This is not an advertisement for Weber. What I do want to share is a few thoughts on why I have finally taken the plunge and integrated it email marketing and subscription software into my website here at The Six Minute Strategist – in order to achieve some of my blogging goals.
Building a reputation online is a marathon and not a sprint. I am sure you have heard that before. I have had my blog up for over a year now. Although I have not been the most regular poster of content, part of that was because I had not really thought through WHY I had the blog in the first place.
Now that my strategy is clearer – to build a community to share my knowledge of corporate strategy, investment banking and social media – and yes, eventually to leverage this community by making great content and information available to them on a free and paid basis – I realise that I need to be able to build my relationship with them.
Using Google analytics I can see that since setting up my Blog I have had 1,303 unique visitors to my site – and never more than 20 in one day. The good news is that there must be something of interest on the blog. The bad news is that I know absolutely nothing about who you are and am not able to engage with you.
The first reason for installing the email management software is to enable the site to have a subscription page to capture a visitors name and email address. When I say “capture” this is not a unwilling kidnapping. It is rather an invitation to them to subscribe to be informed in future of new content being posted and to enable me to keep in touch with them.
The second reason is the AutoResponder function. If the objective of the site is to build a community, then you need to continue to give value (great free content) to your community and, following Penny Power’s mantra, get them to know you, like you and trust you. With AWeber there is the ability to set up a series of follow up emails which can be scheduled and are emailed in succession to your new subscribers. Some of these may contain offers of products and services but this should not, in my opinion, be more than one third. At present I have no information products to sell so mine are purely informational and focused on building the relationship.
To date the only subscriber I have is me – my test subscription. But I live in Hope!
Thats it then for the moment. I will come back periodically and tell you how I am doing. The software offers many other capabilities and I will share them with you as I get to learn how to use them.
If I could include a call to action – come and subscribe – please. There is a 3 minute pen cast on my subscription page telling you about me and what you can expect from my blog and a sign up box (name and email only). At the moment I can’t even offer you a free ebook for signing up but I am working on some.
Full Disclosure: I do have a few affiliate links on the site including one to AWeber.
You can find their site (affiliate link free) at https://www.aweber.com/landing.htm and another product is Mail Chimp (http://mailchimp.com/) whose product I have not used and to whom I am not affiliated. If you would like to support my site, please use the link but really do not feel you are obliged to. I want to help you improve your blogging.
If you want to learn more, faster from a real expert head over to the Smart Passive Income Blog run by Pat Flynn. This is absolutely one of my favourite sites and Pat has posted great blogs, videos and has a brilliant podcast. He has a great post The Beginners Guide to Starting a Newsletter which will help you to get going. Much of what I have learned and continue to learn has come from him. When I signed up to AWeber I went through his link as a way of saying thank you. If you find his content amazing as I do, use his link and not mine.
UPDATE:
I have just found this video at AWeber which may be of interest.
Try AWeber’s Autoresponders for $1
Finally, if you like this post please RT and if you have any comments you can reach me at jbdcolley[at]aol[dot]com
Have a spectacular day and thank you for reading my blog post.