Here are a Few More Ways to Create Anticipation on Your Blog
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been writing about how you can grow the numbers of subscribers to your blog. Lets take a quick look back:
- Four days ago I revealed how I build my subscriber numbers by creating a sense of anticipation among my blog’s readers.
- A week ago I shared how you can lower your blog bounce rate and keep visitors on your blog longer.
Today I’m sharing four other techniques that I use to increase anticipation on my blogs and turn more visitors into subscribers.
How a Series Can Help You Create Anticipation on Your Blog
A series is simply several posts which build upon one another as they are published. Writing a series of blog posts is one of the most obvious methods of convincing someone to come back to your blog.
You Need to Give Them a Reason to Come Back for More
“By not giving your visitors all the information in a single post, you give your readers a great reason to come back to get the rest of the information.”
It’s important to make it clear that more posts are coming if you want to build anticipation and grow your subscriber numbers. You might also want to highlight your blog feed to give visitors an easy way to subscribe.
If you want to explore how to write successful and engaging blog posts, check out my post Make Your Blog Posts More Engaging and Conversational.
You Need to Plan Your Post, Then Your Followup Posts
You shouldn’t blog impulsively. When you sit down to blog, you should have some idea what you want to write about. You need to be focused upon what you want to say today, and even weeks or months in the future.
Take some time to plan your blog topics for the next few days, weeks, or even months. That is beneficial on several levels. One of the biggest benefits is that you can share your plans with readers. You can show them what they’ll get if they subscribe.
The more subtle benefit for planning your blog posts, you’ll understand where you’re headed with your blog in the future. Planning your writing will help you build momentum and engagement with your readers. That’s what helps create the anticipation that readers pick up on and are energized by.
Grow Your Subscribers Using Invitations on ‘Hot Posts’
Simply include invitations to subscribe on your blog posts. Analyze which posts have gotten the most traffic and visitor activity.
When you discover these posts, just add simple text link that says something like ‘get more tips like this one by subscribing’ or ‘if you enjoy this post, get more like it by subscribing…’ These invitations in hot posts snap first time visitors out of the ‘now’ and dangle the possibility of similar ‘future’ goodies from your blog.
Want to see a great example? One post that gets significant traffic on the Better Business Alliance Blog is How a Great Customer Experience Creates Brand Loyalty. Brand loyalty, customer experience and user experience are topics that interest many of my visitors.
If a particular blog post gets a spike of traffic from a social media site or another blog you can easily add a similar invitation to subscribe. This means having to be on top of what’s getting traffic on your blog at any given moment – but it pays off.
Use Language that is ‘Permanent’ and ‘Future Oriented’
The web is notoriously transitional and temporary. Sites and readers come and go as if they are driven by the wind. You have to use language that tells your readers that you’ll be around tomorrow and beyond. You have to help them consider that your blog should be a place that they will want to return to rather than a place that they visit once.
I’ve experimented with this quite a bit. By talking about upcoming posts, future features, asking readers to submit questions which I’ll base future posts upon etc. are just of the few ways that I engage readers. I believe that this type of language shows readers that you’re in it for the long haul and gives them some incentive to return.
I also make a conscious effort to use the word ‘community’ to describe my efforts and the people that engage with my writing. Community is a word I would describe as a ‘permanent’ word. Using ‘community’ signals that your site is more than just a one off sharing information but that it’s a place that people can ‘belong’. I’ve discovered that quite a few people have subscribed because they didn’t just want information. They were seeking a place where they could learn with others.
Heed This Warning, You Don’t Want to Annoy Your Readers
You Don’t want to overuse the technique of Building Anticipation on your blog. If you overdo some of the above, you run the risk of annoying readers. Particularly your regular readers who have already subscribed.
I’ve unsubscribed from a blog if they leave almost every post hanging on a key point. Or if they divide content that could easily be covered in a single post into long and drawn out series of posts.
You should use a series of posts, when it is necessary to cover the topic properly. However, I’d be sure that each post in the series has something worthwhile in it that gives it value on it’s own. It should make sense and matter whether it’s read in the context of the full series or not.
I think I’ll end this post and hand over the sharing of tips for building anticipation to you the community of the Better Business Alliance. How do you build anticipation on your blog? Share your own experiences about building anticipation in the comments….. We’d all love hearing about your experiences.
