Skellie at Skelliewag.org gave out the tips to get 1050 subscribers in just 3 months of blogging from scratch. She did it despite being the sole author of the blog and spent zero $$$ on marketing and promotion. And she said that it doesn’t matter what niche or audience you’re targeting; she did it although the niche has already matured and crowded with other blogs targeting the same audience. The gists of her tips are summarized here.
Know Your Target Audience
Most important of all is that you have to know who your audience is. You must write for your target readers and not just about the topics (because you may diverge away from the readers’ needs if you centered your content around topics to write).
Your target audience must be convinced that your content is written for their needs and unmissable. What they want is a 100% relevant content so that their times are not wasted. Even if your content is just 70% relevant, there’s a big chance that they won’t subscribe to it – because some of your content can be missed!
It’s a good trick to write clearly at the top of your blog to whom is it for so that they know right away without even reading the content yet.
Write Good Stuff, But How?
Content is the heart of your blog, so make it a great one. Write posts that give values to the readers, not just for the sake of making more posts. One post packed with values is worth so much more than many posts with little or no values.
If time is hard to come by, it’s okay to post less but make sure each piece have great values to offer. Make your readers’ time worthwhile. Readers will subscribe if they learn a lot from your content.
Expose Your Blog - To Your Target Audience!
There are two ways for people to get to your blogs – links or social media. These are the place to put your effort to build your blog’s exposure.
Links: There are two types of links:
1. Links you make in other blogs:
- Links from your comments in other blogs.
- Your forum or social media signature.
- Your by-line as guest-posts.
2. Links you get from other blogs:
- Write great articles that people will link to.
- Ask them to link to you or exchange links with them.
The most powerful links that you can make or get are from popular blogs, sites, and forums related to your blogging niche. Not all links are equal - some links are better (in sending readers to your blog) than others. But it’s better to have all these links than to have none or just a few good ones. It’s unmistakable that if you have great and valuable content, links will come naturally.
Try also to write as guest-posts especially in popular blogs. But first, show that your content is worth it.
Social Media: The tip on social media (Digg, StumbleUpon, etc) is simply to be an active user. If you vote for other posts, they tend to vote for your article as this is naturally the easiest way to repay the favor. Once your article has been voted, other people will easily build it up the ladder on.
Some principles that guarantees her success are to be friendly, treat every person you interact with respect, always help out in the best way you can, focus on mutual benefit, and give more than you take.
Other Little Things
Without all of the above, the little things won't work. But once you have the essentials covered, consider putting some effort on the extras
- Make your feed button easily visible (e.g. at the top part without scrolling)
- Add the option to subscribe at the end of each post.
- Put effort on blog design. Readers see that authors’ are more serious with their content if they are serious about their blog design.
My Comments
Compare Skellie’s tips to that of Tina Su's (who got 2000+ subscribers in 3 months). Their tips are pretty much the same, except that Tina recommends bloggers to think about why they want to blog first and then set blogging goals and targets before anything else.