Problogger revealed another great survey done recently, with regard to why people unsubscribe from blog feeds, and it seems that the three most important factors involve the frequency of posting, partial feeds, and focus.

Let’s go deeper into each one.

Frequency of Posting

In his survey, “too many posts” was in fact the most popular reason why people unsubscribe, and I feel that way too.

Do you subscribe to some of the top blogs like Engadget, Gizmodo, Boing Boing and Lifehacker? If you do, and when you happen to not have time to read your feeds just for 4 – 5 busy days, you are in for a big one.

These blogs post like 30 – 40 posts a day! Man, its hard to catch up! Besides, some of these blogs talk about anything under the sun from Documentaries an Google Video, to Escaped Animal Drills in Zoos!

Of course, it a (very) big feat, being able to post so often and on such wide variety of topics – and the effort is well paying off, but maybe its not something someone will read everyday… unless you are a “full time blog reader :mrgreen:”.

On the other side of the scale, there are some blogs which updates only once in a couple of weeks (BTW, I’m guilty of holding on to some of these blogs too), or worse, updates once in a couple of weeks with 10 posts at a go! Such blogs don’t serve as regular resources for valuable and updated content, so its no wonder why the feeds get kicked out of the feed readers.

So that is it with posting frequency. You CAN overwhelm your readers, bore your readers, or both! According to many books I’ve read, the recommendation when you are starting a blog, is 3 posts a day to 3 posts a week, but I believe one can go on to 5 or 6 posts a day, without overwhelming readers… as long as it is regular.

Partial Feeds

Partial feeds irritate the hell out of me – for many, the purpose of me subscribing to feeds is because I don’t want to deal with too many browser windows, or have to surf to your blog to read your post. What many are looking for are a “one stop” place where they can just scroll and read, and click only when they find the content interesting.

Too many blogs irk me by publishing only partial feeds… and when I have to choose between clicking and loading your blog post, versus moving on to the next blog (you are just one of the hundreds I have subscribed anyway!)… well, you know the answer.

Next!

It think one of the major concerns about partial feeds is that you WANT visitors to come to your blog, and see your ads on the sidebar, and click them, right? If that is the case, why not attempt to solve the issue at its root, and offer feed advertisements instead? Feedvertising is a good way to start if you want to get some ads published with your feeds.

Publishing partial feeds is, in my opinion, sabotaging you readers experience.

Focus

I know, it is easy to go off course when you get the pressure to write regularly… and then you start to think of all the different ideas, start echoing what people have said (even if the articles do not relate much to your blog topic), and you stray away from your topic.

We have heard much about the Long Tail, and one of the primary concepts explained is that people are really looking for very specific things on the Internet. If your blog talks about healthy home cooking recipes, it is better off posting once every two days about healthy home cooking recipes, rather than four times every single day and start talking about where you can eat out, about nutrition and vitamins and everything.

I think it is okay to stray off once in a while with one post – it will make that post a “special feature”, as long as the topic is closely related to the main blog topic, but if you have sufficient information on another topic, you can consider either featuring a special series of posts, start another blog altogether!

You need to let your readers know that you know you are straying from the main topic. If not, your readers will think you’ve messed up and have nothing else to say. Well, while that may be true (you might really have run out of ideas for a while!), but that’s for you to know and keep to yourself, not let the whole world know!

How else can you discourage unsubscribing from your feeds?