Being a blogger and influencer is all about growing your audience and building a loyal audience. A loyal audience will take your recommendations to heart, share your content with friends, and will consume your content for years to come.
One great way to really amplify that and create a truly dedicated community, is through starting a newsletter. This is one the most important digital marketing tools to have for your blogging business.
Starting a newsletter can feel overwhelming. There are various platforms to choose from, topics you can include, newsletter designs and more. Today we’re going to talk about how to start an effective newsletter for your blogging business and influencer business.
And a hot tip from TBS to you, if you don’t have a website, we still encourage you to start a newsletter no matter what! This can be a great way to build community, have a place to share MORE links and content to earn more revenue and more. Plus, if you do decide to finally start a blog, you’ll have a built in audience who is ready to read and you can then drive website traffic to your new site.
How Do You Start A Newsletter
Starting a newsletter can be hard work and a bit overwhelming. Lots of platforms to choose from, a strategy to decide on and just getting over that learning curve. But trust us when we say, it is worth it!
What Is A Newsletter
A newsletter is an email that you the creator and blogger, sends to your readers. It’s a way to communicate with your audience, share behind the scenes content and exclusive updates, but also a way to build community. Having a newsletter is an effective way to connect with your audience and build brand loyalty.
Bloggers and influencers can benefit from newsletters for all of the above reasons. The community it builds, the trust, and the ability to share content straight to peoples inbox is really essential to your success. Newsletters also convert at a higher rate than social media can. While this may vary based on your target audience, newsletters typically are going to convert
How To Start A Newsletter
Step One – Choose Your Newsletter Platform
Choose an email newsletter platform that works for you. There are several options to choose from based on your needs, price point and size of your audience. Here at The Blog Societies, we are big fans of Flodesk. But many of our fellow influencer friends also use Substack. We share our thoughts on substack vs newsletter here.
Weigh the cost and benefits of each to find your preferred newsletter platform. Once you’ve chosen, get yourself signed up and dive into the next steps.
Step Two – Define Your Purpose and Audience
This should be something you already know before you get started. But this could also be a good time to revisit your brand, who you are, and your why. You can even get our blogging roadmap to help define your brand, and come up with content ideas here.
Defining your purpose, and knowing your target audience is key to creating your newsletter content. You want to send your email to an audience that you know wants to consume and enjoy your work. Your newsletter also may be just a portion of what you offer your audience. So this may be a snippet of your entire purpose and offerings as a creator. Maybe your newsletter is exclusively one facet of that.
Step Three – Create A Freebie
One of the best ways to generate new subscribers to your newsletter is to offer a high value and high quality freebie. This is something that will be featured on the pop up that you create in step four. Freebies are essential for growth because no one is really entering their email to “get the latest” from your website. Instead, they want something of value in exchange for entering their email.
There are lots of ideas for creating freebies. One of our best tips is to look at your top posts on your blog and see if there are any similarities. Are they mostly style tips? Or maybe travel-related? Create a freebie that will capture those readers the most. You can get more freebie ideas to drive more newsletter signups here.
Step Four – Create A Pop Up & Sign Up Page
In order to capture those new subscribers you’re going to need a pop-up on your site. As well as a landing sign up page. Depending on the email service you sign up for, the process and options may vary. We use Flodesk and. love that the pop-ups are really easy to create and integrate into your website. Plus, you can create full page signups to share across social.
Your pop up should encourage and entice readers to subscribe to get the freebie you’re offering. Make sure to test your pop ups and that the text and links are easy to read and click on desktop and mobile.
Step Five – Plan Your Content
Now that you’re newsletter is set up with pop-ups and freebies, it’s time to plan your newsletter content. Every blogger and creator will have their own plan that works for them. It may take a little trial and error to figure out the type of content that resonates best, and the cadence you send it.
In general, we always suggest making your newsletters as exclusive as possible. Just sharing a link to your latest post is not going to build that community. Plan content that is exclusive, helpful, personal and insightful. These are some of our favorite ideas for newsletter content if you’re not sure where to start.
If you are looking to share your latest blog posts, sending a weekly recap with a personal note is one of the better ways to go about this. It allows you to send something a bit personal (and exclusive) while catching your readers up on what happened on your website.
Step Six – Stay Consistent
Whether once a month, or twice a week, sending your newsletter should be a consistent cadence. Pick a schedule you can stay consistent with. It can also be a good idea to stay consistent in the type of content you share. Can you create a series that happens weekly or monthly? This makes readers feel more invested in the content as they know what’s coming.
Step Seven – Analyze Your Data
Every so often you’ll want to analyze your newsletter data. See what your open rates are, click through rates, and sign up rates. What’s working, what isn’t. We use our monthly KPI tracker (TBS members can download this spreadsheet in The Library) to keep an eye on our monthly data. This allows us to find consistencies, or lack thereof, that may spark some change.
Something else to keep in mind, is your subject line! These can truly help increase your open-rates and is something you should analyze when looking at your data. Which subject lines are working, which aren’t? You can also get some of our favorite subject lines here.
Step Eight – Promote Your Newsletter & Switch Up Your Freebies
Now that you’ve started your newsletter, made a pop-up, freebie and some content, there is still work to be done. And that’s to continue to promote your newsletter, and always be updating your freebies.
Promoting your newsletter can be done through updated pop-ups and always having them on your relevant blog posts. But also sharing the freebies and offers with your audience on other social media platforms like Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok. Wherever you have a presence, you should be sharing your newsletter and encourage signups every so often.
And lastly, switching up your freebies. This doesn’t have to happen often. But it would be wise to revisit your freebies every season to make sure they are still relevant. Evergreen content is best, but sometimes it’s nice to create something seasonal to increase your subscribers.
Newsletter Templates
If you’re using Flodesk, we’ve got a newsletter design just for you! While Flodesk is beautiful and an easy drag and drop system, we wanted to create an email newsletter template you can use for your first welcome email.
Use this template to welcome your new subscribers with your freebie download. This can be a link to a PDF you make in Canva. PS, TBS members can also use our newsletter freebie template in Canva that’s great for making a multi-page high-value freebie.
No matter if you’re a blogger, influencer, TikTok-er or even someone who provides products and services, a newsletter is crucial to connecting with your target audience. Build community and trust with your followers and have a way to contact them easily by simply sending an email with ease.
