Blog Tips#2 Increase readership through subscription
In my last “Blog tips” post, I discussed how to make it easy for readers to find the content they’re looking for. This time I’m going to talk about how to substantially increase your readership and more importantly, how to keep readers informed or interested, to ensure they continue to come back.
Making it easy for readers to learn about updates to your blog is vital. Subscription is the most compelling method to gain readers and retain them. There are more than 22 million blogs tracked by technorati so competition for readership is buoyant. What’s the point in providing quality content that’s hard to subscribe to and difficult to navigate. Chances are, someone else is providing similar content with user friendly subscription and navigation. So, improving the user experience by providing a friendly navigation and easy subscription method makes your readers feel that you care.
Its not rocket science, a few tweaks here and there in your blog template code is enough. Naturally, if you run out of fuel and need specific help, just post a comment and I’ll help you out.
Allow readers to subscribe to comments
Some readers may only be interested in the ongoing discussion of a specific post, rather than the whole blog. This is especially true when they’ve posted a comment themselves and wish to be updated when others respond.
There are two popular methods to enable comments subscription; comment feed and email subscription. Personally I prefer using both methods at the same time, as that gives readers a choice.
By automatically emailing people who comment on a blog post when someone else has added a comment after them, you are significantly increasing the possibility of them coming back to post more comments. In turn, this increases the possibility of them becoming more active on the blog to possibly even become a member of your community.
Method one: Via comment feed Adding an RSS feed to your posts is very simple. WordPress already has a global comment feed present, which you might have noticed if you installed a new theme. You can access this by placing the following tag in your sidebar (sidebar.php) or footer(footer.php).
<?php bloginfo(‘comments_rss2_url’); ?>
But for showing RSS feed of a specific post and let readers subscribe you need a different function, actually a WP template tag.
<?php comments_rss_link(‘text’, ‘file’); ?>
The “text” parameter represents the anchor text to display the comment’s RSS feed and “file” parameter represents the file the link points to. The default is ‘wp-commentsrss2.php’. Better to leave the file part at the default if you are not playing with your feed core file.
Place the code below in your themes comment section header (usually comments.php) just bellow the #postcomment call (as shown in the image). Replace the Anchor Text to suit your test.
<?php comments_rss_link(‘Anchor Text‘); ?>
Method Two: email subscription
Via email subscription, your readers can be notified by email when a current discussion has been updated (someone leaves a new comment to which they may wish to respond). The advantage of adding this feature to your blog is that you are giving your readers an update alert even when they are away from their feed readers, through email which can easily be accessed via phone or PDA.
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The easiest way to to add this feature is using a plugin (Subscribe to Comments). Alternatively you can implement it with a few tweaks in the comment form (Moderate PHP and SQL knowledge necessary).
Place this code snippet just bellow your comment form (comments.php) function call. Note that the classes can be configured in CSS. You can customize it further by adding subscription management, auto subscription (off course all in PHP).
<form action=”http://<?php echo $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . wp_specialchars($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']); ?>” method=”post”> <input type=”hidden” name=”comment_subscribe” value=”comment_subscribe” /> <input type=”hidden” name=”postid” value=”<?php echo $id; ?>” /> <input type=”hidden” name=”comment_ref” value=”<?php echo urlencode(‘http://’ . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . wp_specialchars($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'])); ?>” /> <p class=”subscribe_comments”> <?php _e(‘Subscribe without commenting’, ‘subscribe_comments’); ?> <br /> <label for=”subscribe_email”><?php _e(‘E-Mail:’, ‘subscribe_comments’); ?> <input type=”text” name=”email” id=”subscribe_email” size=”22″ value=”<?php echo $user_email; ?>” /></label> <input type=”submit” name=”submit” value=”<?php _e(‘Subscribe’, ‘subscribe_comments’); ?>” /> </p> </form>
Go the extra mile – Subscribe to categories
This is a very simple yet highly adorable feature you can offer to your readers. You may write about lot of things in your blog but that doesn’t mean your readers are interested in everything you have to talk about, that’s why you sort them into categories. Now if you can offer your readers the ability to subscribe to specific categories, it would be wonderful, don’t you agree? The method is simple, as WP already has a template tag ready to take care of it.
<?php wp_list_categories(‘arguments’); ?> [for WordPress 2.1 and above] <?php wp_list_cats(‘arguments’); ?> [Prior to WordPress 2.1]
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These two functions work almost the same, they dynamically list categories available to your blog. There are two ways you can let your readers subscribe to categories.
