SEO Copywriting Checklist: Why your site needs a newsletter. Right now.
Greetings! Welcome to another installment in the SEO Copywriting Checklist video series.
In today’s video, Heather addresses a content must that a lot of small business owners – and even medium- to large-sized businesses – completely forget about, and that is having an email newsletter.
This discussion came up when Heather was doing the SEO Copywriting Certification training in Phoenix last week. She was talking about how newsletters can be really good for business, and people came back with: “Why do I need to worry about a newsletter? I already have a blog. Why would I have a newsletter on top of a blog?”
Tune in to hear Heather’s response: Here’s why your site needs a newsletter. Right now…
Think A RSS Feed Is All You Need? Think Again.
The folks at the SEO Copywriting workshop had a really good question about why the need for an email newsletter as well as their blog, because a lot of site owners think “Oh, I have a blog, and people can subscribe to it through my RSS feed, so I’m good. I don’t need to worry about taking that extra step.”
But the thing is…
– Many people don’t know what RSS is or how it works.
– Weekly (or monthly) newsletters provide quite a few benefits – and are definitely worth the time and effort.
Email Newsletters Have Some Great Advantages
Some of the benefits of email newsletters are…
– They can drive traffic to your site and increase social shares.
So for example, the SEO Copywriting newsletter that I run comes out every Tuesday. Even if I couldn’t tell the day of the week in analytics, I could certainly see that spike in web traffic and know it must be a Tuesday, because of the surge in social shares and site visitors.
And what I do to encourage that with my newsletter is to include a little preview of what the blog post is about, and then a link that takes readers directly to that post on the site.
So the article isn’t printed in the newsletter, just a little snippet with a link that sends readers back to the site.
– They provide you an opportunity to “connect” with your readers.
Newsletters are a fantastic way to keep in touch with your readers. One of the things I enjoy doing with my newsletter is to write a brief introduction that maybe talks about the theme of the newsletter, or just about what’s been going on.
Especially if you are the brand, this is a great way you can connect with your readers as well!
– They are a great way to build a loyal following.
Newsletters also can help build an incredibly loyal following. You’ll have this core group of people who are really excited to read your newsletter every week. And they’ll even email you if they didn’t receive it, and say “I didn’t get your newsletter – can you send it to me? I really look forward to reading it!”
And that’s always fun!
– Newsletters help you sell more stuff.
Finally, newsletters provide an ideal channel for selling more stuff!
If you’re writing blog posts on a daily basis, chances are those posts are not promoting your products and services – because you’re writing strong, quality, informational content.
But say you’re having a sale, or there’s something special going on that you want folks to know about? Within the body of the newsletter, you can always include a little call-to-action block letting readers know about your sale or special event.
You can even set it up so that your newsletter subscribers are the first to know about sales or other special events. That way you can have that V.I.P. “velvet rope” appeal to readers, granting them access to exclusive benefits just by signing up!
So if you don’t have a newsletter, I encourage you to get one going. Or if you do have a newsletter but you haven’t done much with it in awhile, you might want to think about kicking it back into shape – and figure out what you need to do in order to build a bigger subscriber list and get more folks visiting your site.
Because I guarantee, once things start rockin’ and rollin’, you’re going to see some huge benefits!
Thanks for joining me! As always, if you have any questions or comments please let me know – you can leave them here in the comments below, or find me on Twitter @heatherlloyd, or email me directly at heather@seocopywriting.com.
photo thanks to FontShop
Are your conversions sluggish? Are your content efforts falling flat? I can help. Check into my low-cost SEO Content Review service today!
I’ll be the first to admit, Heather, that it took a long time for the penny to drop about RSS for me.
By contrast, subscribing to email updates made sense straight away.
So, yep, we cannot afford to miss out on having an email newsletter.
I was pleasantly surprised how easy they were to set up. And they’re more versatile too.
@Kevin – I totally understand. I went through the same paradigm shift a few years ago. Starting a newsletter was one of the best things I’ve done! (And yes, it was easy to set up!)
:)
The return on newsletters – if they are done well – can he superb and are worthwhile for any business that needs repeat customers. An excellent article.
Thanks so much! I’m glad you enjoyed it, Mike! :)
I have personally seen great results with email newsletters but if you really need to take it to the next level I would recommend mailing your customers paper and ink letters.
As a freelance digital marketer this is something that I should certainly be doing more of. I can focus on writing content all day but if my readers aren’t going to come back it’s pointless. It’s also great for keeping in touch with clients and is supposed to be brilliant for ecommerce.