How To Get Email Subcribers and Keep Them Happy

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How to Get Subscribers and Keep Them Happy

Bloggers know that email subscribers are very important people. Before we get started, I would like take a minute and t if you are already a subscriber to my newsletter, I want to take this time to say thank you. With each email that I send you, feel free to respond. When you send me a question, I'll respond personally and I look forward to your feedback and suggestions.

Click here if you want to subscribe to my newsletter and get exclusive content and other updates. 

And if you want to get started with building your own list you can use this link to sign up for AWeber. That is my affiliate link, and I will earn a small commission, but it doesn't effect the price that you pay. 

MailChimp is another popular service among bloggers and they offer a free service up to a certain number of subscribers.

I want to encourage you to start building your list now, even if you're not ready to start sending out an email series yet, it's a good idea to get started on building the list ahead of time. 

FeedBurner & RSS Subscribers 

RSS subscribers get some type of notification each time you update your blog. Most bloggers do offer their RSS feed through FeedBurner. Here's how to find your feed [excerpt taken from Basics of FeedBurner]:

"But Where is My Feed?

The virgin (or default) feed for every Blogger blog uses this format (replace “blogname” with your blog title) :

• Atom: http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
• RSS: http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

The raw (or default) feed for every WordPress.com blog uses this format (replace “blogname” with your blog title):

• Atom: http://blogname.worpress.com/feed/atom/
• RSS:  http://blogname.wordpress.com/feed

The default feed for Typepad blogs use this format (replace “blogname” with your blog title):

• Atom: http://blogname.typepad.com/blog_folder_name/atom.xml
• RSS: http://blogname.typepad.com/blog_folder_name/rss.xml

Feeds come in two flavors, Atom and RSS, (RSS 2.0 feeds are often used for podcasting) to accommodate the multitude of readers that are available. FeedBurner is going to help you sort through all of this."

I'm a fan of using FeedBurner too, but I want to caution you that there is a strong possibility that Google (they own FeedBurner) is going to make some changes or possibly do away with the service. They recently announced that they are shutting down Google Reader so there is good reason to believe that FeedBurner might be on the chopping block soon as well. 

Read: Sharon Hurley Hall Uses Feedly not Google Reader

Build Your Own Email List

With the uncertainty of the longevity of FeedBurner, bloggers need to plan ahead. Be proactive instead of reactive and plan out your future. Look down the road and think about where you want to be in terms of having an email list and how your readers will have access to your blog updates. 

You can use an email service as a replacement for FeedBurner to notify subscribers of your blog updates - once again, I want to give a shout out to AWeber since they are the pros when it comes to email marketing. I recently visited the AWeber headquarters and here's a pic of me in front of their "green wall" and waterfall.

Ms. Ileane at the AWeber Open House 2013

 "Exclusives" Keep Subscribers Happy

Once you sign up for my email list, you'll see that from time to time, I have special offers and giveaways that are exclusives to my subscribers only. 

You can do the same thing with your email marketing campaigns. 
Feel free to copy the ideas from some of my subscriber exclusives:

#1. I received 3 copies of the single site license for SEOPressor Plugin Version 5 from the developer and I held a giveaway that I only shared with my subscribers

#2. I did a presentation at the Social Media Examiner Content Success Summit and gave away a free pass valued at $600

#3. I upload tutorials to YouTube that teach people how to be more productive or use the internet more effectively. I make sure my subscribers are the first to know! One example of this is PicMonkey which you can use to edit images or add text and quotes to Facebook or Pinterest. Here's a link to the list I mentioned.

Remember to do things in "layers"
I don't mean to overwhelm you with a ton of action items. Take things one at a time. Think of it in terms of layers. Perhaps you'll start with building your list, then move on to the next thing like starting a YouTube channel or a podcast. 

If you need help, or if you have a question, remember you can leave a voice mail on SpeakPipe and I might end up including your question in and upcoming episode of the podcast.


  

My All Time Favorite Tip for Getting Blog Traffic

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In this episode I talk about how you can get more blog traffic by paying attention to the information found in Google Analytics.

Getting Traffic

We always communicate with our readers on blog comments, Twitter, Facebook and even through email responses to our newsletters. Even though these readers are extremely important and they represent our core group of followers, there is another group that we need to listen to as well.

The only way to understand what this "silent" group of readers is trying to tell us is by looking at our tracking statistics. There are a lot of different software programs we can use to do tracking but I recommend using Google Analytics.

Analytics Integration with Webmaster Tools

Google Analytics can be integrated with so many other Google products and primarily I go into detail about the integration with Google Webmaster Tools. You can learn more about Google Webmaster Tools in a previous episode of the podcast and you can find watch this video tof find out how to make the connection between the two accounts.

How to Connect Google Webmaster Tools to Google Analytics 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWtKoMA1gY

Once you connect the two account the Search Engine Optimization reports will help you find which posts on your blog are getting the most traffic from Google. This is really helpful for you determine how effective you are at getting search traffic for the terms you are going after. On the other hand, you'll also gain insights on what you might be doing wrong! But once you have that information you can put a positive spin in this by creating more content that people like. 

I share two examples of this from posts on my Basic Blog Tips blog and how I was able to turn this into a successful traffic generation tool for my blog.

Google Analytics and FeedBurner Integration

It's also a wonderful idea to allow FeedBurner to integrate with Google Analytics. I give an excellent example of how Justin Young from Major Money Tips http://www.majormoneytips.com/how-to-use-google-reader-find-and-share-content-553/ put this to good use on his blog.

This is how you can really listen to your readers and develop  more of the content they want to read about and more importantly, you can provide them with the content that they are searching for. This will help you get more traffic but also help your readers by giving them information that addresses a problem they are trying to solve or fulfills a need that they have. Eventually these "silent" readers will become part of you core group of commenters, followers and subscribers.

Happy blogging!

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