6/12/08

How-To: 7 Tactics for Getting Online Readers to Stick

This article was written by CEO Nate Whitehill of Unique Blog Designs. It works best for those seeking to build brands through blogging, but is also adaptable to companies wishing to maximize their online content development.

Here are seven tried and tested methods to get visitors to become regular readers, be it through RSS subscriptions or simply by reading a good amount of posts. All of these methods, used in conjunction, tripled my RSS subscriber count in April.

A note on traffic.

"Steroid traffic" is a term I coined to mean quick surges of traffic that don’t necessarily average more than 1.1 pageviews per visitor. It has short-term benefits and the visitors rarely stick around.

In contrast, natural traffic — traffic from search engines or referrals — averages well over 2.0 pageviews per visitor and generally become repeat visitors. This piece focuses on generating natural traffic.

1. Use a highly visible Feed Button. Make sure you have a BIG RSS button near the top of your site and also in your sidebar. If you need Feed Icons, check out FeedIcons.com, which has a downloadable package of customizable ones.

2. Include this magic sentence after each post. As soon as I modified my template to include the following sentence after each post, I saw RSS subscribers go up significantly. The magic line is, "If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed." You can use a derivative of that, but anytime someone finishes reading a post you wrote, that option will be presented directly in front of them.

3. Install this plugin. Anytime someone finishes reading an article, what do they do? They either leave a comment, leave your site, or read another article. How do you get them to read another article? Install the Related Posts plugin. I have it set to display 7 other related posts readers might be interested in. As soon as I installed that plugin, I saw my P/V ratio (pageviews per visitor) go way up.

4. Ask questions.install a poll and ask a question which will benefit you, such as, “what do you want to see more of on this blog?” I used the answers to that question to help further define the focus of my blog.

5. Offer a full feed RSS. RSS, also known as Really Simple Syndication, is a popular way to read blogs and stay up to stay on multiple news sources. If you offer a full feed RSS and do not cut off your posts (in your RSS feeds), you will definitely see readership increase. You may have to sacrifice readers visiting your site to read an article, but the goal is to build readership for the long term. If they want to leave a comment, they will have to visit your blog anyway.

6. Be highly reachable. I use a plugin called Comment Relish to send an email to every new visitor who leaves a comment. In this email, I include all my instant messenger (skype, aim, msn gtalk) usernames and encourage them to contact me about anything.

7. Host a contest. Contests are a great way to give back to readers and encourage community participation. I just finished hosting my first contest and it was a great success. I saw a ton of new visitors and a met some new people. Try to make the contests somewhat interesting and encourage people to talk about it.

Those methods have helped my blog increase its traffic, RSS subscribers, and overall reader interaction significantly over the past few months. You can see the percentage of repeat visitors by monitoring the repeat visitor rate in your stats software. (Generally, anything over 50% of considered a good repeat visitor rate.)

What other methods have you used to get visitors to stick around on your blog?

If you're a personal blogger, it can be beneficial to have a home affiliate business; banner advertising on its own can generate money for the webmaster. But it is essential that one know how to operate this business. To do so there are training programs which can help you learn new skills, such as Microsoft training.

Besides that, SEO techniques should be implemented to increase site traffic. Constant changes need to be made to keep users up-to-date; use a broadband connection for fast updating. The domain name itself should specify what the site is about. Finally, it's smart to go for hosting services which provide free site hosting to save money.

http://www.marketingvox.com/how-to-7-tactics-for-getting-online-readers-to-stick-039155/?camp=newsletter&src=mv&type=textlink

No comments: