On August 31st, I posted “The Plan“. That is to see my RSS Subscribers double or better during the month of September.

Last Friday I believe that my counter was saying 58 subscribers to this blog. Subscriptions will always fluctuate up and down a few and that was the case this week. Yesterday the count was showing to be up to 74 but this morning is down again to 63.

That’s OK, it’s a start. I also don’t want to live or die by a counter. As long as you put out relevant information that is of interest to readers, the blog size will naturally increase.

Here are a few things that can be done in order to keep readers coming back:

• Consistent Posts - Home with Heather for example is updated at minimum 5 days a week, but I shoot for posting something daily - including weekends. If you post only three times a week, be consistent with which days your posts go up. Readers will come to expect it on those days.
• Time of Day - I found this week that although I did post daily, my timing was not consistent and I lost a few readers due to that. Look at your traffic stats, when do you get the most visitors to your site? You may want to work your posting schedule around that and again, be consistent. I get much of my traffic early morning, mid-afternoon and then again later in the evening. I find it best to post in the morning. It gives readers something to think on and if they would like to link to the post through a trackback or pingback, it gives them opportunity to do so.
• Having some pre-written entries can really aid on those days when things seem to go a muck. A great example of that for me would be Wednesday when my ISP was down most of the day. I should have had something post automatically, but was caught unprepared.
• Reader Involvement - Try to get your readers to participate in the discussion. Encourage comments and ask questions. Allow your readers to feel they are part of the community.
• Daily Social Networking - Set aside a chunk of time each day to get out and meet people. Check out other blogs, comment them, participate in networking activities on facebook, myspace, blog catalog and other networking sites. Bookmark post of interest for other bloggers. Don’t be stingy handing out the kudos, if you like something stumble it. You may feel you’ve better ways to spend your time because socializing can be so much fun, but in actuality it is a great use of your time. I’m trying to do my socializing in the evening after the other tasks have been accomplished for the day. I find it a good reward, it’s also a great way to wind down for the day and it gives me an idea of what’s going on for the next day.
• Give Readers a reason to subscribe - You could do this by writing a series, post each installment a few days apart and encourage readers to subscribe so they don’t miss it. Sometimes I do something called Monday morning ramblings. I let readers know what to look forward to at the beginning of the week so they’ll keep checking back.

So how has this week been for you? Have you noticed an increase in traffic, or in subscriptions to your blog this week?

Care to share? Did you notice anything that worked really well for you, or anything that you thought you should have done differently. As always, I’d love to hear from you

Expect the Best,

are you in, blog promotion, free traffic, getting more readers, rss, September challenge, subscribers, traffic, Web 2.0, weekly update

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 10:54 am and is filed under Traffic, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.