How to Get Blog Followers and Subscribers With These 4 Types of Popups

Now, growing an audience is not an easy task. But thanks to the experience of thousands of successful bloggers, you don’t have to invent the wheel: there are many proven ways to do that. One easy tactic you can start using today is call-to-action popups.

In this post, we are going to show you six ways to use popups that will help you get more blog followers. You’ll see how to increase engagement with your content, boost post views, and attract email subscribers.

1. Collect more email subscriptions with a popup

People will not subscribe to your blog unless you proactively invite them to. You have probably noticed how many bloggers choose to use opt-in popups for collecting email addresses. The reason these popups are so popular is very simple — they work. However, you do need to put some thought into creating an email popup that works. Here are a few pro tips to help you:

1. Create an incentive to subscribe to your blog

What is it your readers will get if they subscribe? What's the value for them? Timely updates on your blog content are somewhat enticing, but if you want to get more blog followers faster, consider using lead magnets.

An eBook, a downloadable report, or even a chance to win something will make a good lead magnet and increase your signup conversion rates.

2. Choose the right moment to display the popup

In most cases, you don't want to show it as soon as someone opens the page. They don't know what your blog is about yet, so chances are, the popup will be just closed and you’ll lose a potential subscriber. Instead, consider using scroll-triggered popups or exit popups.

3. Tailor the popup to the page it appears on

If you visit a lot of blogs on the Internet, you have probably noticed that many popups look out of place, as if they don’t belong to the page. It’s typically caused by poor design or copy that is too generic. A great way to increase your newsletter signup form click-through-rate is to make it look authentic. Looking for inspiration? Check out our roundup of popup designs that work.

2. Announce giveaways and contests

Giveaways and contests are a great way to get new blog followers. Everyone loves freebies, so it won’t take you much effort to encourage your visitors to follow your blog on social media or enter their email addresses. Once you build that list of email contacts, you’ll be able to repeatedly engage with them via inbox and drive traffic to your blog.

To make sure every visitor of your blog is notified about your contest or giveaway, create catchy popups or sitewide notification bars. Describe the promo and link to the page where readers can enter the giveaway.

Since most giveaways and contests run for a limited time, in Getsitecontrol you can actually create a schedule to select exact dates and hours your popup will be displayed.

3. Promote featured blog posts or new content

Do you have super popular blog posts that get the most attention and engagement and you want to drive your readers there? Do you need to highlight a new article? You can do all of this with a popup.

Think of it as an ad for the content you feel might get you more blog followers. Your popup should include a link to the promoted page and a clear call to action showing why another post is worth readers’ attention.

If you choose to go this route, make sure you follow the best practice. For example, you probably wouldn’t like being interrupted by a recommendation of another blog post while you’re still in the middle of an article. That’s why the best moment to display such a popup is when a visitor scrolls down around 80% of a webpage.

Alternatively, you can use exit-intent popups. This will be a great time to ask “Have you seen this?” and link to something cool visitors might have missed.

4. Survey your readers to get content ideas

Knowing your audience is crucial because it helps you build a better strategy for your blog. And even if you’re just a beginner receiving few daily visits, your first readers’ opinion is quite a valuable resource you shouldn’t ignore. In fact, if you want to know how to get more blog followers, you should first figure out how to keep those who have already discovered your blog.

Eliminating all the guesswork and writing more of what they want to read about will entice your visitors to return to your blog, subscribe to updates, and share your content. Need we say that’s a fantastic exposure opportunity?

Here is how you can communicate with your blog visitors and ask them what they think: create popups surveys.

You may start small and just ask your readers to rate your content using a star rating scale widget. Thus, you’ll get a better idea of which articles are favored more by the audience and why. And when you have a few article ideas already, use surveys to validate them with the audience.

Once you find out what they are most interested in, you can set your writing priorities – and your readers will see that their opinion is heard and valued.

Instead of showing the survey at once to every single blog visitor, target those who are clearly interested and engaged with your content. This way, you’ll avoid misleading results.

For example, you can display a survey popup to the visitors who have spent X amount of time on a webpage or scrolled down X% of the page. You can also show your survey to returning visitors only or those who have viewed at least two pages of your blog.

Wrapping up

And this wraps up the list of tips for getting blog followers using various types of popups. Of course, there is a lot of work behind every blogger’s success story, and you can’t grow your audience overnight. But if you already have great content published online and you finally see some traction in the Visits tab of your analytics app, it may be time to use additional tools and amplify your strategy. Popups will be a great choice for this task because of how multifunctional they are.