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Why Promote an RSS Feed if it Keeps People from Visiting Your Blog?

Posted By Darren Rowse 23rd of July 2009 RSS 0 Comments

In the last 15 minutes I’ve had 3 people ask me pretty much the same question:

“Why promote an RSS feed where you share the full posts of your blog when it means people don’t read your blog?”

Rather than write another post on the topic I thought I’d simply share a previous post where I address it:

Are RSS Subscribers Worthwhile if they Don’t Visit Your Blog?

Also check out 10 Sure-Fire Ways to Get RSS Readers Visiting Your Blog.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. RSS feeds are the lifeblood of my blog, because most people who check out my affiliate programs come straight from RSS.

  2. Ya why spend so much time trying to get people to come to your site, then just then a way not to as soon as they arrive.

  3. Some visitors are always better than none. Even if it is just RSS.

  4. RSS Subscribers are far from useless, RSS does help to build your brand.

  5. excellent illustration. i’m an rss subscriber and look i just clicked over to tell you how smart that was to link to your other posts.

  6. You should have your readers best interest in mind. Your readers likes to read in different types of ways. Some like to visit, and some like to get them in email. You need multiple different ways to have happy visitors. Greg Ellison

  7. Focus on profits, not traffic.

    A salient point from the comment threads on your previous conversation on the RSS point. But something so often forgotten in the business world. Hell, the world as a whole.

    Measure with objective, relevant criteria instead of subjective, or irrelevant criteria. If advertising revenue is a percentage of one’s reach, why not increase the reach through RSS?

    Great article, and great points on the competitive necessity of distribution through RSS. I can’t wait for the next post on the subject! ;)

  8. I reckon this is a cunning slow to get rss visitors to visit the blog (the two posts linked to). Although it could just be the cynic in me :)

  9. I find that if people read my RSS feed, they also will come to my site to comment etc.

    I subscribe to many RSS feeds and I still visit their website to comment or to look at other posts. I wouldn’t go about spamming people to death to subscribe to my RSS feed, but I might promote it here or there.

  10. i meant ploy not slow. Damn predictive text!

  11. The majority of visitors spend their time on the “backend” of my site. By that I mean in the “pages” section and not the posts. I consider those who read the actual blog posts and subscribe to RSS be a bonus more than my actual audience. It didn’t start out that way, but as I’ve continually added more content to pages and just post a blog entry every few days to keep things fresh things have gone that way.

  12. A lot of people only like reading blogs from RSS Feeds, why lose this type of readers? A blog doens’t live from visitors or page views, a blog lives thanks to its readers.

  13. I would also want to note the social proof aspect of RSS feeds. People seeing that there are for instance 10lk subscribers at a blog makes them think(sensibly) that they have just visited a great blog. I guess it falls into the reinforcing the brand category.

  14. If the readers never subscribe to your RSS feeds, how will they know there is a new post?

  15. Miles Carmany says: 07/23/2009 at 9:44 am

    It begs the question: Does having an RSS Subscription actually change a reader’s behavior?

    Not in my case. I usually like to read articles in context on the website. Particularly if the site is well designed, has polls, and images or graphics that enhance the reading experience. I use the offerings from NewsGator to keep my reader at work and home synced, and that usually strips out most media.

    In addition, some bloggers post only summaries or the first few hundred characters of their posts in the feed itself, which should help drive the subscribers to the actual site.

  16. I think I agree with Miles. When I’m notified via e-mail of a feed update, I typically click the title in the feed and read it on the site, because I value the information on that site, and I’d rather read it there than in my e-mail inbox. Most of my feeds are not accessed through e-mail. I use a feed reader, or Outlook’s RSS feeds feature to glean that information.

    If you can limit the post, you can drive the traffic back to the site anyway.

  17. If I explain my own experience, sometimes I first read the feed (ex: via email) then if I feel that it’s good post, and would like to know what others think about, and I also have something to share about I don’t think twice to visit the original post.
    So that means if you can influence the reader via the feed he/she surely come to your blog.
    So IMO RSS Subscribers is a valuable asset that should be well cared.

  18. Darren,

    Thanks for this post (well, actually, the older one you linked to). I’ve asked this question myself, and those are some pretty good answers. The exponential impact of the influence of a subscriber is something I hadn’t thought of. I am a tech savvy subscriber of RSS feeds myself, though I use them mostly just to see what the latest titles are. If I see something I like, I visit the actual blog to read the post. I find that they’re usually formatted better on the blog (for which they were designed to read on) than a reader. Also, I find that actually visiting the site allows me to become more engaged with the author’s related content.

    Thanks again for a great post.

    Jeff
    2Lincolns.com

  19. You can always just bang Adwords into it.

  20. You don’t have to show the entire content in your feeds, then, your readers will be interested in the rest of the Post. In Fact, the RSS feeds help you, because the people know when you have posted something new.

  21. RSS is good for teaser and informing about new content, won’t be teasing if it is in full post.

  22. I love using my RSS reader. Before I used my reader, I was not able to keep up with all of the blogs & conversations “between” blogs as I can now. I also love that I have my subscriptions in different folders by blog type. I feel I can really follow blogs much more closely. (I’ve got a really wacky range of blog types in my reader.)

