Companies are very busy developing social media strategies but seem to forget the most valuable channel of all. Email is the ancient warrior within the world wide web that is already surviving for 25 years and will probably never die.
Social media channels are replacing each other during the years. They come and go. Invested advertising resources and grown fan bases on a platform that’s slowly disappearing will be gone forever.
This makes it terribly important to create synergy between your social media and your mailing list. By the time a network dies, your fans should already be on your mailing list.
Revue
I have always been doing this. Back in the days by giving away free ebooks on my first website to get email subscribers. And by sharing interesting articles via my main channels Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to grow a follower base and convert them to subscribers later.
I was using Mailchimp to send an occasional email when I had something to share. Usually about my own business. But I felt this to be a deprecated strategy and want to start something new.
Then I found Revue, an editorial newsletter tool for writers and publishers that focuses on the curation of quality content and the engagement with followers. I started using it to setup my own monthly newsletter with curated content about online business.
Make sure to subscribe if you didn’t do it yet.
Goals
My goal is to have 1000 readers each month, based on Kevin Kelly’s 1000 true fans theory. To reach that I would need to have an estimated 2000 to 4000 subscribers, as the opening rates of my mails are around 25% to 50%.
If I reach that goal, I will probably launch a paid weekly version of the newsletter. But that’s not my main objective for now.
I want to:
Increase my reach
I have 1000+ followers on Twitter and 500+ on LinkedIn, but that doesn’t equal reach. Take into account that a lot of your followers don’t see your updates. That’s why I’m working towards 1000 newsletter subscribers that actually read it.
I want to use the newsletter to share updates on my own products and blog occasionally.
Improve my english
I think my level of English is OK but there is room for improvement. I always want to keep learning. In Barcelona I learned Spanish but I found out that made me forget words in other languages, including my native one sometimes.
By reading books and articles and writing blogs I want to improve my English again.
Get myself to read more articles
My Instapaper has always been packed with articles I want to read. Twitter is my main source for this. Now that I’m curating a newsletter I am more motivated to actually read all of them and pick the best ones to share.
Improve my writing skills
I like writing, blogging in particular. I can express myself better writing than talking, probably because of my personality.
Due to my new newsletter I’m more motivated to write all of the article ideas I have had for years.