Because I am always looking for more ways for us to connect with our readers and at the same time help our blogs along, I felt it was time to discuss one of the best and under used tools by new bloggers. For day 27 of 31-Days to Kick Your Blog in the Butt, we are going to spend today’s post discussing using an e-newsletter with your blog.
Before you throw something at your computer screen and screaming, “Griffiths you are an idiot, I don’t have time to post to my blog and do a newsletter!” Let me tell you right off, yes it takes time to do it right. Yes, you will have to write more content. But, it does not take a huge amount of time. And, if you are doing all of the other things we have been discussing, you will have plenty of content for a newsletter.
Today’s Lesson, teaching moment, discussion and jam session
You know I would not suggest all of you do a newsletter with your blog if I did not feel it was important. In fact, I have not even asked anyone to do anything I don’t do myself. We have been using a newsletter with Blog For Profit for just over a year now. And the overall results have been amazing. In fact in less then a year, we doubled our subscribers to the blog and we have seen steady growth each month. Do I think a newsletter is a great way to connect with your readers? Short answer is heck yes.
Let’s dig in and look at the how and whys of doing a newsletter.
Let me first just say we are not going to get into the mechanics of setting up a newsletter and all of that kind of “stuff” in this series post. We will be providing some extensive information on newsletter in the very near future, so be watching for that. What I will tell you is my tool of choice for doing my newsletter is Aweber. I would not be without it. Why do I use Aweber over the other services out there. Simply put, it works every time I use it. I have never had an issue with Aweber and the only time something does get screwed up is because I forget to do something. (And yes, the link for Aweber is an affiliate link).
How to do an email newsletter
1. What do you want to accomplish with a newsletter?
What are your goals? Just like we discuss with our blogging, you need to first start off determining what you want to accomplish doing a newsletter. This could be the most important step in the entire process. For me, here is what I wanted to get out of doing a newsletter when we first started one.
- increase and drive more traffic to my blog
- build the Blog For Profit community even more
- not only increase traffic, but increase readers too
- build up a list of people who we could market to
- one more way to continue building our brand
Is that a tall order to expect from doing a newsletter? Perhaps, but I do believe it can all be done. One caution I would want to give you is this. If your only goal is to make money from your newsletter, your readers are going to notice and are going to run the other way. However, if you are providing a lot of information to your readers in your newsletter and you build a relationship with them and gain their trust, they will be open to any offerings you make. Before you run the risk of having your newsletter fall on its face, be open right up front and tell your readers you will be making offers to them from time to time. Tell them right up front that you will not be offering anything to them for sale if you are not completely convinced it will benefit them in some way.
I get emails weekly from other bloggers wanting us to promote their stuff on this blog and in a newsletter. I very seldom pass along offers to my readers. Only those I have used myself and/or firmly believe will benefit our readers get passed along.
Which leads us right to our next step in what you should do when you are setting up a newsletter.
2. Tell your reader from the very beginning what your newsletter is about
I get newsletter almost daily in my inbox and I subscribe to new ones weekly too. It is amazing how useless some of these newsletters truly are. Some of them provide me with absolutely no new information. In fact, most of them spend all of their time pushing their affiliate links in my face wanting me to buy somebody’s crap.
As I mentioned in the previous section, we do promote stuff from time to time. But, I tell our readers that right in the subscribe page they get when they sign up for our newsletter. In other words warn them from the beginning. What we do more than anything is provide information to our newsletter readers about our particular niche, which is blogging and how to use it to promote a business or service firm. Again, if you concentrate on providing information and not selling yours or someone else’s crap, you will grow your blog’s community and build more trust with your readers.
Another problem I see with so many newsletters is the fact they spend way too much time giving me the news. I don’t need the news in my niche. I can get that with Google alerts or my RSS reader. Give me something I can use and apply to my own daily work or business. You should be doing the same. Too often I see business or service firms do a newsletter and simply restate today’s headlines. Big deal!
3. Be consistent in publishing your newsletter
If you are new to blogging and just don’t feel you can publish a newsletter weekly or twice a month, don’t. There is no written rule on how often you need to do a newsletter. In fact if you only do one monthly, you are going to be miles ahead of most of the business bloggers out there. You are going to accomplish just what you are trying to do with your blog. You will become a source of up-to-date, reliable, relevant information for your readers.
The best thing you can do is incorporate into your editorial calendar the exact day of the month you plan to publish your newsletter and do it. And if you use a service like Aweber, you can even write your newsletter ahead of time and have it publish on the date and time you pick.
Where are you going to get the content for your newsletter? Simple, write one or two extra blog post a month and put them in your monthly newsletter instead of publishing them on your blog. This is a great technique if you are new to both blogging and doing a newsletter.
4. Give them what they are looking for
Just like your readers on your blog stay with you, your newsletter readers will stay with you. You have to give them value. You have to meet their needs. And for most, they are starving for information.
How to build value with your newsletter readers:
- providing original content or information you don’t put on your blog
- providing useful tools or resources for your particular niche and/or audience
- case studies of others in your niche
- give them links to your best stuff on your blog too
Keep in mind, people are comfortable getting information via email. And some of your blog readers may not subscribe via RSS as they have no idea what it is or how to use it. There is nothing wrong with pointing your newsletter readers to your blog post.
5. Make your newsletter easy to read
Make your newsletter easy to read in the sense of structure and not the content. Copywriting and your newsletter will have to wait for another day or series. What I am talking about is making it easy on the eye. Make it scannable. Keep in mind, when people read anything online. Whether that is a blog post or an email, people tend to scan when they read. Because of this, you have to keep their attention or they are going to either leave your blog or trash that email newsletter you just spend time putting together.
Here are some key ways to make your newsletter scannable and easy to read.
- use different colors
- use images
- italics
- bold
- lists like this one
- headings and subheadings
Those techniques work great if you are using HTML emails. But, you should use both HTML and plain text as some people don’t accept HTML emails. With plain text you are going to have to use symbols, characters and CAPS for the headings. Make sure you break up your paragraphs with line breaks too. Try different approaches to see what works with your readers.
6. Finally, make it easy for them to subscribe
Don’t hide the fact you are publishing a newsletter. And make it easy to find your “subscribe button.” If at all possible, put your subscription option for your newsletter in the upper right hand corner of your blog. This is where people usually look and see your “call to action” offers.
Start off small and slow
Don’t allow yourself to worry too much about publishing a newsletter. Start off slow and small. Publish it only monthly and don’t worry about having anything fancy. You can just put together an email and send it out to those who subscribe. We will talk more soon about newsletters and we will really dig into how you can do one. This series has some limitations and spending as much time as I would like with newsletter is just not allowed. Be watching for details soon on where we will be spending this extra time.
Today’s homework
Use the link above and go sign up for the lowest priced Aweber service. Go through their great instructional videos and helps pages. And set up a newsletter. Also, as I mentioned, we will be bringing you more on this subject very soon. And if there are some blogs you are reading who do newsletters, subscribe and see how they do it. You can always unsubscribe later if your inbox gets too busy.
