Last Updated on September 27, 2021 by scottkandh
Today’s post picks up on Day 3 of 20. The whole purpose of this blog series is to get at least one new subscriber per month for each consecutive month.
The main blog series post is Good traffic, but few subscribers – 20 Simple ways to get “new” Subscribers – Day 1 of 20.
Each day, I’ll move on to the next topic. If necessary, I’ll briefly discuss something from the previous blog post that wasn’t published earlier. The topics coincide with the day of the month (for example, day 8 will be published on November 8th, etc.).
Day 2) Demonstrate the Value of Subscribing
Review of Day 2)
Only one thing to comment on yesterday’s blog post. I’ve got TrustPulse, setup and I’m waiting for a subscriber to sign up so I can see the next popup notice to visitors.
Please visit my blog: https://www.pinartwork.com and subscribe to be the first to receive my latest blog content!
I’m looking forward to using the TrustPulse program. It’s setup in a way that until new users subscribe it’ll display a welcome screen that you can click on and you can set up a page that it’ll link to. Hence that’s a great way for you to link to your dedicated Subscriber Landing Page. Chances are you don’t even need a screenshot to see what I’m describing. You should be able to see the TrustPulse pop-up in the left sidebar of your screen located closer to the bottom of the page. I’m guessing that once a visitor subscribes the message is going to change, but I don’t know how it’s going to change. Hopefully it reflects the true number of subscribers and doesn’t inflate it.
End of Review
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If a visitor is new to your blog, they’re likely going to need some convincing that it’s worth coming back to time and time again. Just as with any effective call-to-action, you need to clearly demonstrate that value of subscribing to your blog. Explain what the visitor will get from the blog when subscribing. In the HubSpot blog’s subscriber call-to-action, for example, they explain what the HubSpot blog covers — “all of inbound marketing – SEO, blogging, social media, lead generation, email marketing, lead nurturing & management, and analytics” — so visitors have a clear understanding of what they’ll get from subscribing.
I added a new landing page to two places:
- My Front Page and
- The About Me page.
Both of the landing pages are located at the bottom of this post. But the one that I prefer over the other is the one below. Because it easily explains to visitors what they’ll be getting from the blog when they subscribe.
Over time, I plan to create a new type of different Landing Page until one starts getting some hits and that’s the one that I’ll use.
Viewers, you can help me out immensely by leaving a comment at the bottom of the post with a short description of the post (i.e. Day #1 post) that you were viewing so that I know which Landing page to use for future use.
What I would like to do is to create an E-mail Subscribers List. This differs slightly from the normal WordPress Subscriber. The latter provides you with an e-mail to all blog posts regardless of their subject.
An E-mail Subscriber list can provide you with a select choice of items to choose that interest you. Future e-mails “should” be limited to topics within the confines of the areas that they’ve selected.
I’m getting a little ahead of myself because a portion of this is for tomorrow’s blog. A good example of what I just mentioned above for an E-mail Subscriber List or what Pamela refers to as a “Dedicated Subscription Landing Page” is on HubSpot.
The problem that I foresee is that “most” Contact plug-ins (that will provide a subscription e-mail address) don’t allow you to select multiple items.
I did one that might work called WPForms and I’m going to try it here to see if it works (for an E-Mail Subscriber List):
E-Mail Subscriber List.
By default, you can only select one item. Please select the one item that interests you the most. If you don’t want to fill in the form again a 2nd or 3rd time for the other two topics (please make a note in the comments field). Thank you.
[wpforms id=”5015″ title=”false” description=”false”]Unfortunately, you can select from multiple items; however, you can’t specify more than one item. So for the time being, I’m going to see if this will suffice until I can find a better way to do what I want.
I’ve signed up for TrustPulse, now I just need to learn how to set it up.
“It’s easy to convince people to take action when they see other real people doing the same thing. TrustPulse simply works and the results speak for themselves.”
– Jared Atchison, Co-Founder @ WPForms
Day 3) Create a Dedicated Subscription Landing Page
In addition to the subscribe module right there on your blog, create a dedicated landing page that you can direct people to via other channels such as social media, other pages on your website, PPC, or email. This way, rather than saying, “Visit myblog.com, then look for the subscriber option at the top right. You know — right below the banner CTA,” you can say “Visit myblog.com/subscribe to be the first to receive our latest blog content!” You can also use the extra real estate on this page to better demonstrate your blog’s value, as we did with HubSpot’s blog subscription landing page.
