6 Awesome Ways to Get More Subscribers to Your Blog

You can spend all of your time writing an exquisite blog or creating the perfect Instagram or YouTube post, but if you don’t have an audience for your brilliant words, all you’re doing is screaming into the void. Unfortunately, gathering new subscribers and followers to join your blog isn’t as simple as it once was.

If you want to succeed on platforms like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, becoming an influencer is essential, but you can’t do that without an audience to see your message.

If the traditional methods for bringing new eyes to your social media channels aren’t working, here are a few awesome ways to bring fresh eyes to your Instagram, YouTube or TikTok channels.

1. Offer Them Something Extra

People love getting free stuff. That’s why people brave Costco on a Sunday for free samples and sign up for a mailing list that they might not even want to get free shipping.

For blogs and email mailing lists, you might consider offering a free e-book in your field of expertise.  For social media platforms, and even YouTube, giveaways are a great way to bring in new followers.

Your existing audience is the first to learn about your giveaways, but if you publicize them, new followers will sign up simply because they have a chance to win. If you’re doing giveaways, make sure you’re following any rules put in place by the platform where you’re hosting the giveaway.

2. Use a Smart Call to Action

We’re all familiar with the idea of a call to action (CTA) — something that catches your audience’s attention and makes them want to come back for more. On Instagram, that might be referring people to the link in your bio or telling them to swipe up in your Insta Stories.  On YouTube, asking someone to like, subscribe, and click the notification bell is that platform’s version of a CTA.

Unfortunately, people get tired of seeing the same message repeatedly, especially if they’ve already subscribed to your blog or the social media platform of your choice. Smart CTA’s use a cookie that detects when a person has already subscribed to your blog and hides the CTA from them. It only appears to new potential subscribers, which is less annoying than your traditional CTA.

While you can’t program this into Instagram or YouTube directly, you can provide a link to your website with a social media landing page that utilizes this type of CTA software. While some influencers may want to stay on their respective social media platform, if you’re selling a product or service, redirecting followers to your website is going to be the best course of action.

3. Program a Virtual Advisor

What sort of content do you offer? Is it something that a lot of other content creators are also providing to their audiences? It’s easy to get lost in a sea of information and if you want to stand out, you must be careful that you’re not scaring away any potential subscribers.

Sixty-six percent of consumers admit to being overwhelmed by the sheer number of beauty products on the market. Search for a popular topic on Instagram or YouTube and you’ll come back with hundreds or even thousands of content creators all vying for the same audience. Virtual advisors can provide your users with an experience that can help you stand out from the crowd.

By collecting information about your followers – through both cookies left on their computers and through data they provide – virtual advisors can personalize each user’s experience when they visit your website.  They can take some time to set up because they rely on AI-based machine learning software, but once they’re in place, they can help prevent you from overwhelming your potential subscribers or followers with information.

If you sell food items, for example, a virtual advisor can ask a couple of questions, leave a cookie behind on the consumer’s computer and organize your products based on preferences or dietary requirements each time they visit your site.

4. Make It Fun to Subscribe

This might seem like common sense but it’s something that a lot of content creators seem to forget. Don’t make your potential subscribers jump through hoops to find the form where they can fill out their information. Make it easy for them to subscribe, either by keeping it on each page (this is where those smart CTAs might come in handy) or by providing an obvious “click here to subscribe” button.

If you offer any sort of freebies for subscription, detail them here as well. Try to make it fun. Give your followers a nickname – like Lady Gaga calling her fans Little Monsters or Swifties, who are fans of Taylor Swift. Show them some behind the scenes video or do a live stream where you can chat with your followers in real-time.    People aren’t going to go out of their way to subscribe to a site if you make it too difficult to find the form or if they don’t feel like they’re part of a community.

5. Optimize Your Content for Search Engines

Despite what some industry experts might be spewing, search engine optimization is still an important tool for bloggers and website owners. Not all traffic is going to come from social media shares, so you need to make it easier for people to find you when they’re coming in from search engines.

The big difference now is that keywords are secondary, with Google and other search engines changing their focus to natural language processing instead. This means that searches are based on how people speak, rather than how they type.

If you have a life skills blog and your latest post is about how to do your taxes, Google’s focus isn’t going to be on keywords like “life skills” or “taxes” — it’s going to be on the statement “how do I learn how to do my taxes?”

Stop thinking about SEO in terms of keywords.  Instead, think about how you’d ask someone a question if Google was a human being.  It might not be an actual person on the other side of that search, but Google wants you to think there is.

Need help with SEO? Reach out here.

6. Be Patient, But Also Be Consistent

You’re not going to bring in hundreds or thousands of new subscribers overnight unless you’re offering some sort of a substantial giveaway — and then most of them will likely unsubscribe as soon as you draw the winner’s name. Be patient but be consistent. Consistent engagement with your followers will make them feel like they mean more to you than just your social media metrics. While you don’t have to personally respond to every single message – we know this can get pretty intimidating if you’ve got tens of thousands of followers – try to engage with as many people as possible.

If your goal is to become an influencer, whether you’re working on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok or simply trying to build an audience for your blog, don’t give up.  It’s a long and sometimes tedious process but it ends up being worth it in the end.