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7 Ways To Get Readers to Stick

Posted on May 09, 2007 by Nate Whitehill

7 Ways To Get Readers to Stick

A while back I talked about “steroid traffic” versus natural 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. Steroid traffic has short term benefits and the visitors rarely stick around. Natural traffic, however, from search engines or referrals, will generally average well over 2.0 pageviews per visitor and generally turn into repeat visitors.

I am going to share with you 7 tried and tested methods I have personally used to get visitors to become regular readers, whether that be through subscribing to my RSS feed or simply reading a good amount of my posts. I used all of these methods in conjunction with each other to triple my RSS subscriber count last month.

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 this web site which has a downloadable package of customizable Feed icons.

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 my 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, of course, 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. Asking your readers questions is a great way to interact with your community and show them you care what they think. You can do this a number of ways – respond to their comments with questions, ask questions at the end of a post, or even install a poll and ask them 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 becoming an increasingly 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 your readership increase. I know you may have to sacrifice readers visiting your site to read an article, but the goal is to build readership for the long term, and of course, if they want to leave a comment, they will have to visit your blog anyway.

6. Be highly reachable. I encourage all of my readers to contact me if they have questions, comments, suggestions, need help, or just want to chat. I even use a plugin called Comment Relish to send an email to every new visitor who leaves a comment. In this email, I included all of my instant messenger (skype, aim, msn gtalk) usernames and encourage them to contact me about anything. I love to meet new people and I have met some great new friends as a result of my blog. For example, the other day I received a message on MSN from Jason Honey and we had a nice little chat about entrepreneurship.

7. Host a contest. Contests are a great way to give back to your 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.

All of 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?

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Discussion: 77 Comments

77 Responses to “7 Ways To Get Readers to Stick”

Newer Comments »

  1. DotNetNuke Consulting

    - 9th May, 07 03:05am

    Nice Article, especially contests and magic words are becoming the key of keeping users on your site.

  2. Julie

    - 9th May, 07 04:05am

    Nice article Nate! I learned about a couple of plugins that I definitely need to add to my blogs. Good stuff.

  3. 45n5

    - 9th May, 07 05:05am

    Cool list, may I suggest –

    8. Offer visitors the option to subscribe to your blog via email.

  4. Daniel Primed

    - 9th May, 07 06:05am

    Probably my favourite article that you’ve written, you’ve forced me to add this to my delicious. Definetly some excellent tips there that I’ll have to take advantage of. ^_^

  5. DotNetNuke Consulting

    - 9th May, 07 06:05am

    45n5, its a good option too for readers, we can also feature or readers blogs (if they have helpful articles)

  6. Community Building Blog

    - 9th May, 07 07:05am

    A agree with your comments (well apart from the contests one, but what do you expect from me by now eh, Nate?!?).

    Your magic line (in my opinion) of: “If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed”

    Should include reference to it being a FULL RSS Feed if appropriate to encourage even more subscribers.

    I also like to have a ‘Top Posts’ page to ensure my best articles don’t get hidden in the archives never to be seen again!

    - Martin Reed

  7. Josh Buckley

    - 9th May, 07 08:05am

    Great post, i need to fix a few of these for my blog

  8. StockTube

    - 9th May, 07 09:05am

    great nate … i’ve done most of them except the contest & reachability … on interaction with readers, i think it depends on how serious your topic as well as your group of readers nationality …

    i found out that if our topics are serious, then readers tend to slows-down in terms of interaction … also if your readers are from asia, then they tend to listen more than ask or interact as compare to readers from u.s. or european …

    just my personal opinion …

    cheers …

  9. Wolf Stone

    - 9th May, 07 05:05pm

    i look forward to your posts everyday…nate…another post filled with wisdom !! Good Job

  10. JaneMay

    - 9th May, 07 05:05pm

    Yup, that’s Nate…I’m constantly approach him for his wisdom :-)

    Thanx!!!

  11. coopreme internet marketing

    - 9th May, 07 06:05pm

    nate… you rock my world… prepare to get some LINK LOVE BIOTCH!!!!