Here’s a copy of the subscription landing page referenced above from HubSpot.
There’s a plug-in called CrowdSignal that allows you to select from one of three options: 1) Poll, 2) Vote, or 3) Applause
In an effort to emulate HubSpot’s Subscription Landing Page and have an E-mail Subscriber List setup I’m going to set up each of the three options to see if one of them might work.
- Poll
2. Vote: It doesn’t appear this will work. It’s simply a vote in the form of a like (thumbs-up) or a dislike (thumbs-down).
3. Applause: I have no idea what this will offer, so I’ll see what it does now. Okay, it’s just a different form of likes in the form of clapping.
After looking at the three options available in CrowdSignal, none of these options will suffice, back to the drawing board. Looks like I might have to turn to a program called Interact (the program I have for quizzes). If you want to see it in action, click on the menu labeled Quizzes. I took a brief look at the Interact site to make a new quiz, but I don’t think that visitors can select multiple answers.
I finally got the answer that I’ve been looking for from the fine folks at ConvertKit. For your information, all of their forms and landing pages have the capability to add checkboxes.
You might have read about this already but if in case you missed it, please take a look and this may be able to help you:
Adding Tag Dropdowns + Checkboxes to Forms
Form / Landing Page with checkboxes
My new E-mail Subscriber List form:
I’m nearly there, I have the form setup but for some reason, my checkboxes aren’t showing up. Just in the event that you might run into the same problem, I’m showing a before and after and I’ll provide the solution (once I get the fix from the ConvertKit team).
Before:
After: For some odd reason, the text is running into the checkbox. But at least I’m that much closer to having a “select” E-mail Subscriber list. I’ve requested some help with that issue. But I don’t know if it’s a doable fix.
This is awesome, no sooner than did I add the information into the blog and I got two subscribers within seconds of one another. Cool beans! I think this is going to pay off big dividends.
It’s actually quite a simple fix to make the changes to the spacing.
If you want to adjust them, add CSS code to make the checkboxes have some spaces between the text.
label {padding-left: 38px !important; } – Change the value “38” into the best value that will suit your need.
The higher the number, the greater the space it’ll create.
Day 4) Offer an Incentive for Subscribing
Do a push to boost subscribers, such as a dedicated email send or a social media campaign, and offer an incentive for subscribing, such as an exclusive ebook, download, or coupon. Set up a dedicated landing page, and reward anyone who subscribes via that landing page with the exclusive offer.
Day 5) Promote on Your ‘About Us’ Page and Press Room Pages
Include a link to subscribe to your blog on other high-trafficked pages of your website such as your ‘About Us’ page and Press Room. These pages are likely to attract a lot of new visitors to your website, so use the opportunity to funnel them into your blog so they can learn more about you and read all of the awesome blog content you offer.
To each of your blog articles, add a simple, text-based footer that acts as a call-to-action to subscribe to your blog — like we’ve done to the bottom of this very post! If a visitor finishes reading an article on your blog and has found the content they read valuable, you’ll capture them at the height of their interest.
Day 7) Search Engine Optimize Your Content
An indirect way to boost subscribers is to drive more traffic to your blog. The more traffic you drive to your blog — assuming you’ve also optimized your blog to convert visitors into subscribers — the more subscribers you’ll gain. Don’t overlook the importance of search engine optimizing each blog article you publish. Brush up on your blog SEO, and target the keywords you want to rank for in search.
Day 8) Leverage Social Proof
‘Social proof‘ is the concept that people will conform to the actions of others under the assumption that those actions are reflective of the correct behavior. This third-party validation can be a very powerful motivator for your site visitors’ and prospects’ actions. You can leverage social proof on your blog to boost subscribers by highlighting the number of subscribers your blog has already accumulated, as we’ve done on this very blog. This makes blog visitors think, “Well, if so many other have already subscribed to this blog, maybe I should, too!”
Use your email marketing real estate — whether it’s within dedicated email sends or lead nurturing emails — to encourage blog subscriptions by adding a simple, text-based footer CTA to the bottom of your emails.