    I click through about 25% of the individual blog posts daily because the topic really interests me and I want to read all of the comments. And, of those, I actually pay attention to (and sometimes click through) to the advertisers.

    I do prefer reading blogs in their “home” blog format because I like the graphics and overall context, but I simply can’t follow as many blogs (200+) with as much attention as I’d like if I had to click into each individual one daily or click from emails.

    In a nutshell, when I started using a reader, I became a daily follower and reader, which I gotta think is valuable, right?

  23. I add at the bottom of each post three links to other blog posts I’ve written and labelled it, “You may also be interested in:” with the three links below. I believe this increases the chance of someone clicking in to your blog from RSS or email.

  24. I guess it is called a building your brand.

  25. If someone wants to read my content, I’ll happily supply it :) It’s better than having someone tell me to shut up.

  26. I think we need to promote our RSS feed because it make our readers more easier to know if there is a new posts on our blogs.

  27. It’s about providing a different distribution service depending upon the customers wants.

    Some like to receive e-mail, some will want RSS, some will just come and visit every day.

    We are all different!

    Andrew

  28. Thanks for showing us your past post on RSS.

  29. Quality readers will always add more to a blog than people who just skip through.

  30. Two thoughts:

    First, and I think most blogs ignore this, it is all about your readers. Serve them first, and then profits, or fame, or whatever you want from blogging will come. If someone wants to read my blog on google reader, well, I won’t get a page hit. But it will serve them.

    The Simple dollar once wrote that if you have 1,000 dedicated followers, you’ll be fine. That’s what i am going for.

    Two, RSS feeds mean standard advertising won’t work, but e-books or affiliate marketing are the future of making money on the web. Also, someone regularly following your site won’t be clicking on ads anyways.

  31. For me, it increases readership and provides a certain connection with the blog and the reader. Most readers tend to just be in blog hopping mode, thus traffic is not much an essential factor for these types.

    But through an RSS subscription, they might be reminded one way or another that your blog exists and it may produce future repeat visits.

    I’m also believing that once a certain reader subscribed, it may already mean that he really wants to follow your content, so it’s a good thing already.

  32. RSS helps too.I mean people would be knowing about our brands and it could be helpful to promote our website.

  33. i have the same question

  34. Hi,

    I found your approach pretty interesting.

    I have not tried yet to use an RSS feed in my blogs, but I think to add it.

    It is an interesting traffic technique which I had not found before.

    A general question is how do measure your blog traffic?

    Can you suggest some ways to add counters to a blog. I currently use blogspot.

    Regards

    Mario Pesce

  35. Oh great !
    You mean brand building? Good.
    I’ll do it for my blog.

  36. If they’re reading your content what’s the difference if they read it on your blog or RSS feed?

  37. I think having lots of rss subscribers is great you still can monetize the rss page with Adsense to make money from it. I think having rss subscribers list you still can make them come to your blog by offering a product or a service in your blog post. Having a rss feed of products will make them come to your blog. Thanks for sharing.

  38. I just wanna share the information with the readers. And as usual, I got comments. It’s enough for me =)

  39. I guess I am still too new to this… I thought that an RSS just searched my site for a new post and forwarded that post to a reader… Is there a way to customize what gets sent out to the reader?

  40. RSS = Loyal Reader = Not forget you and just incase they do, you reach their inbox with a update. RSS = Very important, period.

  41. But do your regular readers click on ads? That’s the question that I have.

  42. David, its very rate that regular readers click on ads but more the readers more chances of having direct ad sales.

  43. As others have already pointed out, RSS serves many functions for a blog. To make RSS subscribers come to your blog, you have to hook them with your post’s title and the first couple of paragraphs. Mind you, this is dependent on how you have your RSS feed setup to be displayed (X number of words versus the full blog post). If people are not enticed enough to click the RSS link to your blog’s post, then you are missing out on increasing your blog’s page views as well monetization possibilities.

    Wesley Craig Green
    The Geek Entrepreneur

  44. that is also my question?
    Blogging Tips, SEO and Money Making tips by http://teratips.com

  45. Great points you made in that previous post. The first and last points I find very important. Having one subscriber who never visits your blog is worth much more than a visitor who never comes back to your blog. With that one subscriber, your still keeping a reader. I agree that if you want subscribers to be regular visitors you should offer them things like they couldn’t get just from your feed. Such as asking questions or running polls like you said.

  46. Promoting your RSS feed is very important. I don’t know about other people but I have 100s of people who have told me they read my RSS feed but they never visit my blogs.

  47. Darren, I subscribe to you via RSS. I was one of those who used to read PROBLOGGER posts in my inbox, and who initially didn’t comment. I guess I didn’t think I had the time. But by your brilliant posts, you drew me in. Now I frequent your blog daily, commenting as often as I can. So it does work!

    krissy knox :)
    follow me on twitter
    http://twitter.com/iamkrissy

  48. As said before promoting your RSS feed is highly important for your blog or whatever kind of site you have! I have readers all over the world that read my blogs and article directories throught RSS reader and if somebody that has a site and doesn’t promote their RSS feed is missing a part of the traffic!

  49. RSS feeds are good for your blog and will help it grow.

  50. thanks for your info i hate the ‘content is king’ line everytone throws around because you can write the most amazing articles in the world if you dont get anyone to see them your not going to get traffic…

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