This is a question I’ve been asked so many times I’ve lost count. The short answer is there is no magic bullet for increasing blog readership–it takes hard work and continued, compelling content. That said, there are certain things that can be done to help set yourself up for success.
Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger had a great entry yesterday on how to increase the readership of your blog. For any person or company new to the blogging game, or anyone looking to update or refresh an existing blog and drive increased traffic, I highly recommend using this post as a starting point.
Rowse outlines 11 ways to find (and hopefully keep) new readers, hitting on everything from site design/layout, off-site promotion and super-tactical items such as offering RSS subscribers full feeds vs. partial feeds.
Of the 40+ comments to the post, many found tips #5 and #6 most useful. Rowse suggests blog owners regularly promote their RSS subscription links when commenting or interacting on other sites: “Get into the habit of not only giving out your blog’s URL but also include your RSS feed and you might just pick up some new readers.” Not a bad idea at all.
He also recommends offering blog readers the ability to ‘subscribe’ to your blog via email, as opposed to RSS. This one is particularly relevant, because readers may not know how to use RSS or may not even use an RSS reader–meaning you have no way to ensure they keep coming back to check out the fresh content. To this end, note that we’ve added an email subscription option for Bitemarks (see the left-hand column). Check it out and let us know what you think!
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About the Author
Trevor Jonas is an account director at Bite Communications, a worldwide public relations firm with offices in London, New York, San Francisco and Stockholm. An avid observer of the social media revolution, he can often be found posting about his favorite topics–PR, marketing and news consumption habits–on the Bite blog.
