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Blogging Basics: Grow Your Mailing List

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The Smart Blogger’s Not-So-Secret Weapon: Grow Your Mailing List

8-a-emailWe’ve all seen the for-profit blogs that get a ton of traffic, have oodles of comments on every post and they never seem to have any shortage of advertisers. How do they do it? With very few exceptions, I bet there is one thing they all have something in common. They use email to promote their new posts and market to their readers.

If you aren’t working to grow your mailing list, you are simply throwing away a huge chunk of your traffic that will visit once and never come back again.

Bloggers need email for a multitude of reasons, here are a few:

– By getting an opt-in, you can now keep in touch with your visitors, instead of having them come, read some stuff and leave forever.

– RSS is not enough because most people do not use RSS feeds and even those that do, may not check it as regularly as they do check email.

– Email is personal and a more direct way to reach your reader. A blog post is out there for anyone to see, but an email is directly addressed to its recipient. 8-b-ideas-why

– Email is commercial by nature. People expect to receive special offers and promotions by email.

– From various studies and tests, email boast very high conversions and is one of the most cost effective ways to get your message out there.

With this in mind, if you aren’t actively growing your list, now is the time to start. Things you need to start doing include:

– Create a valuable incentive for signing up for your mailing list. It needs be more than your newsletter is free. Offer them a report, a handy checklist, access to videos, an information product or anything that is relevant and valuable to your target subscriber.8-c-free-download

– Add your opt-in box and compelling offer to the side bar of your website. Include an image that represents the incentive, so it’s eye-catching and your readers won’t miss it.

–  Include an invitation to sign up for your list in the footer of all your posts. Put the opt-in code right in the footer, so your readers can sign up right there, instead of having to click around.

– Mention your relevant free offers in the context of your posts. For example, if you’re writing a tutorial on French braiding and you have a free report on braiding techniques, mention it directly in your post.

– Continue to make more valuable content that you give away in return for an opt-in. Having a variety of incentives will help you reach more people and allow you to mention your mailing list more often.

Whether you have a lot of traffic or a little, building a mailing list allows you to maximize your blogging efforts. Don’t let the traffic you do have go to waste. Your subscribers will form a large part of your loyal following for years to come.

Until next week, this is Jessica signing out!

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3 Comments

  1. Hello, I’ve got a question for you.
    On my blog, readers can follow RSS feed by email, because I myself don’t use RSS reader… What I’m thinking is, if people subscribe to my RSS Feed by email, I’ll also sign them up to my mailing list. But then maybe some people don’t want to get bothered by daily emails from me. I’m considering to have both, but I’m afraid people will get confused of which one is which, and I’ve been thinking of how I can differentiate them enough to make them eye catching and channel people to their preferences easily…

    Thanks!

  2. Hi! I recently started a blog (with blogger) When you talk about the mailing list do you mean the follow by email that comes with blogger? or do you use something else?
    Thanks!

    1. Congrats on joining the land of the insane Seriously, us bloggers are a different breed. 🙂 When I mention the mailing list, I mean a totally different thing than just your feed. I mean a newsletter than you can send directly to any singe person, a set of the subscribers, or the whole list.

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