This month on my blog a big focus will be on list building and how to build an email list. I’ve only recently started creating lists, in the past 6 months or so. I haven’t been actively promoting too much. So, this month I’m going to focus on a few tactics and share those with you. I’m ashamed to say that I really haven’t worked out a plan of attack for that yet.
I have set some goals and will do the 365 day challenge that I mentioned in an earlier blog post, but a list building strategy hasn’t actually been worked in.
I recently posted an article at Blogging Tips about the very basics of list building. Feel free to hop over and read that if you’d like. I will highlight some of those points here.
One of the things that can be overwhelming is that the majority of content you find on list building, whether it be blog posts, courses or ebooks you’ve purchased, is that most of them give you WAY too many options in the beginning. I know you’ve read them, you can do this, this, this or this and that, that, or that.
Yes, there are many ways to go about list building, but in the beginning, and especially for newbies, you should focus on one or two methods only. I understand these reports want to give you all the options, but it tends to cloud the main point—choose one or two and do them consistently.
The two methods I will focus on for January is blog posts aimed at my newsletter and social media. Once I get that nailed into a weekly routine I will consider adding a new method or switching out a method.
On to the basics of how to build an email list
One of the first things you should consider is your target audience. Who is it you want to reach? Who do you want to help? Forget about who you want as customers. Your goal is to help people and build a community of followers. The sales will naturally follow if you consistently over-deliver and show yourself as a real person who genuinely cares about their followers.
I also believe you can have more than one target group. In my case, I want to help writers who may be afraid to venture off into marketing, whether it’s their own services they need to market or they want to promote other people’s products. Another target area is newbies. I am pretty new to IM myself, but I’ve been looking at it long enough that I’ve seen a lot of bullshit and I want to dispel the bullshit and share really simple tactics. Information overload is overwhelming and I hope to help others avoid it.
So, for starters, you need to be real, keep it simple and build a community. You want it to feel like a huge neighborhood of friends and family.
The second thing you want to do is focus on one or two tactics to get people to sign up for your community—your list. You can work on the two methods I mentioned earlier, or you can focus on two others. However, I’m not discussing other methods in this post because we’re keeping it simple, remember?
The third thing is to follow through. For January I will work on some blog posts that are aimed at my list and my target audience and post those throughout the month. I will also use Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to promote my newsletter. That is ALL I will worry about for list building this month.
What if you don’t have a clue about what kind of list you want to build? Stay tuned, I will cover that in another post. For now, I want you to think of list building in simple, easy terms and let it sink in that you want to build a friendly, caring community.
To your success!
Patti
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I hear about link building not list building,
thanks for sharing this blog
Very nice list building tips. Gaining the right audience is indeed an effective way to list building. Social medias like facebook and google+ is a great place to look for your target audience. You can even look for groups that is of great value for your campaign.
Building an e-mail list turned to be harder than thought. Thanks very much for the valuable and time-saving help!
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You are so correct, that there’s so many “list building” gurus out there pushing their products and ebooks… I know the importance of building lists and it’s place in an overall marketing strategy, but always felt it too complicated to tackle… You do a nice job in your post describing the basics and laying out easy to understand tactics… well done. :-)
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