Day 10) Leverage Your Social Presence
Incorporate blog subscriber promo into your social media updates. Promote the dedicated subscription landing page you set up in tip number 3, and share it in updates for your various social media accounts such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Facebook. You could even create a dedicated tab on your Facebook page and collect subscriptions right within Facebook!
Let your readers do some of the work for you! Another indirect way to boost subscribers is to make the social sharing of your blog content as simple as possible. Add social sharing buttons to every blog post you publish so your readers can easily promote your blog content to their networks and expand your blog’s reach beyond your current fans, followers, and subscribers.
Day 12) Guest Blog, and Include a Link in the Author Byline
Guest blogging can be a powerful link-building tool. But you can milk guest blogging opportunities for more than just the inbound links. Because other blogs can be a great source of readers who don’t know about your own blog, you can use your author byline as a way to generate new subscribers. Here’s an example of how I might use a guest blogging author byline to drive subscribers for the HubSpot blog:
Pamela Vaughan is the blog manager for the HubSpot Inbound Marketing Blog, which has more than 57K subscribers. You can read more of Pamela’s content on inbound marketing by subscribing to the HubSpot blog here.
Day 13) Promote on Thank-You Pages
Thank-you pages are the pages your visitors get redirected to after they’ve completed a form on a landing page. As a result, these pages are prime real estate to encourage reconversions — especially blog subscriptions! Add CTAs that compel your newly converted leads to also subscribe to your blog content. It’s a great way to boost blog subscribers while also continuing to nurture leads.
Day 14) Promote Within Other Content
Include blog subscription CTAs within some of your other content such as your ebooks, webinars, or other downloads. Just as with the footer at the end of your blog posts, this will enable you to capitalize on the people who are already interested in your content. If leads think the content they’re already consuming is valuable, they’ll be more inclined to subscribe to the other content you offer on your blog.
Day 15) Hold a Contest
Do a push for blog subscribers using your other promotional channels, and treat it like a contest. Offer an enticing prize to a randomly selected subscriber who subscribes between the launch of your promotion and a designated date.
Day 16) Commit to Content Quality
Face it: You’re never going to convince readers to become a ‘regular’ if they’re unimpressed by the quality of the content on your blog in the first place. Make a commitment to increase the quality of the content on your blog. As TopRank Online Marketing’s Lee Odden says, you need to publish a “quantity of quality” in order to get a leg up on all the other blogs that are also vying for your audience’s attention. Not convinced that quality content is that important? Read this post.
Day 17) Be Consistent
The fastest way to churn your subscriber base is by failing to consistently publish content. Subscribers have an expectation of regularity, so if potential new subscribers don’t see that you’re regularly publishing blog content, they’re not going to see much value in subscribing, and you’ll lose some of the subscribers you’ve already worked so hard to attract. And publishing frequently can reward you with a lot more than just subscribers — HubSpot’s 2012 State of Inbound Marketing Report shows that the more frequently you publish to your blog, the more likely you’ll generate customers from it.
Day 18) Promote Blog Subscription in Your Personal Email Signature
Add a CTA and link to subscribe to your blog in your personal email signature, and encourage the rest of your company to do so as well — particularly your sales team. Using HubSpot’s free email signature generator, you can create a custom email signature that includes a link to your blog subscription page or latest blog post.
Day 19) Do a Paid Push
Put some paid marketing muscle behind your subscriber push. Use PPC to direct traffic to your dedicated blog subscriber landing page, or leverage Facebook Sponsored Stories to drive traffic to the subscriber tab you created for your Facebook business page in number 10.
Day 20) Use Full Feeds
To provide a full RSS feed, or not to provide a full RSS feed — that is the much-debated question. If you’re not hip to the difference, a partial RSS feed delivers just a snippet of the blog post with a link to read more on the blog, whereas a full RSS feed provides the entire post within the reader’s feed aggregator. The full feed provides a more user-friendly experience, whereas the partial feed is beneficial in driving traffic to your blog itself. The problem is, many readers won’t subscribe to your blog if you’re only offering a partial feed, so while partial feeds save you some blog traffic, you end up losing subscribers and hurting user experience. While there are definitely opposing points of view, we recommend providing subscribers with the full feed.
What other things can you do to increase your blog’s subscriber base? And … ahem … have you subscribed to this blog yet?
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