Tips to increase your RSS readership

In response to Seth Godin’s concern that too low a percentage of his readership was coming via RSS feeds, Rok Hrastnik offers these tips for increasing RSS readership.

1. Push your RSS subscribe features upwards, directly below your logo.
2. Having the AddToMyYahoo button is cool and goes a long way towards reaching the mass public, but is it enough to entice visitors to subscribe? Add some copy to actually invite people to subscribe and tell them why. Treat it as a ‘subscribe’ function not an ‘RSS’ function.
3. Add a permanent link explaining RSS and its benefits. I’m guessing most of your visitors will miss the latest RSS post.
4. Don’t stick with just the Yahoo! button, but also add buttons from Bloglines, Google etc.

And it’s going to take a little time to get everyone using RSS. Was the same with email and Websites. Good thing the influencers of public opinion use RSS. Doesn’t matter that your prospective clients do not all use RSS, just so people who influence them like the media and avid blog publishers do.