This post was guest blogged by Carl Ocab, who who has great timing since I recently broke 35,000 RSS readers.
OK, OK… I’d be honest with the you, I hate reading posts like “how to increase feed readership, increase feed count, blah blah blah†They all recycle the same tips over and over again. Day after day, someone out there is posting about how to increase feed readership that’s for sure.
But what if I make it this way, what if I ask the crowd face to face what makes them subscribe to a blog’s feed? Because actually, the best tips are really in you, if you just put yourself in the reader’s shoe, I’d bet you can give the best tips.
Of course, as the one who asked the question, I’ll be the one to answer it first. Here are some of my spot-on reasons why I subscribe to a blog…
1. Quality More Than Quantity
I’m not really an avid reader in nature. Your content has to be something special to make me read – and that’s exactly what big chunk of bloggers are – lazy readers.
I skip those segregated newsy posts saying “AdSense changed their TOS, Yahoo acquired by Microsoft, etc†You get the picture.
Point is, concentrate in quality, don’t be tempted to post those news (Yep, I was too), people are up for unique and jam packed content.
2. Readability of Posts
WARNING: The next paragraph will probably burn your eyes if read full or make you cry while slowly digesting what it’s saying – but by doing that, you’ll get what I mean in no time 😉
Imagine reading blogs that make post like these, but before I get to that, let me tell you that I had a great day fishing with my dad today. Even though we only caught 2 fishes and 1 got back in the water, it was still fun. After we went fishing, we stopped by the nearest gasoline station to have a drink after that tiring day then hastily drove home to cook the fish that we caught. It was a tiring day, yes so to get some relaxation, I sit down here and made a post for you guys. Ok, so what’s wrong with this? First of all, making a grammatical error on the first sentence – yep, that’s a good addition. Then second, telling unrelated stories about your life that people don’t care of. Third, putting it all in one slab of paragraph. Fourth, making the post dull without any pictures or anything and lastly by doing this… PLZ SUBSCRIBE TO MY RSS FEED (Not to mention the caps, geesh)
3. Style of Writing
For some reason, I don’t subscribe to a blog with an off the chart “formal†style of writing even though the content is worth subscribing to – a lawyer’s article for example.
Like what I said earlier, I’m a lazy reader, it takes something to make me (And other people too I bet) read – I need emotions, I need personality and the most important, I need connection with the blogger.
4. My Friends’ Blog
Whether I like their posts or not, I have to subscribe just so I can relate to them whenever we talk. It’s just a little favor so I’ll deal with it 😉
What about ya?
I have a couple of reasons in my pocket, but I don’t want to spoil ya so I’ll keep it and give you the floor.
Again, the question is…
“What does it take to make you subscribe to a blog?â€
Give the community your reasons by commenting below – after sometime, I’ll get back to your comments and handpick em’ for a monstrous list that I’ll be posting on my blog. Stay tuned and subscribe to my blog’s RSS.