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Email!... is that still a thing?
It's perfectly understandable to think that way today, with social media having taken control of the way we communicate with each other on a daily basis. Well hey, everything I teach is about how to build a brand and business on social media, so why would I even need to ask if an email list is worth building?
You don't own me
You have been putting in the work and have built a following on Instagram of 1000 awesome peeps, or 10,000, or even 100,000, and they all hang on your every word. You feel great and so you should... but then Mr Z decides Insta has lost its edge and he is dropping it completely to launch a new platform. If Instagram was the basis of your entire business model then you have lost everything overnight.
Or what if your million Tiktok followers get locked out of your account because your government is having a dummy spit at China? Once again your business is dead in the water and you have no way to reach your followers.
An email list is currently the ONLY way you can collect followers and actually own their details. Unlike every social platform where your community is in the hands of some corporation or shareholders who can change everything on a whim, nobody is going to close down email. And so an email list is the only sure way of finding your followers if everything else goes to shit!
Crunch the numbers
And if that wasn't reason enough to start building an email list, I have one more fact that should tip the scales 100% towards it.
We see and hear every day that it is getting harder and harder to reach your followers on social media. Just a few years ago it seemed that your new content would hit the feeds of almost every one of your followers, but with the platforms expanding at a crazy rate and the volume of content becoming ridiculous, it now feels like only a small fraction of your followers ever see your new posts.
Add the fact that platforms like Instagram want to promote their latest features and how they have moved toward a more advertising-driven model, it is unlikely things will go back to how they were in the good old days.
On the other side of the coin take email, you are pretty much guaranteed almost everyone on your list will receive your emails, and it's in your hands whether your catchy title or genuine connection to each person means they open those emails. But at least reaching everyone is way better for business than the platform deciding who does and doesn't even get the chance to see your stuff.
Start building your list TODAY
It doesn't matter what stage you are at in your Kickass Content Creator business, but if you don't already have an email list then you must start building one right now. I will have a whole post coming out soon about the new email platform I recently moved from Mailchimp to an awesome new platform called Flodesk, it has been designed with creatives in mind and super easy to learn.
The best alternative to Flodesk, for those of you who are just starting now, is Mailchimp. It's a bit more complicated to work out at first but it is free until you hit 500 subscribers, and it's where I started until I got serious about building my list.
What you need to do now
- Choose your email platform.
- Come up with something free that you can give away to your social media followers in exchange for their email address.
- Put a link to that freebie on your social platforms and do some promotion (it doesn't have to be paid promotion).
- Send emails to your new list on a regular basis (once per week is perfect). In your first email to them ask them to tell you what they would like to see from you, remember these emails are to keep them engaged with your brand.
- Once you have a decent sized list be sure to add the deets to your media kit, brands will appreciate knowing you have that as another way to promote to your community.