By showing a text RSS link beside category name-
<?phpwp_list_categories(‘orderby=name&feed=RSS’); ?> [for WordPress 2.1 and above]
<?phpwp_list_cats(‘orderby=name&feed=RSS’); ?> [Prior to WordPress 2.1]
By showing RSS feed image link beside category name-
<?phpwp_list_categories(‘orderby=name&feed_image=/files/rss.gif‘); ?> [for WordPress 2.1 and above]
<?phpwp_list_categories(‘orderby=name&feed_image=/files/rss.gif‘); ?> [Prior to WordPress 2.1]
For feed images do not forget to replace /files/rss.gif with your own feed image location. You have to place these codes to your sidebar template (usually sidebar.php) above </div>.
Good luck and give me a shout if you need a hand with anything.
18 Responses to “Blog Tips#2 Increase readership through subscription”
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There’s a very illuminating discussion unfolding on Twitter concerning subscribers, site visitors, readers and reach. It’s part of a disjointed converstion between PaulWalsh, imeallach and topgold that might be useful in its distilled format as a follow-on to this post.
Kamrul, That’s a very useful blog-tip, must check out the other blog-tips,
I’ll be testing these ideas over the next while.
and Bernie Goldbach’s note that there is further discussion on Twitter between Paul Walsh and others.
Must check that too. cheers.
Siasy,
Good to know that you found the tip useful. More tips coming soon. Yep on twitter you can track some interesting discussion regarding readership and those stuffs between Paul and others.
Hi…i’m not great with computers but i have a blog on blogspot…i’d like to put a way in there for my friends to subscribe so that when i update it – it will notify them…is that possible? well…i know it is because it works on myspace, but can you talk someone who is virtually computer illerate how to do it? Can you do it w/out sending people to that feedburner website thing b/c i don’t like the format of that, i like the blogger site better.
Thanks!
Amy,
Sure it’s possible to allow users subscribe directly from your site instead of sending them to feedburner or other third party’s site. Watch out for our blog tips upcoming week, which will be especially for Blogger/Blogspot blogs.
I think this may be kind of what i need…but instead of subscribing to a catagory, i want to post where they can subscribe by email to the entire blog – so whenever i add a new entry, they will receive an email letting them know i updated…is that the same as what you wrote in the subscribe to catagory section above? Sorry if i am pestering…but i am REALLY new to this. the blog is abowlofsupe.blogspot.com not that you need to read it, but if that helps you see what i am talking about–it is just about my dog – so hardly anything earthshattering that will keep you up at night – but i don’t know if it will help you visualize what i am trying to do!! thanks so much!!
Amy,
Here is what you have to do-
1. Login to your Feedburner account (if you don’t have one, open one it’s free). Browse through “My Feeds”–>”Publicize” –>”Email Subscriptions”(4th from the top on the left sidebar).
2. Choose “Feedburner” as Feed-via-email service provider than activate.
3. Next select the code (Subscription Form Code) first from the top and copy it (You will need this so don’t close the window yet).
4. Log into your blogger account. Browse through “Template”–>”Page Elements”. Click “Add Page element” link on the side or footer, where you wish to place the email subscription form.
5. You will notice a pop-up window with bunch of stuffs. Select 4th one (“HTML/JavaScript”) from the top on the left column. Now you will have “Configure HTML/JavaScript” window. Just Paste the codes you copied from Feedburner on step 3. Don’t forget to put a Title and Save changes before you close that window.
Here is a demonstration of how it will look like when you done with the process. http://kams-labs.blogspot.com/
Nice one Paul had been meaning to set that up on a per post basis for a while, now implemented.
top screenshot is out of order.
Great stuff Elly – makes sense
Sorry Kamrul – followed Paul’s twitter link so supposed that he wrote the post! Good topic, well explained.
Elly, you can also subscribe by author, not just category. Kamrul is very hot when it comes to building blogs and blog networks. He hand codes almost everything to ensure we don’t have compatibility issues when we upgrade WP.
Hey Paul, not to sound too blond, but how do you subscribe by author? When I click the link for Kamrul’s name under the ‘Subscribe by Author’ section on the top left it just takes me to a list of his posts. I used the google reader subscribe tool on that page, but it brings in the entire feed of all authors? Am i missing somthing obvious?
@Elly, this demonstrates we need to make it more obvious! Click on the RSS button beside his name.
You can never be too blonde… unless you use lemon juice and then sit in the sun.
Just click the Orange button beside name Elly
Got it now! Since the link and button were beside each other I assumed that the button was just for show and not active – definitely blond!
Cheers Kamrul it works perfectly, your a lifesaver!
Sorry for delayed response. Glad to hear that it worked out for you “Plumber Paul”.
If you already upgraded to latest version of WordPress the coding may slightly differ due to some function upgrade.