10 killer tips for getting mobile subscribers for your blog

1. Make your feed easy to locate.

It should be at the top of the page, or very close. Pushing your feed to the bottom of the page means that fewer people will subscribe – and mobile users may not subscribe at all.

2. Shorten your feed URL.

Some blogs try to put keywords or even a description in their feed URL, which may be good for SEO, but it’s not nice to enter a long URL into your phone. For instance, ProBlogger’s blog feed is feeds.feedburner.com/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney – this is just too long for mobile users. If your feed URL is already long, you could use a URL shortener to make life easier for mobile subscribers.

3. Use heading styles.

I’ve banged on about this in several previous posts, but it really becomes obvious if you don’t use heading styles when browsing on a phone. Sometimes I do just bold the title of each tip at the start of the paragraph – other blogs may use bold text in a paragraph just before the body text – but this isn’t great on a phone. Use a heading style for everything that should be a header – it makes your posts so much easier to browse.

4. Use paragraphs – and keep them short.

I know some bloggers seem to avoid the use of paragraphs, instead preferring to write a huge block of text – and others may use very long paragraphs. On a phone, this is a nightmare. It’s tricky to determine how long a paragraph should be, as phones have smaller screens and each line of text will wrap much sooner than it would on a computer. Just try to avoid long paragraphs.

5. Write shorter posts.

If you don’t need to write an extra 100-200 words, just don’t. Better still, go back and edit out any unnecessary sections of your post if you’re basically saying the same thing 3 or 4 times over. For some reason my phone doesn’t always display the entire post in my feed, even though the feed itself contains the whole post. And there aren’t any page numbers.
If you have something really vital to say in a long post – say it at the start! This is a good rule anyway, as it grabs the attention of a potential reader and gets them to keep on reading.

6. Consider offering a mobile-only feed.

I’ve always believed in “full feeds” – i.e. showing the full post in the feed, instead of just an excerpt. But as I said in #5, on a phone this may not work as expected. As a mobile user I’d still like to see a full feed, but a summary would probably be OK. That way, I can click through if I want to read the entire post. Avoid title-only feeds though – they are pretty pointless. At least provide a short description on each post.

7. Don’t use feed ads.

When every post in a feed has the same annoying ad at the bottom, I see little reason to subscribe. These ads are bad enough in a feed reader. But on a phone, they are incredibly painful to deal with. Bottom line – mobile users won’t bother subscribing if you use feed ads.

8. Limit the use of images.

Don’t put images in your feed if they’ll take ages to download – anything above 100KB is too big. Don’t use images that are too tall, or too wide – this will cause horizontal scrolling on a phone. It may be easier just to omit the images from your feed – images can kill the mobile experience.

9. Don’t rely on third-party services.

If you must use images or buttons in your posts, at least host them yourself. Loading a website on a phone can take longer than on a computer, and the fewer external resources you link to, the better. Generally this shouldn’t be as much of an issue in your feed as on your site, but don’t make it a problem just because you want to throw loads of images into your feed.

10. Subscribe to your own blog.

I suggest this anyway, but I strongly recommend subscribing to your blog from your phone, as well as browsing your blog from your phone. If you find any weirdness, you can make changes accordingly. If you’ve never visited your blog from a phone, you’ll be in the dark, and you’ll never know if mobile users have a good time on your site – if it loads at all.