Number 6 in a series, Business Blog FAQs, culled from my business blog consulting practice.

Many Tactics Are Needed to Bring Regular Readers to Your Business Blog

One of the most unsettling feelings a new blogger experiences is the feeling of talking into a void. It’s a legitimate worry – here you are spending all this time and energy writing … what if nobody reads it?

The first thing to remember – be patient. It takes time for anyone to build readership, unless you happen to be a celebrity. Here are things you can do to accelerate the process of attracting blog subscribers.

The Basics

  1. Offer a prominent, clearly marked RSS feed, either on your blog’s masthead or high on the sidebar.
  2. Offer a prominent, clearly marked email feed as well. Many people are unfamiliar with feed readers (e.g., Google Reader) and prefer receiving email notifications of new posts anyway.
  3. Deliver full feeds, not partial feeds. Some people recommend partial feeds as a way of enticing people to click through to the blog. I do not care for this tactic at all. Partial feeds give subscribers a convenient excuse not to click through. Assume potential readers are as busy as you – they are looking for reasons not to read something. On the other hand, if your content is engaging and invites comment, readers will click through to leave a comment and explore your blog further.
  4. Do not advertise in your feed. There are exceptions to this, but generally, when you’re starting out, you have little or no audience, and therefore no meaningful ad revenue potential. There’s little point in turning off a reader by advertising in a medium where advertising is sometimes frowned on.
  5. Test your feeds. Make sure they work before you launch.
  6. Subscribe to your feeds so you are the first to detect any problems – they are bound to come up.

The Old Fashioned Ways

  1. Add your blog address to your email signature, with a “please subscribe” message.
  2. Email your network letting them know about your blog and encouraging them to subscribe.
  3. Add your blog address to your business cards, letterhead, and printed forms. A little starburst alongside that says “NEW” will grab attention.
  4. Add a blog blurb to your printed/pdf literature.
  5. Add one or two slides devoted to your blog to PowerPoint presentations.
  6. Tell customers and prospects about your blog during meetings or when you have them on the phone.
  7. Email customers and prospects links to posts that may be of particular interest or are relevant to an issue you are dealing with. Repurposing posts is one of your blog’s most powerful benefits.

Become Active in the Blogging Community

  1. Leave meaningful comments on blogs in your niche and related niches. Those comments link back to your blog and attract interest from the blog’s author and other commenters. Incidentally – following comments that interest you back to their source is an excellent way to find new blogs to read and broaden your network.
  2. Participate in blog contests and group projects. Jump at the chance to get involved in these community activities. Participation builds your reputation as a legitimate blogger and sometimes builds a little “team spirit” that encourages fellow participants to spread word about you to their readers.
  3. Host a contest and offer a prize. Even if you have a small audience, offering a prize for a group project draws lots of attention, especially if the prize has value. If you need help designing the right kind of contest, I can give you lots of help.
  4. Guest post on blogs in your niche and related niches. A great way to get exposure, especially if you can get a high profile blogger interested in helping you get off the ground. The best way to accomplish that – write quality content and be an active reader and commenter.
  5. Invite bloggers to guest post on your blog. They will bring their readers with them, and many will subscribe to your blog.

Engage in Social Media

  1. Get a Twitter account and go to work. Twitter is a powerful way to build your network, publicize posts, and attract new readers. I’ve suggested in another post that blog subscriptions will grow faster if you start on Twitter before blogging. If I could start over, that’s what I’d do.
  2. Use your blog URL for your social media presence. Even if you have a regular website, social media participants probably want to visit your blog rather than your corporate site as a first step in getting to know you. This is good news as you try to build readership.
  3. Publish your blog’s feed on LinkedIn and Facebook. Anyone coming to your profile page will see it.
  4. Be active on LinkedIn. People report great success expanding their networks by participating in Answers (asking and answering), and joining or starting Groups.
  5. Be active on Facebook, maybe. Although Facebook is a broad based network, it may or may not be suitable for your niche. If it is, there are more ways to effectively get involved than can be covered here. Suffice to say, if your audience frequents Facebook, we should develop a plan.
  6. Be active in niche social media sites. Many industries – and geographies – are forming their own online networking circles. These can be highly effective, but people overlook them because Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn have the big numbers and get all the press.

Over to You

There’s much more that could be said about all these areas of subscription building. What’s worked – and not worked – for you? If one area stands out as the most effective, which would it be in your niche?
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