Tuesday, May 10, 2011

How to Increase Your RSS Feed Subscribers

The success of a website can be measured in various ways. You can look into its traffic statistics. You can look into how many comments its content receives. Or you can ask the owner how much money he/she makes per month on the website. These are all good measuring sticks but one of the best ways to determine the success of a website is by looking into how many users are subscribing to its RSS feed. Browse around the web and look into the RSS subscriber stats of the most well-known blogs and websites. The numbers are pretty amazing. Reaching those numbers for your own business website or blog will of course be very difficult but it is not impossible.

Here are a few tips on how you can increase your RSS subscribers:

1) Focus on unique and great content.
Always keep in mind that content is king even if some people say otherwise. You may have all the marketing tips and tricks in the world but if your content is lousy, nobody will subscribe to your feed. Why would they? So always keep your attention focused on quality content.

2) Make it a point to post new content regularly.
If you can set up a posting schedule then by all means do it. You have to let your readers know that new content will be regularly provided to them. One of the main reasons why people unsubscribe to a certain feed is because they are not getting any fresh content. So don't make them unsubscribe by giving them what they want and need.

3) Make it as easy as possible for people to subscribe to your RSS feed.
Make the RSS button stand out. Position it prominently on your website. People online like to click on large and shiny things so take advantage of this trait by making your RSS button bigger and shinier.

4) Offer a full RSS feed.
Studies have shown that partial RSS feeds do nothing but irritate subscribers.

5) Give your readers the option to subscribe via email.
Not all internet users are comfortable with RSS readers so give them an email subscription as an option.

If you make use of all of the above strategies in building your RSS subscribers, your subscription numbers will surely grow. It's going to be slow at first but once it develops momentum, growth can be rapid. The secret to good growth is consistency with your strategies. So keep using the above tips until you get results.