Getting people to read your blog is important. But getting them to subscribe is essential if you ever want them to become a customer, that is.
When people subscribe to your blog, they give you their email address, meaning they finally pass from the attract stage to the convert stage.
After that, you only need to close and delight and you may have gained yourself a customer for life.
Need some advice? Here are 4 ways you can get people subscribing to your blog.
1. Make Sure Users Can See Your Subscribe Button
This is possibly the most obvious way to get more blog subscribers, but you'd be surprised how many people don't consider it to be a problem. A lot of bloggers think that having a subscribe button is enough. But it's not. You need to draw your readers' eyes towards your subscribe button and make it an easy decision for them to click it.
First things first: Pick a place. Make sure your button appears in good view. The best places are usually above the fold, like this Buzzfeed subscribe button (highlighted in green):
Or, you can place your subscribe button as a call to action at the bottom of your page. Like this Hubspot button (also highlighted in green):
Hubspot even went one further and triggered a pop-up as I went to leave their site:
This is another great way to get people to subscribe and it's so simple too. Just ask. The worst people can do is click away. The best they can do is fill out their email address and hit the button.
Bam. You've just helped yourself to one more subscriber.
2. Offer an Incentive
People are selfish creatures. A lot of the time, we won't do anything without being sure that we're getting something in return. With that in mind, it makes sense to encourage people to subscribe to your blog by offering them an incentive.
This doesn't have to be something spectacular like: “$100 off your next purchase.” It can be as simple as the Hubspot pop-up above. The pop-up simply lets marketers know what they'll be getting if they sign up. It also turns the pressure up slightly by letting readers know that 300,000 of their fellow marketers are already signed up.
You can make your incentives more effective by adding a sense of exclusivity, like Backlinko:
This encourages users to sign up because they will feel like they're missing out if they don't.
3. Keep It Simple
If there is one thing that everybody has in common, it's that we're all so busy. As such, people like articles they can skim read. This way, they can fly through and pick out things of interest. To make your articles easy to skim, you need to think about white space the space around the text. Believe it or not, the more white space there is in an article, the more attractive it appears. Take a look:
You can simplify your articles further than this. Remove all jargon and simplify your sentences. This will make your articles even more attractive to read and people will be more likely to subscribe to your blog. An awesome app for simplifying your language is Hemingway App.
4. Make Sure You're Seen
If you want to get more subscribers to your blog, then getting more readers is a good way to start. How do you get more readers?
Make sure you're seen. You can do this in three ways.
Make your blog easy to find on your website
While browsing different marketing websites, I discovered that a surprising number actually only mention their blog in their website footer. That's not a prime place to be seen.
A link to your blog should be available within the top navigation bar of your website. Not only will this increase your subscribers, it will increase general customer satisfaction. Customers like reading blog articles. They find them useful. In fact, blogs have been rated as the 5th most trusted source for accurate online information.
Increase your social presence
If you want to be seen, then you need to go where the people are social media. Studies have found that 28 percent of all time spent online is now spent on social media sites. That's equal to 1.72 hours per day.
Done properly, social media can be a great practically free marketing platform for brands. Every time you write a new article, be sure to share it on your social sites. You should also encourage others to share your articles by including social sharing buttons, like the ones below, on your blog:
Contribute to other blogs
Another way to make sure you're seen is to contribute to other blogs like I'm doing right now.
By writing articles for websites with a higher domain authority than your own, you can gain a few things:
- Authority backlinks to your site
- More eyeballs on your articles
- More subscribers
Final Thoughts
To get people subscribing to your blog, you need to work hard. Like with all content marketing techniques, nothing comes easy. But, if you follow the four steps above, then over time you should see an increase in subscribers.
For more information on how to improve your blog, take a look at this SlideShare by Portent.