Avoiding Common Blogging Mistakes: Subscription Options

Welcome to our series on common blogging mistakes, and how to avoid them. Every other week, we'll debut a new post designed to help you avoid mistakes that are common to both new and veteran bloggers, full of tips and tricks guaranteed to help you become an even more passionate, engaged blogger with a growing audience.

Today we begin a new series where we share common blogging mistakes to avoid.  We all make mistakes early on with our blogs but have learned from them. Now we would like to pass that knowledge on to you.  We will cover mistakes or oversights bloggers make and how to overcome them.  Today we start with offering different blog subscription options for your readers.

A mistake made often with blogging is not offering options to subscribe for blog updates.  You want visitors to know when you post an update right?  Don't just rely on the "Subscribe" link that appears in your Navigation Bar and call it a day.  Readers have different preferences when following their favorite blogs. Some people like to get blog updates or digest sent directly to their inbox, others visit a blog reader and read all of their blog updates at once, or they get their blog fix through Social Media.

Here are some of the more common options you can give your readers for getting updates.

Link Back To A Feed Reader

A blog reader is an application that collects and syndicates all of the blogs you follow into one place.  The Subscribe link in your Navigation Bar gives readers your feed URL (ending with atom.xml or rss.xml) that can be added to feed readers.  Make sure you have your Feeds enabled at Settings > Feeds to make your posts viewable. 

Some popular feed readers are Bloglovin' and Feedly.  They both have a selection of "follow" buttons to choose from. You can see how they look here and  here.

Connect to FeedBlitz

By connecting your blog to FeedBlitz, you can share the FeedBlitz sign-up widget in your sidebar.  Anyone who signs up using this widget will be taken to a page showing options to subscribe to the feed via Google, Facebook, and several other services.

Email Updates

If you set up an account with FeedBlitz, you can utilize their Email Subscription option.  Every time you update your blog, an email will be sent directly to your subscribers linking back to your blog. 

Facebook/Twitter

Not everyone wants to get email updates.  People check their social media accounts several times a day, every day.  Offer the option to "like" your blog on Facebook by adding a Like button or badge.

If you share blog updates on Twitter, choose one of their "follow" buttons to let readers know you're there too.   You can also use a service like IFTTT to share your blog updates to your Facebook, Twitter, and more automatically.

By offering different choices to share your blog updates with your readers, you make the most of getting your blog content out to be read and shared with others.

How do you keep updated with your favorite blogs?