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Here’s the progress we’ve made so far in this series on How To Start Your Own Blog
- decided to start a blog
- found our niche
- bought a domain
- chose the blogging platform
- set up your blog and made it all pretty 🙂
- signed up for and installed Google Analytics
- added copyright to the website footer
- added a Privacy Policy and Disclosure page
- added an About Page
Choosing An Email Newsletter Platform For Your New Blog
As we go on we’ll talk about all sorts of ways to “get the word out” about your new blog and your blog posts.
Social media is one way to reach current and new readers. But, the very best way to reach your readers and the best opportunity you have for them to actually see your posts is through your own email newsletter, or e newsletter.
Any social media platform out there nowadays has an “algorithm” that makes it completely difficult to get your posts seen in the sea of posts being shared. If you don’t catch someone’s attention on a social media platform in something like 2 seconds or less they scroll right past to the next thing they see. That’s why an email newsletter is the best way for you to reach the people that have “opted in” to see your posts.
For example, I have a Facebook page that has almost 400,000 followers, however, I constantly hear people say that they don’t see my posts, and believe me we post constantly on that page. It’s because Facebook added an algorithm that now decides FOR people what they want to see… completely ignoring the fact that they actually clicked the follow button… don’t get me started…
Social media is a great avenue to get your posts seen by new potential readers, but, your email newsletter is what will make your readers what we like to call “sticky” – which means returning. It’s great to get new readers, but, how do you get them to continue to come back and keep reading? That’s where an email newsletter helps.
So again, just an example of why landing in their email box everyday gives you a much higher chance of getting your posts seen. YOU control the email newsletter and your subscription list.
Further down the line in your blogging journey you may want to offer specific newsletters for specific readers. You can do that. Say your blog is about golf and crochet (please don’t make a blog about Golf and Crochet… lol), you can actually have separate sign ups so that your golf audience receives only your golf related content and the same for your crochet fans.
Choose Your Email Newsletter Platform
The first thing you need to do is choose your email platform. There are many out there and you want to make sure you choose the one that best suits your needs. You may need a newsletter for your blog posts on flower gardening, or you may need a marketing newsletter, there are many different kinds of newsletters for blogs, so you’ll want to make sure you choose the email platform for the best email newsletters for your specific needs.
Most have the option of you personally writing each email or you can have your posts emailed to your subscribers once a day, or once a week, or however you like. On this site I have it set to email the post out automatically on the day it goes up, if I don’t write a post on that day then no email goes out. I have another site where I post about 30 times a day and all of those posts go out each day automatically.
Design Your Email Newsletter
Whether you choose to have them go out automatically or hand write each one, you’ll want to make sure your email newsletter design has your color scheme and logo in it so that people recognize it as being from you and your blog right away.
Most email newsletter platforms have very easy email newsletter design options and videos and very helpful customer service to help get you going. But, you can also look around online for newsletter examples and html email templates.
Free Email Newsletter Templates
Here are a few free email newsletter templates you can look at to get an idea of what you’d like yours to look like:
Zurb
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Strut your stuff with our email newsletter templates. Get started Free with the Benchmark Starter Plan. Find an email newsletter in our gallery, use your own, or do both. Give it a go. You don’t even need a credit card.
Email Platform Providers
Now that you have templates to choose from – it’s time to choose an email platform provider. Here are a few popular ones:
Advertising to grow your business can often feel like you’re throwing money into a black hole. MailChimp gives you the power to see what’s working and the confidence to grow your own way. Free up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month.
Mad Mimi is the easiest way to create, send, share and track email newsletters online. Mad Mimi is for people who want email marketing to be simple. Every day, over 40 million emails are sent, shared and tracked using our delightful and powerful service. Free up to 100 contacts.
All the major email marketing companies are generic. From cupcake shops, to design agencies, to plumbing companies, they are trying to serve every type of business. Instead of a perfect-for-you solution you wind up with a mass of features that aren’t a good fit for anyone, especially not bloggers. So we set out to build something simple, something elegant, something built for bloggers… a tool that makes it easy and obvious to grow your business through email marketing. Think of ConvertKit as best practices by default. Starts at $29 per month.
FeedBlitz only charges for unique active subscribers on your lists. This means you’re not charged for pending, deleted or unsubscribed readers. We automatically handle subscriber management (and any consequent fee change) for you, including dual opt-ins, bounce handling, unsubscribes and opt-outs. You save time and money, because you don’t have to periodically remove deleted or unsubscribed subscribers yourself to minimize fees. Want to remove active but non-responsive subscribers? Enter a date, and a few clicks later you’re done. Starts at $7 per month.
Professional emails start with customizable templates. First, drag. Then, drop. Editing is that simple. Our editor makes it easy to customize the email template of your choice to look like the business your customers know. Free 60 day trial, then pricing starts at $20 per month.
Create professional emails in minutes Choose one of our customizable templates and make it your own with our easy editor. Add your text, images, brand colors and social buttons to create an email that will get you noticed. Send 4,000 emails per month to up to 300 contacts for free.
Start Winning the Inbox. Emma’s digital marketing platform makes it easy to create beautifully designed emails that drive results. Starting at $89 per month.
Start Building Your List
Once you have chosen the email newsletter platform you want to use and have designed your email newsletter next you’ll want to add a sign up for your newsletter to tell people about it and get subscribers.
There are many ways to do that as well. I am sure you have seen and subscribed to newsletters before. There are pop ups that cover the screen and there are boxes on the sidebar or in the header where you can add your email and choose to subscribe.
The forms and links for those are all in the email platform you choose, along with installation instructions.
Be sure to read all of the posts in this How To Start Your Own Blog series. Don’t miss any of them or you could be setting yourself up for failure. Each one is as important as the next. Remember, you’re skipping all of the mistakes I have made over the years.
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