This is a guest post by Daniel Cassady from BenchmarkEmail.com
How’s that blog going? Good, you say? Same here. Of course, I could use some more readers, but then again, who couldn’t, right?
Does this sound familiar?
If you’re a blogger – especially one that is trying to make money with your blog, there’s a good chance that you’ve spent your fair share of time trying to figure out how to lure new readers to your blog, and with varying amounts of success.
Most people tend to move toward social media sites like Facebook and Twitter when they want to increase their readership, and they are right to do so. The world of social media, if you didn’t already know, is growing by leaps and bounds every year, and with smartphones and tablets with built-in social media apps becoming as common as the rhinovirus, you can be sure that the influence social media has over the decisions people make will only grow stronger.
Then, of course, there is old reliable – email marketing. Not too long ago, email marketing was considered a passé tool for promoting and marketing. But, take a look at your inbox. Email marketing is back and in a huge way. Groupon and Living Social are two perfect examples of email marketing at it’s most successful.
So what does this mean for you, the blogger looking to hit it big?
It means that if you want to make the most of your promoting buck (an odd choice of words, I know since both social media sites and email cost little to nothing), then wouldn’t it make sense to combine the promoting power of social media and email marketing?
Of course it would. And here are a few ways to do just that.
Share-Worthy Content
This first tip is pretty simple. People are more apt to share exciting, fun content like videos or podcasts than run of the mill blog posts or price lists. Think about it this way. What are you more likely to forward to a friend, a photo ad or a funny video? If you keep your content in your emails interesting and engaging, the higher the odds of your content being shared on social media sites.
Encourage The Sharing Mood
As much as you would like them to, people don’t generally pass on promotional emails to their friends with excitement. Maybe once in a while, a blog post or coupon will be so fantastic that the person may share it with a friend or two, but that doesn’t really build your brand in any significant way.
Now – if you simply add social sharing buttons to your emails, that’s a whole different story. By adding these social sharing buttons, you’re inviting you’re readers to share your content with all of their contacts with one swift click of a button.
Start An Archive
So, you have a backlog of promotional email that you’ve sent, all of which have social sharing links attached. Now what? Do you just let these past emails dissipate into the ether until they’re forgotten? No way! Those emails still have a lot of life in them. You just have to know how to coax it out.
Start an archive on your website of all the past emails that you’ve sent and put those emails to work. The great thing about archiving your emails is that you increase the odds of someone finding your blog via a random web search because you’ll have that many more pages on your website. More website hits means more visitors.
Develop A Sense Of Community
In the same way that there are bloggers just like you out there who want to build an audience, there are social sharing communities all over the web that are looking to help bloggers do just that. It’s a beautiful concept. A group of like-minded bloggers and business folk upload their emails and newsletters to one specific site, making them available to every member of the communities audience because it’s a shared site. Minimal work, maximum payoff.
The Mobile Solution
I mentioned mobile devices at the beginning of this article and how they seem to be everywhere these days. A great way to combine your emails with social media is to optimize your emails for viewing on mobile devices. There was a time when people only checked their email at work or at home. These days, people check their email in line at the ATM or waiting for their meal at a restaurant.
Make your emails mobile friendly, don’t forget those handy social sharing buttons, and you’re sure to see a spike in your email views.
Promote Yourself
For my last tip, I’m gonna go a bit old school. Every time you send out a new email, get on Twitter and let your followers know. Log into Facebook and plaster it on your wall. With all the work you are going to put in trying to use other people’s social networks, it’s easy to forget that you’ve got a social network as well. Don’t forget to use it.
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Wow, so many great ideas! To be honest, I still need to wrap my head around on a lot of things that’s developing at a fast pace in technology, that it’s really hard to catch up sometimes. But again these are undeniable trends, really valuable and definitely worth looking into. Thanks!
Getting social is becoming the true buzz word phrase of the day. An interesting twist to the thought of getting social goes back to the olden days, those days prior to the internet, when we all promoted word of mouth advertising. Give someone a good job or product and they would get you tons of business. Really all that we are trying to do with social networks. Get brave and ask for a share and ie you have just asked someone to give you a good word with their friends.
It is really true as it has been stated above, that people don’t generally pass promotional e-mails to their friends but, that can be done easily if you add a social sharing button to your e-mail. Because it is just a simple click only. Thanks for sharing the great information.
Excellent points on combing the two. I like the point on how to get your content more visible by others. Videos sow more personality and much more likely to be shared.
And really promote yourself. I mean, really! Nobody will see anything you did without seeing it first through promotion. Personal Promotion.
The world of social media, you can be sure that the influence social media has over the decisions people make will only grow stronge is growing by leaps and bounds every year, and with smartphones and tablets with built-in social media apps becoming as common as the rhinovirus, if you didn’t already knowr Most people tend to move toward social media sites like Facebook and Twitter when they want to increase their readership, and they are right to do so.
Apart from the above tips, I would also suggest using some modern day applications & scripts which help you gain email subscribers easily utilizing social media. I’ve seen some live on some sites & I must say they work. I don’t remember the plugin’s name, but it was something which could automatically pull a user’s email id if he’s logged into FB or Twitter & allows him to subscribe easily with a click or two.
Mobile traffic is increasing everyday and we should absolutely do everything to tap it. Thanks to all the mobile apps of popular social media sites, sharing content, and promoting it is a lot easier. Just that most of the internet marketers are not doing it.
Excellent post Daniel. I think the key idea you’ve put forward is that of community. Turning your blog into a niche social site would be the next logical iteration for anyone wanting to really build a serious following.
I think a lot of people (including me) have forgotten recently about using email properly for marketing. Good advice on combining email with what many are already doing with social media.
Its nice idea to combine social media promotion with emails. however, it all depends on how the audiences are pleased with “relevant message”. We should not flood with too much of information also that definitely pulls down the subscriber count.
Thanks.