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The first part of this RSS subscriber series examines why RSS subscribers are the foundation for a successful blog. Many beginning and experienced bloggers spend too much time worrying about increasing traffic and not increasing the number of people subscribing to their blogs. This is very short sighted. RSS subscribers are the bedrock of a successful blog.
RSS Subscribers Are Your Most Loyal Readers:
People who subscribe to your blog are your most loyal readers. By subscribing they are saying that they do not want to miss any of your articles. They are saying that your work is important to them and they want to read more. This loyal base of readers needs to be established and cared for.
This is especially true for a blog like Newest on the Net. RSS subscribers are usually tech savvy and demanding of information. These are the perfect type of readers for a blog focused on the latest trends online, like blogging and social media.
RSS Subscribers Represent a Very Stable Source of Traffic:
All bloggers are focused on increasing traffic to their blogs. There are several sources of traffic, including direct referrals, social media sites, search engines and RSS subscribers. RSS subscribers are your most stable source of traffic. If Google would go out of business tomorrow, your RSS subscribers would still be able to find you.
RSS Subscribers Are More Likely to Link to Your Blog:
Next to increasing traffic, the second most important thing for bloggers is getting backlinks. A lot of RSS subscribers are bloggers themselves. These bloggers are more likely to link to your content because they are seeing each of your articles in their feed readers. This makes RSS subscribers extremely important.
RSS Subscribers Are More Likely to Submit Your Sites to Social Networking Sites like Digg and Sphinn:
In order to make the front page of Digg or Sphinn or to maximize the number of stumbles you get on StumbleUpon, you need a consistent group of readers who vote for your content. There is no better group of people than your RSS subscribers. These RSS subscribers have the power to make your articles go viral and without them you can have the best content in the world but your articles will go no where.
To summarize, RSS subscribers are so important because,
- They are your most loyal readers;
- They are a very stable traffic source;
- People who subscribe to your blogs are more likely to linkback to your articles; and
- RSS subscribers are great for submitting your articles to social media sites.
What are some other reasons that RSS subscribers are important?
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15 comments ↓
[…] · The importance of RSS subscribers […]
That’s a great post i am sure it will help my blog
How true… I’ve found that subscribers do visit your site very often even if you have full feeds… and are much more prone to join the conversations, which is always good for any blog.
I think it’s only partially the truth, since there’s RSS subscribers as well which simply add you to their RSS and probably barely check up on it as well. I used a feedreader for a while and even though it’s still running and fetching making me a subscriber, I don’t check any of it anymore. Just too lazy to disable it.
Then there’s also the people which add pretty much anything they come across, making it nice in numbers but doesn’t really drive you traffic.
The good old bookmarks is what I went back to, I just find it easier. Does that make me less of a loyal reader to the blogs I frequent? I’d say no.
“If Google would go out of business tomorrow, your RSS subscribers would still be able to find you.”
Google owns feedburner, a huge amount of people use feedburner for their feeds. So if google would go out of business many RSS subscribers wouldn’t be able to find them back again either :D. Gotta love how a huge part of the net completely relies on Google ;).
@Maher - I am very glad that you liked my post. Please subscribe to my RSS feed so that you won’t miss the other posts in the series.
@A.Marques - I think subscribers do visit often. I think that they are good commenters too.
@Slevi - You raise a lot of great points. I especially liked your point about Feedburner. You are right that if Google completely shut down, Feedburner might not work. However, I still think that my points about RSS subscribers are true.
Totally true.
Increased traffic is merely a statistic pleasure, a site with real objectives need different metrics. If the site intends to make money with adsense, then traffic is important, but only in the measure that generates clicks.
Now, if the target is to build a community around content produced, it is more important to have quality readers than having a ton of parachutters.
All that said, traffic is only important on the measure that you can convert it to you real targets. Just spending server bandwidth can’t be a target for anyone
One of your later points where you say that subscribers are more likely to link to you, I don’t think that’s quite right. Yes it’s bloggers that link to you but not all RSS subscribers are bloggers. I would imagine that most bloggers use RSS but of course there are a ton of people out there who also use RSS but don’t have blogs!
I’m not disputing the value of RSS, I’m just saying that if you want the attention of other bloggers, don’t just focus on your RSS count.
Caroline,
I certainly proposing that you put all of your eggs in one basket. If you want backlinks, you should definitely do other things as well.
Hey there!
You just recently posted on my blog, first i am returning your favor and thanks for the comment tip (i replied). Nice explanation of rss feeds!
[…] installment of a series on RSS subscribers that Fred is writing. The first article focused on the importance of RSS subscribers as the foundation of a successful […]
[…] ??????????blog??????????????35?????RSS????????????RSS???????????????????RSS??????????????????RSS????? […]
Do you have any tips for increasing your RSS numbers? My numbers seem to have hit a plateau and I can’t get them any higher.
[…] This is the second article of my RSS Subscriber Series. The first article discussed the importance of RSS subscribers. Now let’s get more people to subscribe to your […]
[…] Newest On The Net - RSS Subscribers: The Foundation For A Successful Blog […]
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