I read Copyblogger’s recent post on “How to Increase Your Blog Subscription Rate by 254%” with interest. An interesting point was made about word association - “subscribe” with “RSS”. For the less tech savvy folks, “RSS” is the short form for Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0). According to Wikipedia, RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format. Now, most people know the common meaning of “subscribe”, which is “to pay for a service” (e.g. magazine subscription). However, when we associate “Subscribe” with “RSS”, does it mean we need to pay to receive blog entries or news headlines updates?
NO! I was alarmed by the findings of Copyblogger’s experiment. It seems like quite a number of folks in blogosphere have the impression that subscribing to a blog’s RSS feed costs money. The common meaning of the word “subscribe” (which means to pay) seems to have been implanted in people’s subconscious, so much so that they tend to “shun” anything to do with “subscription”! Well, I have learned two important lessons:
Lesson 1– to pay more attention to choice of words as well as the power of word association. The original RSS subscription button created by me at skoyu.com is as shown. I have the word “Subscribe” planted THIS BIG! Now check out my new “RSS subscription” button in my right sidebar. Looks better? I have adopted the “strategy” of using layman terms (Receive Blog Updates) to cater for less tech savvy folks and retained the standard RSS logo such that more tech savvy readers can immediately recognize it as Skoyu’s RSS feed button.
Lesson 2 - Besides learning the importance of word association, I realized another crucial point about building a great blog. In my attempt to create an easy-to-navigate blog and provide value to readers, I have overlooked one key attribute. I have assumed that readers are familiar with blogosphere, have basic knowledge of web technology and are accustomed to web terminologies and such. What an invalid assumption!
Henceforth, I am working towards “making life a little easier” for less tech savvy readers, and I will strive to explain any concepts / tutorials in greater detail. =)
One quality post by Copyblogger, two important lessons learned by TKH.
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