What Makes Me Unsubscribe?

Darren Rowse at ProBlogger asked his readers about their feed reading habits. In particular he wanted to know what makes people unsubscribe from a Blog feed. I have been cleaning out my Google Reader lately and I have found myself unsubscribing to feeds for the following reasons:

  1. Partial Feeds: I still click through to the originating site even if I’ve read a full feed. Partial feeds seem like a cheap way to force me to do something I already do so I just unsubscribe to pages that use them out of spite.
  2. Poor Grammar: Mine is not perfect, nor is my spelling, but seeing bad grammar and poorly constructed sentences on a regular basis makes me lose respect for the author. A lot of the errors I see could be corrected with a quick run through the spell and grammar check on Microsoft Word so there is very little excuse to post before checking.
  3. Repetitive Posts: I know that sometimes the media gets carried away with certain topics (Anna Nicole, Oscar Coverage, etc.), but I expect more from a blogger. Unless your blog focuses on a specific topic, I don’t want to see 10 posts on a specific topic over the course of a week.
  4. Off The Topic: When topic focused blogs go off topic and stay off topic for a while I just lose interest. If it is a topic focused blog I signed up to read posts on a specific topic and related items.
  5. Furry Friends and Cute Babies: I don’t want to see pictures of your kids or your pets unless they are doing something that is really special. I set the bar very high when I use the term special — that video of a cat sitting at a piano and attempting to play was on the low end of what I consider special. Truth be told no one really wants to hear about your munchkins or pets unless it is a blog that regularly features appearances by them. If I am subscribed to a blog with this kind of material, I most likely know the blogger quite well.
  6. Regurge: Please try not to regurgitate stories you found on the last ten sites you visited when you were reading through your own feeds. Chances are I’ve read half of them or I subscribe to similar feeds and will get to that news from an official news source as well. Not every tech site has to report on the newest USB gadget as soon as it drops. Go for a weekly roundup of new gadgets if that is not the primary focus of your blog.
  7. Miscategorization: Don’t try to pass your blog off as a tech or gadget blog if you only make one post about a gadget every week or so. If it’s a personal blog, don’t be embarrassed to let it be a blog about you and your experiences. Don’t try to pass your opinions off as fact or try to spin them as real news either. If you think your readers are fooled, you’re wrong and Fox News already does a better job of it.
  8. Video Clips: If you are going to post links to video clips in your blog, at least put some text in the blog post. Spending an extra second to tell the viewer what the video is about should be common sense.
  9. Excessive Updates About the Blog: You don’t need to tell me about every update you do to your theme, how you’re changing your blog, and constantly apologize for being offline or for not posting constantly. We are human and most bloggers work alone. We understand that your posting frequency will change depending on what is going on in your life. If you want to put some ads on your blog to pay the web hosting bills, more power to you. If you made a change that may have caused down time or screwed something up for the readers, by all means explain yourself. Just don’t do it every day.
  10. Blogging about Blogging: Don’t do it. I’m guilty of it as well and I’ve made an effort to stop it. Blogging about blogging is the snake eating its tale (ha ha).

[Link to What makes you unsubscribe from a blog’s RSS feed?]

Tags: Atom, blog, feeds, Geek, RSS

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March 12, 2007 | Filed Under Geek 

Comments

4 Responses to “What Makes Me Unsubscribe?”

  1. Simon on March 19th, 2007 7:05 pm

    I’ve only just started blogging this month, however I would be guilty of your number 1 reason to unsubscribe!

    I’ve seen various sites doing this and took it to be a good thing to do from both the news reader (get people to your site) and frontpage (reduce it’s size) point of view.

    Is this the general online consensus of people who use news readers? If so, I’ll try removing all my tags then!

  2. elise on March 19th, 2007 7:17 pm

    Simon - I don’t know it is the consensus but I know that thousands of others feel the same way. I would check out the responses to the original blog post over at ProBlogger to see what people touch on. I just feel that using partial feeds is a cheap trick to get people to visit your site. In most case the bloggers that do this want one of two things: ad revenue or traffic to forums/discussion. I’m fine with encouraging interaction which you can do by putting links to the comments in the feed. I would feel like a heel for trying to get people to visit my site for the sole purpose of clicking on ads. If you’re trying to get some revenue you can put ads in your feed as well.

    As far as trying to make your front page smaller.. I don’t think that that is as much of an issue now that broadband is so widespread. What makes a difference is what the viewer sees above the fold (meaning before they have to scroll down) so it is important to have good (recent) comment near the top of the page.

  3. Simon on March 24th, 2007 5:57 pm

    Thanks very much for your thoughts on this topic Elise.

    I’m now not breaking up the items that I publish and will try and have a play with the site so as you suggest, the comments promote more intereaction.

    Much appreciate your opinion on this.

  4. Speedlinking for 3/12/07 on March 15th, 2008 11:31 pm

    [...] What Makes Me Unsubscribe: Problogger had a great post recently concerning what exactly makes users unsubscribe from blogs. Elise offers up her own reflections on the subject with some great insights. Of particular note, something I myself am frequently guilty of - blogging about blogging. I’m certainly guilty of it … never blog about your blog and if you’re making an update post keep it to one a week. [...]

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