Do you ever stop to consider why people aren’t coming back to re-visit your content or why they’re not subscribing?

The short answer is that you’re probably not giving them a compelling enough reason to stick around. Your site might be too cluttered and difficult to navigate. Your content is inconsistent. You don’t engage your readers, but you sure do ask them to promote your stuff.

Below are a few (ok, more like 20) things that tend to keep me coming back to a website and stay subscribed. I’ve included links to the examples so that you can have a closer look too. As you read through them, think about how you can organize your content to make people want to subscribe and re-visit it more and more.

1. Teach me something new (think How To & Tutorial type posts).
2. Share something inspiring.
3. Stay consistent (few people do this well).
4. Keep it short (I like to skim through content AND I have a short attention span).
5. Publish something that makes me think about my business.
6. Share an engaging story with me (learn to tell better stories).
7. Publish a list of resources that I can easily reference over and over again.
8. Resources can be delivered in a shape of an e-book too (Radian6 does this monthly!).
9. Publish timely news and reviews.
10. Share Case-Studies with me – these are real, practical things I can turn around an maybe implement in my marketing.
11. Publish content from varying (expert) perspectives.
12. Feature interviews with special guests and experts – these can be video interviews, podcasts, or even written Q&A’s.
13. Review a service or product in order to help me make a buying decision.
14. Predict what’s going to happen next (think, the future of technology).
15. Teach me something useful that will help me get a leg up on the competition.
16. Consistently write articles that help me hone my craft (in this case web design, marketing and lead generation).
17. In addition to writing your own, unique content, it’s nice when you write weekly wrap-ups that link to other content I should read from around the web.
18. Offer an ecourse and on-going newsletter that publishes useful, relevant, tutorial-based content that I can apply to my own business.
19. You engage me (and others) in the comments (Amber is one of the few that does this well).
20. Make it easy to subscribe (via RSS & email) for those times that I want to read your content on the go!

What are you going to do next?

What kinds of changes can you make on your site to better engage your readers and make them want to stick around? Pick up any good examples from the list above?

Like this post? Subscribe via e-mail today.