How do you market your blog?
Most bloggers want their readers to subscribe to their content - the whole reason we do what we do is to be heard. Relying on our visitors to remember to check the blog for new content is far from ideal… no matter how much they like it, one day they will ‘forget’ and that means you’ve lost them.
Depending on how Internet literate your target market is, you may be having problems getting them to embrace RSS feeds, the other easy option you have is to offer daily summaries via email… and everyone knows how to use email.
Most bloggers know Feedburner - it’s a great way to track how many subscribers you have, but what you may not know is that they also give you the option to provide email subscriptions.
(Feedburner have quite a few hidden options for bloggers - if you haven’t done so already it’s worth taking a look through their many menus and familiarizing yourself with their application).
Email subscriptions are not turned on by default, there are a couple of things you need to do.
It’s worth pointing out that you have a few options regarding how the emails are sent. The default option is to let Feedburner send the emails (the easiest solution and works well), you can also send them via FeedBlitz or RMail… unless you have a reason to use one of the other services though, just stick with Feedburner.
Adding them to your blog is very simple - you get two options, you can either display the whole subscription form on your website (you can modify the styles easily enough yourself if you know a bit of CSS):
or you can just link to the subscription page on the feedburner website.
Once a reader subscribes to your blog, they will automatically be sent an email with all the blog posts you made on that day. Emails are only sent on days where you actually make a post, so don’t worry about subscribers being sent a heap of empty emails if you don’t post all that often. There is also a maximum of one email sent each day, so don’t worry about flooding your readers inbox if you’re a prolific poster, they’ll all be sent in the one email.
Email subscriptions don’t replace RSS - you can provide both options to your readers, it’s just another way that people can receive your content, and the more options you offer, the better you can accommodate your audience.
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