  12. Nate Whitehill (author comment)

    - 10th May, 07 02:05am

    DotNetNuke Consulting,
    Thanks for the comments. Yes, those magic words are key. Readers need to be presented with the option to subscribe as soon as they finish reading an article.

    Julie,
    Glad I could show you a few cool, new plugins. Let me know how they work out for you.

    45n5,
    That is an excellent idea. Unfortunately, I have not had very much luck with people subscribing to my feed through email. Maybe I’ll start a newsletter here soon. ;)

    Daniel,
    Glad to see that you enjoyed the article. Hey, I saw on your site you are studying Chinese. We should chat.

    Martin,
    Excellent point. Many of the tech-savvy readers will very much appreciate the “full-feed” option. I am going to update my blog to mention that. You are also right about the “Top Posts” page. Sometimes I come across articles I completely forgot that I wrote.

    Josh,
    Glad that i could be of help. I love reading the case studies on your blog. Keep up the great work! Nice chatting with you earlier, by the way.

    Wolf,
    That makes me feel good to hear you look forward to my posts. I need to pick up the pace a little bit – I’ve been so busy with work that my blogging has slacked a little.

    Jane,
    Nice to see you back and it’s great to hear about your many successes.

    Coopreme,
    Haha good to hear I rock your world. Thanks for the link love – I might have to return that here soon!

    Thanks for the comments everyone!

  13. Tim

    - 10th May, 07 10:05am

    Really great list!
    But how do you add this sentence in point 2, I mean that do you add it every time or is it written in template?

  14. Wii Errors

    - 10th May, 07 10:05am

    An e-mail list is a good idea I think.

  15. Wii Errors

    - 10th May, 07 10:05am

    It is in your theme editor, you can add it in your comments.php or main index file.

  16. Wii Errors

    - 10th May, 07 10:05am

    A contest might be a good place to start ;)

  17. Wii Errors

    - 10th May, 07 10:05am

    A top posts page is a good idea and promotes deep linking!

  18. Wii Errors

    - 10th May, 07 10:05am

    Magic words :)

  19. Raj

    - 10th May, 07 10:05pm

    Gr8 post with nice tips

    Thanks
    http://www.technobuzz.net

  20. Armen

    - 10th May, 07 11:05pm

    Top job Nick! I definately support #5. I wrote recently about it, trying to silence some of the arguments against full feeds – Read More? It’s Just Not Right!

  21. Rhys

    - 11th May, 07 01:05am

    Nice article, I agree with most of them. However I do not like Comment Relish. I seem to be having problems with trackbacks, as my server sends an email to the source of the trackback (which has no e-mail address), it keeps trying, and it generally screws up my server.

    However, I feel this is just me, as a lot of people have successfully managed to link trackbacks and comment relish.

  22. alamster

    - 11th May, 07 02:05am

    very usefull post, i just thinking about blogspot user, no plugin available :-)

  23. Dexter Zaf

    - 11th May, 07 09:05am

    Very well thought article. Stickiness and repeat visitors are important.

  24. Shane

    - 11th May, 07 04:05pm

    Something I’ve been thinking about lately is “remember your roots”.

    People like a blog for what it is. It’s good to mix it up, but stray too far away from your roots for too long and you stand to lose a little bit of sticky.

    I’ve noticed this on a few blogs. There’s a fine balance between not going anywhere and going where you shouldn’t.

  25. I Blog - You Blog

    - 12th May, 07 04:05am

    Great tips Nate. I already follow some of them . Need to follow the rest.

  26. Adam

    - 12th May, 07 04:05am

    You just got yourself another reader to stick nate ;)

    Nice blog, take care!

  27. Azure

    - 12th May, 07 09:05am

    the tips you shared are very good. I’m in fact implementing several already. thanks for sharing!

  28. David Airey :: Creative Design ::

    - 12th May, 07 01:05pm

    Hi Nate,

    Good job here. I covered some points in a recent post, and actually just asked another blogger how they sent me an automated response having left my first comment. So thanks for that.

    I hope the weekend is a good one!

