To Celebrate The Diary’s First Anniversary – I Give Up on WordPress.com Subscription Widget

I launched this blog a year ago!  HURRAY!  A few lessons learned:

First, consistency is the key to building traffic to a blog.  I have had better periods throughout the year of delivering content and lessons learned.  The blog traffic statistics confirm it.  Also found in my statistics:  good use of keywords has optimized the blog and I have traffic to pages without promotion.  Nice to see good search engine optimization (SEO) working for my brand.

Second, find a unique voice.  Consider who the target audience is and determine the most comfortable tone to talk to those individuals.  Writing blog posts is much easier when I’m true to my unique voice.  I made a change in tone for my blog voice about midway through the first year and the posts were easier to create and I was prouder to promote.  I wrote about this change in Research, Qualify & Present: A Theme Tweak.

My final big lesson I share on this anniversary date – I learned I’m not a fan of the WordPress.com Subscription Widget.  So to celebrate the one year anniversary, I retire the widget and offer a form from the Gillis Marketing website for people to subscribe going forward.  Until I transfer The Diary to the WordPress.org interface, which will offer me different subscription options, I will manually manage the subscriptions.

Reason 1:  Reliability

I am uncertain how reliable the Subscription Widget is for the subscriber.  A few people told me they have tried to subscribe and they do not receive the emails.  I asked WordPress.com about this and they were responsive, but told me it was good on their end.  Since one unsuccessful subscriber has a WordPress blog, I assume she’d know the drill about the confirmation email and it just doesn’t work consistently.

Reason 2:  No control for the author

I do not like that I cannot control when the updates are sent to my subscribers with the Subscription Widget.  I hold back posts on The Diary if I just posted because I don’t want to spam my subscribers.  I would like the freedom to post and promote with social media and not email every time.  For example, I may read a great article I want to share on The Diary as a great reference for DIY marketers.  But if I shared a post the day before, I will use the schedule feature to publish a post in a few days.  Then I need to consider new posts I write and when I schedule those.  See?  Too much planning has to go into publishing posts because I cannot control the email feature of the widget.  It wants to email every time I do anything on the blog.

Reason 3:  No need to actually visit the blog

If the goal is to drive traffic and monitor the statistics for the blog or determine which blog posts people take the time to read, the Subscription Widget prevents that information.  Subscribers receive the entire post in the email.  Therefore, they do not visit the blog to read the latest. If there is a call to action on the blog that is not included in the post, the subscribers will not see it to act on it.  When selling a product or service, the subscriber could be the best person to make a special offer to.  Shouldn’t subscribers see call to action offers, too?  They won’t if they don’t visit the blog site and they will not have to visit if they read the post in their email.

I celebrate one year of keeping Diary of a Marketer by tailoring email announcements about the blog to my existing subscribers, away from the WordPress Subscription Widget.  Current subscribers – thank you for your continued support.  People that wish to subscribe – please click the button below: