You have a blog or website – great! And the first thing you’d most likely be focusing on is getting new visitors on it.
That’s a good start. However, over time you’ll probably observe (if you use tools such as Google Analytics) that many people who visit your website never come back. On average, this applies to 70% of all your visitors.
That’s a shame – you worked too hard to get them on your site just to lose them again!
That’s why you’ll need tools that help you to retain your visitors. A common one is the good old email newsletter, however in the last few years new, more sophisticated & effective tools have popped up that help you to get more people back to your site.
One such tool is follow.it, which I’ll introduce in this article.
What is follow.it?
Follow.it is a service run by Inisev which allows you to place various subscription options on your website, such as a subscription form and icons. That way people can follow you, they get alerted automatically (you don’t have to do anything) whenever you publish a new post – and they come back to your site to check it out!
What makes follow.it different from other tools? They recognized that getting visitors back to your site is a process comprised of several steps – which all have to be optimized for maximum effect.
You can see the detailed explanation of above funnel on follow.it, here’s the gist of it:
- First, you need to make sure people realize they can follow you. That can be achieved not only by placing a subscription form or icons, but also pop-ups, banners or side-widgets.
- Secondly, you need to convince them to actually follow you. For example, this often means that you take their fear of subscribing – by guaranteeing that they can always unsubscribe quickly.
- Next, your followers need to be active (i.e. confirmed) in order to receive your news. Follow.it has developed a patented “Smart opt-in” process that maximizes the number of active followers, while still adhering to the law.
- It’s crucial that emails land in people’s inboxes (and not spam folders). Follow.it has a very good sender reputation which ensures that.
- In addition, chances that people will see your notifications are further maximized by not limiting it to email. Your subscribers can also follow you by RSS, Telegram, etc.
- Finally, follow.it provides great analytics which allows you to track how many followers you get, how many notifications get sent and clicked on, etc.
Sounds good! How do I set it up?
The first step is to head over to the feed set-up page and enter your website URL into the green box.
To illustrate it, let me use Dailyinfographic.com as an example:
…and clicking on “Next”.
In the case of Dailyinfographic.com, follow.it recognizes that it’s running on WordPress, and therefore suggests using this plugin to place the subscription options on the site.
However, you don’t need to use a plugin (and if you’re not using WordPress, you can’t) so you also have the option to design your subscription form directly on follow.it.
After you click on “Continue” you’ll get the HTML code which you can place on your site.
For example, on Dailyinfographic.com it shows like this:
It is suggested to place it at a visible spot so that you get the most followers.
In addition to the subscription form, follow.it also offers to place follow-icons, which in the case of Dailyinfographic.com would be linked to https://follow.it/daily-infographic?action=followPub, i.e. a separate subscription page.
Please follow us if you haven’t done so yet! 😉
And as mentioned above: there are many more options to invite your visitors to follow you with MyPopUps (e.g. with banners or side-widgets).
What’s wonderful about it: MyPopUps is entirely free for all pop-ups which have a follow.it subscription form on them, i.e. unlimited views and all the features, which are usually only accessible to premium users (!).
More features for subscribers
As mentioned above, the key to get many followers is to make the process convenient for them, and offer what they want. For that reason, follow.it gives plenty of options on how they can follow you.
For example, if your website publishes a lot of news per day, readers may shy away from subscribing due to fear of information overload. That’s why follow.it enables subscribers to filter the feed. In the case of Dailyinfographic.com it looks like this.
In addition, subscribers can select how to receive the stories:
Other output channels (such as a Chrome extension, Whatsapp, browser push, etc.) are planned to be added in the future. See follow.it’s Feature Roadmap.
What’s good for subscribers is ultimately also good for you as publisher, as you get more followers.
Other noteworthy points
For small bloggers it’s probably a relief to hear that follow.it offers a very generous free plan which is good for unlimited followers and emails.
For those who want more features, optional upgrades to premium plans are available, as shown on the follow.it pricing page.
Also important to mention is that follow.it is taking privacy very seriously – as can be seen in their privacy policy, which adheres to all relevant laws including GDPR.
With all the features explained above, follow.it is an excellent Feedburner alternative which is very relevant these days as Google announced that they will shut down Feedburner’s email subscription feature in July.
Conclusion
If you’re running a website, publishing content, and are interested in getting more visitors to your site (and offering them a useful tool so they would not miss out on your latest posts) then follow.it is a great option you should certainly explore.
If you need any help, check out follow.it’s thorough documentation, or simple get in touch with them, either via their chat app on their website, or by emailing them at [help (at) follow (dot) it]. They are always happy to assist.