Figuring out why your blog suddenly went from hot to not is uncomfortable, but it's necessary if you want to survive. Losing a follower or two isn't a big deal under normal circumstances—people get busy, they change jobs or they develop new interests and lose old ones. However, if you find yourself shedding subscribers regularly, it's time to examine your situation and determine whether any of the common reasons apply to you.
Reason #1: Your Posts are Long-Winded
You can get too much of a good thing. The ideal length for a blog post for usability purposes is between 400 and 600 words. The ideal length for SEO purposes is between 800 and 1,000 words, according to Google's latest Penguin update. Somewhere there's a happy medium, and you have to find it. Short posts are out because they don't contain enough information or enough keywords to count in anyone's life. Aiming for around 600 to 800 words gives you the best of both worlds, but it depends on your audience. Ask them! As one blogger says: “I don’t mind a long post, if you have something useful and interesting to say. If you’re just pandering to your massive ego, I'm hitting 'unsubscribe.'"
Reason #2: Enough Already
You post too often. If you've optimized your content management system to deliver alerts via RSS feed every time you publish a new blog post, and you do so three times a day, your feed subscribers get notifications equally often. This can be too much for some people, who want to read your information but would rather have it only three times per week. Again, this depends on your subject matter and your audience, but if you're losing subscribers, you should consider whether you're posting too frequently or too much.
Reason #3: Lack of Consistency
You used to post on Thursdays, but now you only post on Fridays...except when you went on vacation and could only post on Wednesday. Is it any wonder you're losing subscribers? It shouldn't be. People like consistency, and if they're actually reading your posts, they want to know when to expect them. Sure, some folks might be OK with an ad hoc schedule, but failing to post regularly can actually hurt your SEO efforts. If blogging is a big part of your inbound marketing strategy, you need to post in a timely way according to the schedule you've established. All the time.
Reason #4: Need Some Cheese With that Whine?
Negativity can cause people to run a mile. Some bloggers seem to think that they're contributing to the conversation only when they're sounding off on an issue. Being vocal and present and opinionated is great—your readers most likely have the same mindset as you. If not, they're likely to drop you from their reading list. You're welcome to use some occasional snark in your writing, but try not to make it a way of life.
Reason #5: It's a One-Way Street
Blogs are part of social media, although the degree to which they are viewed as content marketing seems to have obscured that fact. As such, interaction is the name of the game. If you disable your blog comments, those readers who want to connect with you about individual posts are going to be lost. It's true that many blog comments are ping-backs and spam, but the one or two genuine ones you get are worth their weight in gold. For readers who follow your posts and want to provide feedback, those comments need to be enabled.
If you're going to create a blog and publish posts, you might as well do it right.
*Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net
