What Now? They Keep Unsubscribing
- 13 Comment
The problem with having a RSS base from contests and other promotions is that they might have only subscribed for the prizes. It’s your job, as a blogger, to make them stay long term. The last successful big contest we did was actually our Christmas Contest.
As we’d of course like to launch another huge successful contest, it does take a lot of time to organize and run successfully. With so much competition it is becoming harder to entice people to participate.
As mentioned earlier, some people just participate (like subscribing to RSS) then later unsubscribe after the contest is over. We’ve been able to keep a lot of our readers this long, but as of late, we’ve seen a lot of unsubscriptions. Other than a contest, what can you do?
Get Readers Involved
Give them a reason to want to come back and read day after day. This of course includes posting frequently, daily is best. But beyond that, then what? We always do our Comment Fridays which are definitely a lot of fun. This allows us to ask questions to our readers and get them involved.
Other things could be fun polls to do, round-up posts, or personal entries in your blog.
Launch New Campaigns
I would consider a contest, an advertising campaign, wouldn’t you? It generally takes time of course, as well as a prize. Advertising is your time and money invested into your website or product.
So why not try something else? I would definitely recommend visiting blogging forums and interacting with other bloggers, or other people interested in your niche. Our favorite blogging forum is Bloggeries.
There you can participate in similar discussions you talk about on your own blog, as well as promote your website as well as develop your brand.
Participate in Fun Competitions
Another recent ploy to get more RSS subscribers has seemingly been a “competition”. We’ve seen Conn vs Cow do whatever it is they are doing. I still don’t get it, but it seems to be working for them apparently.
Another interesting competition (which I wish I could of gotten in) is Blogging Idol at Daily Blog Tips. The competition is between 100 different bloggers. The main goal is to increase their RSS subscribers the most with different tactics. The top winner will receive $3000! That sounds like a fun way to increase subscribers with great incentive.
What do you do when you see your RSS feed count dropping?
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13 Comments on this post
Trackbacks
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Tom - StandOutBlogger.com said:
I have always been against competition for the reasons you mention, but I have still decided to enter blogging idol because I know it will motivate me to market like crazy 😀
July 3rd, 2008 at 8:59 pm -
Matthew Henrickson said:
Well good luck, it seems like a fun competition!
July 4th, 2008 at 12:28 am -
David Shaw said:
I entered as well.
I think me and Tom a re doing the most marketing that I can see!
July 4th, 2008 at 3:54 am -
David Hobson said:
Getting people to subscribe is one thing keeping them is another. Contest are a good way of gaining them quickly but not many of them will stay.
July 4th, 2008 at 9:54 am -
BlogwritingCourse said:
When I notice people unsubscribing, I usually look really carefully over my last few posts, and then go in a completely different direction. No gimmicks…just better writing. Things pick back up pretty soon, most of the time.
July 5th, 2008 at 1:46 pm -
Jenn said:
I tried to Digg this post and got this message:
“This URL has been widely reported by users as being regularly used to spam Digg’s submission process and cannot be submitted at this time.”
July 6th, 2008 at 11:36 am -
Matthew Henrickson said:
Yeah we are banned at Digg, happened a long time ago. Now way I know of to get unbanned.
July 6th, 2008 at 11:48 am -
Jovana said:
I agree – I just started up my site but I see people aren’t subscribing, which is irritating. I guess I just need to keep on going, being honest and try to give us much good information as possible. 🙂
July 7th, 2008 at 10:24 am -
Wintermute said:
I’ll admit that I first subscribed quite some time ago because of a contest, but not because of the contest. Let me explain:
I didn’t know about this blog until I saw one of the contests featured on a blog that was in my feed reader at the time. I figured the blog was worth checking out. The thing that got me to subscribe was not the contest, but the content. The thing that got the blog featured elsewhere was the contest. So, had it not been for the contest, I never would have discovered the blog.
July 8th, 2008 at 8:37 am -
Matthew Henrickson said:
Well I am glad you found use Wintermute and have stayed subscribed.
We like to sponsor blog contests with advertising space often which has lead to some traffic and obviously new readers 🙂
July 8th, 2008 at 11:57 am -
Hendry Lee said:
I have been using forum to promote my site, but not for this blog yet, due to lack of time. But thanks for the reminder.
July 10th, 2008 at 8:02 am
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