The One Simple Thing You Can Do to Increase Email Subscribers to Your Blog

Subscribe to your blog’s feed via email, then read it on your smartphone.

For those of you that aren’t aware, I live in a very rural area of Alabama.  Most days I work from home, but at least a couple of times a week I will go ‘into town’ to run errands and I’ll usually stop off at a local library to get some work done, etc.  Earlier this week I was on one of my trips into town and I went by Olive Garden to grab some lunch.  I do this often (yes I love pasta, and yes I have simple tastes ;)), and when I do, I will always use my smartphone to get on Twitter.  What I’ll do is scan the tweets from my lists, and RT any interesting links I see being shared by my followers.

On Monday, I was eating lunch, when I got that day’s blog post emailed to me because I am subscribed to my blog via both email and RSS.  Here’s what I saw when the email arrived:

1 – The title of the email was ‘Why Social Media Measurement Fails Most Companies‘.  Boom!  No fooling around, you know exactly what you will be getting when you open the email.  And note that the title promises to address a real problem that many businesses are facing.

2 – When I opened the email, the very first sentence of the email answered the post’s title:  Because they measure what’s available, instead of what benefits their company.  You know, there’s something to be said for writing well, and using stories to make your point, but there’s also something said for getting TO the damn point!

3 – The rest of the post offered simple and relevance examples that (hopefully) backed up the main premise of the post.  There wasn’t a lot of beating around the bush.

 

And as I read that post, I realized that a lot of people, especially executives and marketers at companies, were getting this same email right now.  They were just like me, they were busy, they were probably going to get lunch (just like me), so they were likely either reading this email in the back of a cab, or at a restaurant table while waiting for their meal.  So because they were subscribed to my blog via email, on their lunch break they got an email from me that was quick, to-the-point, and included social media advice that they could take with them back to the office and start working on as soon as they get back from lunch.

This also drives home another point; you have to consider how your blog’s readers are receiving and reading your content.  You can’t assume that they daily set aside 30 mins just to come to your blog and be blessed by your insightful thinking.  You have to assume that they are getting your content in a way that’s convenient to THEM, and that they will be spending at best 30 SECONDS with your content, not 30 minutes.  You need to quickly give them a reason to invest their precious attention reading what you have to say.

Now, one final tip about improving the experience you are providing your email subscribers: Make damn sure that when your blog’s posts are emailed out, that the subject of the email is that post’s title and NOT the title of your blog!  I learned this TOTALLY the hard way.  An email subscriber contacted me well over a year ago and sent me a screenshot of the last 20 or so posts he had received from me.  He said ‘now Mack I know you aren’t a spammer, but how does this look to you?’  The screenshot showed 20 emails all in a row, every one had the same thing:  From – MackCollier.com  Subject – MackCollier.com

I was mortified!  I didn’t realize that Feedburner was sending out my posts via email with the title of my BLOG as the SUBJECT of every email!  I naturally assumed that the subject of each email would be the title of each post!  This is another reason why it pays to subscribe to your own blog via email, so you can see your content as your subscribers do.

For example, if you receive this post via email, it will read From – MackCollier.com  Subject – The One Simple Thing You Can Do to Increase Email Subscribers to Your Blog.  Much better, right?  If you use Feedburner to provide email subscriptions to your blog and want to make this same change, here’s what you do:

1 – Sign into your Feedburner account

2 – Click the Publicize tab at the top

3 – Click Email Subscriptions on the left

4 – A few sub-options will open up under Email Subscriptions, you want to now click Email Branding

5 – At the top where you see the box for Email/Subject Title: you want to put ${latestItemTitle} in that box.  That way Feedburner knows to use the title of each post as the subject of the email and NOT the title of your blog.

That’s it!  So if you haven’t already, make sure you subscribe to your blog via both email and RSS.  Then try to access your feed in all the ways your readers might.  Look at it in Google Reader (or whatever RSS reader you prefer).  Look at it in your inbox, and yes, look at it on your smartphone.  Consider not only readability, but also what that person might be doing as they are reading your post.

For example, if they are reading your post in the back of a stinky cab on their smartphone, will your post instantly resonate with them?  Because many times your readers will be reading your post in an environment that’s less than optimal for understanding.  Which is why you need to simplify the content delivery process, and make it easier for your subscribers to understand your point(s).