On his blog today, Chris Brogan has a little subscription drive going to encourage more readers to sign up to it. It’s an interesting approach to increase blog subscribers, and if you don’t already subscribe to Chris’s blog, I’d recommend you do anytime.

I was glad to see email subscription being one of these options. Not enough blogs have this option and (to me, anyway) that means they’re missing out.

Sure, just having the standard RSS feed is fine, and a lot of blog readers use this and this alone. Yet email subscription – or the option of one – is becoming more popular and offers your readers more choice – always a good thing.

My personal preference is email subscription. I do use Google reader but I find I can miss some great posts, as well as get swamped in the amount of updates. Maybe I don’t use it effectively, who knows?

But here’s the thing.

As I write this, there are 608 subscribers to this blog (thanks guys!). Of that, 116 use email subscription – almost 20%. If I didn’t offer that option, there’s a good chance I’d be missing out on not only their readership, but my chance to interact with them via blog ideas, comments and more.

The best of it is, setting up an email subscription option is pretty painless. Set yourself up with a Feedburner account and claim your blog. Then use the Publicize option to both set up your email subscription form and get the code to place it on your blog.

If you’re a blogger that doesn’t currently use an email option, think of it this way. Have you ever signed up for newsletters from your favourite business or brand/product? If so, why? I’d hazard a guess it was because it allows you to keep up-to-date with the latest news from people you want to hear about.

Wouldn’t it make sense to let your readers know more about you in the same way?

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