engage in to ensure the long-term success of not only your business blog, but also your very business itself. Below are six simple ways that you can increase your blog readership and subscribers.

1. Make it as easy as possible for visitors to subscribe to your blog. Place your subscription button or link in a very prominent place on your website, and create a very clear call to action requesting them to subscribe to your blog’s feed or opt-in email list. Something as simple as poor site layout can hinder people from opting in to your blog, so get rid of any confusing navigation or cluttered sidebars in order to make subscribing as easy as possible.
2. In permission marketing, as with most other forms of marketing, one of the main questions you have to answer is “What’s in it for me?” Take time to explain to the visitor what he/she should expect to get out of subscribing to your blog. What value will they receive from being a regular reader of your blog? Make sure to thoroughly explain the benefits of regularly engaging with your content.
3. Offer some type of incentive for subscribing, such as a free ebook, a discount on a product offering, or a free download. Establish a dedicated landing page that will provide your offer, and don’t forget to thank them for taking the extra step to subscribe!
4. Create an additional call to action in the footer of each blog post. If your readers have found your content engaging and have read it all the way to the end, a quick encouragement to subscribe will seem like a very logical, natural next step for them to take.
5. Include some type of widget or text that displays the current number of subscribers to your blog. This is known as providing “social proof,” which is the premise that people tend to be more willing to imitate the actions of others when those actions have been shown to be acceptable or correct behavior. By displaying how many people have already subscribed to your blog, you are in effect validating the current reader’s decision to subscribe.
6. As aggravating as some people may perceive them to be, pop-up windows can work wonders in terms of capturing new subscribers. If you’ve ever visited a website that offers the opportunity to subscribe via a lightbox pop up window, you know how intuitive it is to just quickly fill out the form and subscribe. Scores of studies conducted by top industry experts have repeatedly proven that email subscriptions are greatly increased by the utilization of pop-up windows.

Keep in mind that no matter what, in order to increase readership and subscribers to your blog you need to publish solid, helpful content that is of genuine value to your readers. This will always work to your advantage. You can also go above and beyond for your subscribers by sending out special content available only to them, adding to the perceived value of being a member of your opt-in list.