Retaining readership is an important part of blogging, but the next step to retaining readership is creating loyal readers. Marketers call this driving customer loyalty.
As part of a book I wrote that will be published in 2008, I created what I call the Three Ss of Customer Loyalty, which are just as relevant to retaining blog reader loyalty as they are relevant to any product or brand loyalty initiative.
Before I giveaway the Three Ss of Customer Loyalty, it’s important to note that a key component to customer loyalty (and blog loyalty) is emotional involvement. People who are emotionally involved in your blog will naturally develop a strong loyalty to it just as people who are emotionally involved in a brand or product become deeply loyal to it. Think of brands like Star Wars or Starbucks. People who love those brands are very connected to them and borderline obsessive about them. That’s the kind of loyalty you want to generate to your blog.
The Three Ss of Customer Loyalty are:
- Stability: Readers are driven to emotional involvement in a blog when it sends a consistent message.
- Sustainability: Readers are driven to emotional involvement in a blog when they expect that blog to be with them for a long time or at least a specific amount of time with a clear end.
- Security: Readers are driven to emotional involvement in a blog when that blog gives them a feeling of comfort or peace-of-mind.
What do the Three Ss of Customer Loyalty tell us as bloggers?
- Stability: Deliver a consistent message on your blog from your design to your posts. Don’t confuse your readers.
- Sustainability: Post frequently and avoid long lapses in between posts. A short post is better than no post at all in terms of sustaining an emotional involvement to your blog from readers.
- Security: Write in a tone and style that your readers expect and stay consistent with that style. Customers don’t like radical or sudden changes, and blog readers feel the same way. When a blog they are comfortable with and have expectations for suddenly shifts gears customers feel cheated and let down. The fact that readers have expectations for your blog is a very big deal. Now you have to continually meet those expectations.
In short, be consistent, be available (post frequently) and meet your readers’ expectations. If you do these three things, reader loyalty should follow.
In reference to the following statement:
"Post frequently and avoid long lapses in between posts. A short post is better than no post at all in terms of sustaining an emotional involvement to your blog from readers."
RSS fatigue has set in and readers have grown weary of sifting through all the junk. My opinion is that no post at all is much better then putting out something that is only mediocre in terms of quality.
It's not the length of the post that matters. Short or long are both acceptable–as long as they are high quality and packed with value for your readers.
I've found I can only do one such value-packed post each week, and since making the switch, my RSS readership has doubled in size. No more fluff on my blog.