Getting more subscribers to your site’s newsletter is as important as good SEO. After all, you aren’t writing a good newsletter so that you DON’T get new readers. Your newsletter can play an integral role in establishing you as an expert, building a relationship with your readers, driving your web traffic and getting valuable reader feedback.

Today we are going to show you seven solid techniques for boosting your newsletter signups and growing your website’s community.

1. Add a Checkbox to Your Comments Form

Newsletter Sign-Up is a fairly new plugin that adds a checkbox to your comment form so that commenters can easily sign up to get your newsletter. It currently supports Aweber, Mailchimp, iContact, PHPList, Feedblitz.

Other cool features of this plugin include the ability to add a “sign-up to our newsletter” checkbox to your WordPress registration form. It even integrates with BuddyPress registration forms.

2. Place a Widget in Your Sidebar

Nearly every major newsletter service on the internet has a plugin for WordPress that offers a widget you can easily drop in your sidebar to get subscriptions. If you want to promote your newsletter on every page, a sidebar or header signup form is probably one of the most prominent areas for doing so.

3. Offer an Incentive for Subscription

Having a subscription form placed on your site is all well and good, but unless you draw some attention to it and give a compelling reason for signup, users will probably ignore your form.

The bottom line is that people don’t want to subscribe to your newsletter unless there’s something in it for them. Make sure to give your visitors a compelling reason to be on your list.

4. Get Users Signed up at Registration

Allowing for visitors to become subscribers at the time of registration is a strategic move. Generally when a user is registering on your site, he is already favorably disposed to your brand and it’s a good time to catch him. There are a couple other plugin options for getting users subscribed at registration besides the previously mentioned Newsletter Sign-Up.

If you’re using BuddyPress, you may want to check out the BP Xtra Signup plugin, which adds a Mailchimp signup checkbox to your registration form.

Constant Contact users should check out the Constant Contact for WordPress plugin. It fully integrates Constant Contact with your WordPress site. It includes an optional checkbox for your registration form and a signup widget, among other features.

5. Dont ask for too much information

A reader doesn’t want to give you more than his email address. Asking for a name can even be pushing it. Definitely don’t go asking for a user’s city, state, and phone number. People are becoming increasingly guarded about their personal information. It’s best to make it as easy and fast as possible for your users to subscribe.

6. Post Exciting Teasers on Your Blog

Releasing an exciting preview on your blog is a great way to gain new subscribers, especially if you promise that newsletter subscribers will be the first to know about upcoming news. Add a quick signup form directly within your content via a plugin’s shortcode or just copying and pasting from your newsletter service.

7. Write a Good Newsletter

Don’t just send out a duplicate of your RSS feed. Your true fans are already tuned into this information and they don’t want to read a load of copied content from your website.

If your newsletter is interesting, informative and entertaining, people will want to read it. They’ll also want to share it. Consistently writing a good newsletter will keep your users subscribed. As they say: make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.