Start sending out emails

I used to tell people that if they have anything that they want to share with the world, the first thing they do is should get a website up. Having worked in email design the last few years, I now tell them to consider sending out emails to a list of people first and foremost.

Sending out update emails is like posting updates to social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The difference is that you’re directly connected to your readers by having their email addresses. With social media platforms, the platform owns your audience and decides what to do with them: filtering your posts in their feed, distracting them with other recommendations they didn’t sign up for, constant ads. The email they get from you has none of that noise.

Like social media, your email updates can be short, or long, few, or many, there really is no formula. You decide on the frequency and what you want to talk about. You can still use social media platforms, but always point people to your email list. Make it the pinned item or bio link for all the social platforms you’re on.

There are plenty of tools out there that make it easy start a list, have people sign up, and allow you to send out emails. I use MailJet. It’s free for sending a max of 200 emails per day, up to 6,000 per month which is plenty for you to grow your list over time. To put together my emails, I use Blocks Edit of course, but you can also just use what MailJet has to offer.