What's Better for Book Marketing? Email newsletters vs author blogs

email might seem outdated compared to instagram twitter and tick tock but when it comes to marketing your book nothing is more valuable or provides higher return than an email newsletter if you're wondering what's better to market your book or if you need an email newsletter at all then this video is for you hey i'm julie the book broad of book launchers we're your professional self-publishing services team if your ideal reader uses social media then you should certainly build a presence on that

platform that they're using but an email pops directly into the inbox of your target audience creates a much better opportunity for connection and builds that foundation for a long relationship that can help you achieve bigger goals even blog posts will not connect to your audience as intimately or as consistently as a newsletter in their inbox think of your email list as your biggest fans and most devoted supporters looking to discover more of your specific expertise someone who follows you on

social media may simply just scroll past your post and not bother to engage or depending on the algorithm of the platform they might not even see you on their feed at all newsletters might seem like a little more work than a daily tweet or an instagram story but the benefits outweigh the effort and one of the biggest ones you own your newsletter unlike your social media you rent or borrow your platform on social media it's not your media you have control mostly over the content you post but you

don't even control any of the experience the data or the platform strategy like i said a lot of your followers may never see your content on social media and no matter what you're playing by the rules of that platform an email newsletter is your own media and there are three big elements here content community and content by delivering your newsletter to your audience directly and not through a third party you own your content channel and strategy with this content you build more than a transac

tional relationship you're providing value to your own community while being able to access your own data to help with your decision-making as you market your book build your brand and provide better services to your audience now where do you start well the first step is building that email list and reaching out to your audience figure out the right opt-in to connect your audience with your brand basically what do you promise to provide them in exchange for their email address for example if you

want to write a business book you can go to booklaunchers.com forward slash business book and see an example of an opt-in with a value-add offering and that opt-in content should pack value like our business book download does it's a workbook to walk you through everything you need to do to plan to write a really great business book so you really need to add value so somebody gives you their email address so you can start to build that relationship this becomes a curated collection of quality l

eads that you're building a relationship with these are people that will go to your website and enter their address in to receive your emails and that means they're already interested in what you have to offer or what you have to say or what you can teach them you just have to know how to put together an excellent newsletter that they won't hesitate to open now there's lots of useful services out there to help you maintain that list and send out your newsletters mailchimp is a good one and it's

free if your list is 2 000 subscribers or less which makes it great for getting started and it can provide some automation while making sure your opt-ins comply with any laws our recommended service for our authors is convertkit and they also have some great tutorials on how to set up and manage your email newsletter through their service as well after you connect your newsletter service to your website and create that opt-in it's time to create your template if you're not design inclined consid

er hiring a graphic designer to create a header or some other kinds of images but there's nothing wrong with simplicity if you want to just rely on text that can be a great way to go too what matters most is that your newsletter matches your brand reflects you and adds value to the lives of the reader with every issue now that a new subscriber has signed up you want to set up an automated email sequence so that they receive a welcome email in that welcome email you want to provide that promised

content but then you also want to let them know what they can expect next think of this as your first handshake with them what are you going to be sharing over the days weeks months and years together do you remember handshakes before elbow bumps handshakes are how we used to say hello decide on how often to send your newsletter and the content that you'll include you better be doing this at least monthly i highly recommend bi-weekly or weekly but for some a monthly newsletter works and for othe

rs they may want to share content more regularly figure out what works for you and what works for your audience and most importantly remember to do this consistently and provide value when you do otherwise it's going to be added to the trash folder or they're going to hit unsubscribe adding value will keep them opening your emails but i also recommend playing with catchy and original subject lines my monthly tips for you or julie's newsletter or here's that email you signed up for that's not goi

ng to get them to open up your email unless you're trying to bore them so much that they think of taking a nap every time they see your name no craft your subject lines to catch your subscribers attention right away and convince them that there's something inside they don't want to miss by the way this is a great place to test your chapter titles or your book titles stay away from generic statements and spam triggering words instead tease the benefit of what you're offering your subscribers migh

t get a hundred emails a day and their time is precious let them know from at first glance that you're not wasting their time when done right your newsletter is the foundation supporting your marketing mansion the content inside of them isn't just limited to emails recycle it later into blogs social media posts and in those posts link to your opt-in for a chance to boost your subscribe list to deepen your connection to your audience and count on that connection to further your business you can't

just count on your social media it's your email newsletter that really gets the job done and now my job's done at least for this video but make sure you subscribe and turn those notifications on because there's a video coming up that you're going to want to see next and while you wait may i recommend this one that youtube thinks you're going to like to see or this one which is the latest and greatest from the channel take your pick and i'll see you there