Have you ever wondered how to get more blog subscribers?
It’s a common wish of many bloggers.
I know since I collect wishes in my Blogger Collaboration group.
My guest author Eric Schlehlein wrote How to Quickly Get 3,000 New Blog Followers. Consider this a follow-up post.
In response to the article, a reader commented,
Great post
I love how specific it was. I went back and read the one on how to get 3000 followers, and I am going to be completely honest. I don’t want to spend an hour networking when I have only 1-2 hours to spend on blogging. That said, I can see how that would work! I think it was a great tip for those that have time. I love how this post shows how you can use your time wisely by joining link parties, and community pools etc. And still gain followers. Thank you!
I do not have time. I work outside the home as a teacher with papers to grade.
Eric amassed 3,000 blog subscribers in 18 months. I built a community of more than 2,000 subscribers in less than 15 months while working outside the home.
I started blogging in my niche, blogging tips, on January 22, 2015.
By the end of April of 2016, my 15th month in my blogging niche, I had reached over 2,000 blog subscribers.
As you can see by looking at the screenshots, on May 10, the number had reached 2,024.
I don’t mean followers, like social media followers. Since I am self-hosted, the number of followers I have on my social media sites are not included in the total.
There is a reason I am especially humbled by this show of support by the blogging community.
When I started blogging, I read that to have a successful blog, you should have 1,000 blog followers within your first year of blogging.
By this logic, it would take me two years to reach 2,000 followers. To have built a community of over 2,000 people in just 15 months is over-the-moon exciting.
This post will explain how I did it, and how you can do it too.
How to Get Over 2,000 Blog Subscribers
Networking
It is not a coincidence that networking is first. If I had to settle on one action that resulted in the 2,024 blog subscribers it would be networking.
I am so confident that networking is the main key to blog growth, I wrote a post about it. I titled it Secrets of Successful Bloggers, but there is only one secret– the key to blog growth is networking.
Consider this response from a reader when I advised that he network:
I’m not very good at the advice you suggested. It’s not easy, I know that.
I realize I am advising you leave your comfort zone, but how are people supposed to become interested in a blog they don’t know about?
He has since unsubscribed from my blog. Apparently he did not feel comfortable with my methods. Networking, in my opinion, is not a method. It is common sense.
If you want people to read your articles, they first have to know that you exist.
Being Regimented
For me, consistently performing my blogging tasks on a schedule goes hand in hand with networking.
Most days after school, I would eat my lunch and network. I tried to meet new people and make them aware of my blogging tips site.
Reblogs
To coin a song from Aladdin, “It’s a Whole New World.”
Since I self-hosted, I am living in a whole new world, a world where I can’t be reblogged.
Before I started self-hosting, having my articles reblogged by a supportive and appreciative blogging community accounted for so much of my subscriber growth, I actually wrote a post about it, Blog Growth Hack: A Cheat Sheet for Getting More Followers.
In the post, I encouraged people to find a reblog buddy and reblog each other. It’s a great way to be exposed to new communities.
Has my inability to be reblogged deterred my subscriber growth? No. People share my links to my articles, and they write short blurbs about my articles.
Chris, the StoryReading Ape, is so tech savvy, he knows how to show my article graphic as well. Others do too.
Facebook Groups
Facebook is consistently at the top of my referral traffic. I have not only received new subscribers who found me on Facebook, but I have made a great many friends.
Facebook groups in your niche are easy to find too. You just go to the search bar on Facebook and type in the name of your blogging niche. Your niche and the word “group” will come up.
You will have to ask to join the groups. Sooner than later, you’ll receive notification you can post your links in the group. Read the group description. Many are solely interested in supporting their members through advice and not by self-promotion. Other groups have strict rules about where you can leave your link.
Follow the rules. You don’t want to inadvertently anger someone and risk getting kicked out.
Reading
The more I read, the more Facebook groups I hear about. I join all groups I believe will work well for me. For example, I wouldn’t want a group that entails too great a time commitment.
Over the 15 months, the more groups I joined, the more I came into contact with new people, and the more followers I received.
Caring about SEO
Sticking to an editorial calendar goes along with being regimented. Consistent publishing helps your SEO.
I know it helped mine since people wrote that they found me in search engines.
Since I started following my secret SEO tip, my organic traffic has increased twenty times!
Giveaways
According to blogger Smitha Arons, giveaways result in gaining many new subscribers. She was right.
Lysa Wilds and I held one, and it did. Rafflecopter is a helpful tool to use with giveaways.
Meet and Greets
People are going there looking to meet others. I once attended a Meet and Greet. I introduced myself to everyone who left a link. They all followed me to my blog and subscribed.
People subscribed to my blog to join our four subcommunities and be able to pin to our blog’s Pinterest board. (Note: If you have subscribed to this blog and would like to pin to our blog Community Pinterest board, please let me know in the comments section.)
Miscellaneous Factors but Everything Adds Up
The following contributed to my blog growth, but not as much as the above eight tips. The following helped, but resulted in fewer subscribers.
New subscribers explained they found my blog because I…
- commented on other people’s blogs .
- pinned to Community Pinterest boards.
- used Twitter tools to make more like-minded people aware of my blog on Twitter.
- posted to Google+.
What Conclusions Can We Draw About How to Get Blog Subscribers?
I have read that blogging advice is much the same from blog to blog. Things become trite because they are true.
I conducted an interview in which I asked successful bloggers how they decided which blogs to follow [How to Get New Blog Followers: Experts Reveal Their Secrets ]. If you read the interview, you will see the experts express belief in the Bandwagon Effect– if it is a highly trafficked blog, it must have quality, and they subscribe.
I disagree. You don’t have to be blogging guru Ryan Biddulph to be appealing to potential subscribers. My blog is not as highly trafficked as Ryan Biddulph’s, and over 2,000 people chose to subscribe to my blog in a little over a year of blogging in my niche.
I have presented a case study of how I managed to grow my subscriber list ahead of a schedule I read I should expect.
This week is a time of reflection since I published my 400th post. I hope you found my reflection on what contributed to my receiving 2,024 subscribers in 15 months valuable enough that you can repeat my methods.
Bloggers, please share so others still struggling to grow their subscriber list can do so.
What methods do you feel contributed to growing your subscriber list? If you had to pinpoint one factor that could help new bloggers, what would it be? I look forward to your views in the comments section.
Related Posts
How to Easily Get People to Subscribe to Your Blog by Networking
How to Quickly Find 3,000 New Blog Followers
