We received this email from a colleague and fellow blogger, Tom Heitz. I thought it would help others to answer his questions here.
Denise and Patsi:
I have working through my, "Build a Better Blog" ebook and I have a question. I have figured out how to use Feedblitz and put the code on a sidebar. I also have an ezine mailing service aweber.com which I can put on the blog as well for signups to my ezine.
Feedblitz will send them an ermail to let readers know there is a new post(s). Aweber is a service that will send out my ezine and autoresponders. Since my goal is to build my mailing list, and I'm sure it is one of your goals as well, how do I use both? Or maybe a better question would be, "how do you use both?" I know I am on one or several of your lists but not on a Feedburner list from you. Any suggestions would be helpful.
Thanks,
Tom
All good questions, Tom. Aweber is a good service for emailing out your newsletter, and the newsletter and blog should work together, linking to each other.
You might want add your blog post updates into your newsletter. For example, Here's What's New on the Blog... and list your article titles (you can even link to them.)
I do this on my weekly Newsletter Nuggets ezine. (To see a sample, of how I update readers on all the articles posted on my blogs, subscribe to this newsletter on the home page of www.customizednewsletters.com; you can always unsubscribe later.)
You should also inform readers of your blog about your newsletter, and offer a special report if they sign up over on your website. All this can be linked; you can include an adtracker i.d. to monitor if this information brings results.
Feedblitz is a separate service designed to give subscribers to your blog updates each day that you have new articles.It is not connected to anything but your blog posts.
Recently Aweber has installed an RSS delivery service, which can be used by those computer users who have a news reader or aggregator or RSS feed system set up on their computers. It is a way of delivering newsletters to subscribers who use this system. It does not deliver into email
inboxes. This is important to learn, since filters and email overload has led to poor
(30-50%) open rates of emailed newsletters.
But only a small fraction of users are savvy enough to have this system installed onto their computers; the numbers are growing. Right now only 12% of people use RSS feeds.
RSS is the same technology that is used when you set up your My Yahoo page to get news, movies, and blog updates directly onto your internet default page. It is a way of going around the email delivery problems.
Denise and I recommend using both an ezine or newsletter and a blog to stay in touch with readers and potential clients. Once you have the systems set up, it really doesn't take that long to write on your blog, and send out announcements through your ezine emailing system.
Because blogs require you to stay abreast of what's going on in your field, you never run out of topics to write about, either on your blog, or newsletter. People respect that you keep them informed, and this builds your credibility and expertise.
Hope this helps, if you have any questions, please ask. It gives us an opportunity to share with others who are probably wondering the same thing.
Patsi