    David

  29. Nancy

    - 12th May, 07 04:05pm

    Great ideas — after reading your list, I went ahead and put my feed button at the top of my page. :) I will likely implement the rest of your suggestions soon. Thank you!

  30. I Blog - You Blog

    - 12th May, 07 10:05pm

    Oh and I forgot, thanks for mentioning me. I’m very grateful to you.

  31. Hobo SEO

    - 13th May, 07 09:05am

    Nice list. We’re currently looking at all of these plugins to make our blog a bit more blogger friendly…

  32. Jonathan Franzone

    - 13th May, 07 07:05pm

    Great tips! I enjoyed them… and took them to heart. I actually opened up and second browser window and made several of the changes right away as I read through the post a second time.l

  33. Alan

    - 14th May, 07 02:05am

    I would agree that contests are a great way to give back to readers and keep them coming back.

  34. Henri van den Hoof :: B2B Marketing

    - 14th May, 07 08:05am

    Great list Nate :-D Some nice new tips and will definately try out this Comment Relish plugin.

  35. Damien

    - 30th May, 07 11:05pm

    Thanks, your post has been very helpful.
    Nice tips

    Damien

  36. Kosta

    - 11th Jun, 07 04:06am

    Cool!

  37. Nikolaos

    - 10th Jul, 07 11:07am

    Cool.

  38. Marko

    - 10th Jul, 07 04:07pm

    Interesting…

  39. Simon

    - 29th Jul, 07 03:07pm

    Very useful information for any blogger. Thanks

    Simon

  40. Debo Hobo

    - 10th Aug, 07 10:08pm

    A contest is next on my list, just as soon as I stumple upon the prize.

  41. Joe Justin

    - 11th Aug, 07 07:08pm

    I loved comment relish and received a lot of compliments becuase of it. However, I had the same problem with comment relish. My site was down for almost a whole day due to this problem. I finally went into mysql and deleted the last comment I receieved and everything was good!

    One day after that, same thing happened again, so I de-activated the plugin.

  42. Urbanist

    - 11th Sep, 07 03:09pm

    I’ve been wondering about the comment relish though … personally I don’t like it when people have options like ’subscribe to comments’ checked by default or send me unsolicited email. I’d rather check an option or some such. Certainly comment relish is less invasive that a default subscribe to comments though.

  44. David Smithers

    - 3rd Feb, 08 01:02pm

    Hi. Thanks for the informative article. I just started a blog- I post great deals, freebies,credit card info and frequent flyer info. Check us out at http://dealsnmore.blogspot.com
    Thanks

  45. John

    - 13th May, 08 07:05am

    IMO, The best way is to create a relative poll for the post, people always wants to give a free vote and than would like to check, how much they are better in voting.
    Well, NWH you have mentioned other gr8 tips.

  46. Online Products Shopping

    - 19th May, 08 09:05am

    I think for one post only one detailed description is required, one should not mixed up more than 2 points in the same post, it some times becomes very complex for a reader to understand for the what the post is about. For one topic one separate post, that’s what i believe.

  47. Eva White

    - 30th May, 08 01:05am

    A lot of very useful tips. Specially the one for RSS

  48. XMAN

    - 2nd Jul, 08 12:07am

    Hey Nate!

    I really appreciate your post. I just finished reading your Ebook and I have to say I have been online looking for exactly what you offered there and before now was utterly disappointed. You gave me great value and it was free! That is pretty rare!

    I am a new blogger and I am committed to do what it takes to see it through. I enjoy people and helping them as often as I can. I have been in forums for years and helped many people and decided it was time I entered the blogsphere.

    Thanks again and I look forward to many more posts!!
    ::X::

  49. Web Designing India

    - 2nd Sep, 08 04:09am

    Giving the hottest news in the society to readers will increase traffic and popularity of a blog, means as much as the blog owner is active on the blog, the blog is more active for readers.

  50. Dali Burgado

    - 4th Nov, 08 01:11pm

    Nate,
    Excellent post. This was exactly what I was looking for. You rock.

    I appreciate you and look forward to reading some more quality content.
    Dali Burgado

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