Four Reasons Why Your Local Blog Needs a Mailing List
by Matt on Nov 19, 2009 in Blogging, MY BEST POSTS
I’m thinking about creating mailing lists for our local blogs. I haven’t fully thought-out the mechanism for creating and managing these lists. A Yahoo Group? Do it myself? Some other e-mail platform? But I have figured out the Why.
Four Reasons Why Your Local Blog Needs a Mailing List
1.) Everyone uses e-mail. Few use RSS. E-mail is the number one online activity among Internet users in general. I don’t have any stats on this, but RSS adoption is certainly way behind e-mail use. I feel like we, as bloggers, tend to put all our faith in RSS as the tool for pushing our content to readers. But e-mail seems like the smarter, safer choice. (The closest stat I could find about this was from Pew Research earlier this year, which showed that 91% of online adults use e-mail, but only 32% read blogs. It’s in the third chart from the bottom. Not specifically RSS, but perhaps close. )
2.) People don’t want to learn RSS. On one of our local blogs, I set up a WordPress page about RSS. (See the Richland blog.) I purposely left such a page off the other blogs to see if the Richland blog would get more RSS subscribers from the tutorial being there; it hasn’t. Over time, all of our local blogs have had generally similar subscriber counts. You don’t have to teach people to use e-mail.
3.) E-mail is more ubiquitous. No matter where people go, their e-mail can go with them. You don’t need a smartphone to have e-mail on your phone; any web-enabled phone will do. Thanks to webmail services, you can check personal e-mail while at the office. It’s everywhere. Again, I don’t have any stats on this, but it seems safe to assume people don’t check RSS nearly as often as they check e-mail.
4.) E-mail is easier to share. Sure, Google Reader and other RSS tools offer sharing/bookmarking features. But again, is there anything easier than hitting the FORWARD button on your e-mail software and sending it to a friend or neighbor? Don’t think so. And even if sharing RSS feed item was easier, how many neighbors would be able to get it? Not nearly as many.
What Have Others Said?
Consider these two quotes from earlier this year about e-mail and local information:
1.) In Reason magazine, Jesse Walker wrote:
I’ve lived in two Baltimore neighborhoods, one in the city proper and one just outside the urban boundary in Towson. In both cases I learned almost immediately about every substantial local crime that had been reported to the cops—not by reading the police blotter, but by checking my email. Through the same lists, we were kept abreast of subjects involving everything from upcoming block parties to an effort to build a community swimming pool. And if we needed anything from a babyitter to a handyman, the lists were an instant source of informed advice.
2.) At SXSWi, Steven Johnson of Outside.in said this:
“Five years from now, if someone gets mugged within a half-mile of my house, and I don’t get an e-mail alert about it within half an hour, it’ll be a sign that something is broken.”
Your turn: Do you agree? Disagree? Maybe you already have a mailing list associated with your blog? If so, tell us what you use and how it’s working for you. If not, would you consider adding one? Comments are open. Go ahead and make this post better.
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14 Responses to “Four Reasons Why Your Local Blog Needs a Mailing List”
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Matt- I agree that every blog, business, and organization needs an email list. How to acquire it, how big it needs to be, and what to do with the list are the more interesting questions in my mind.
On my blog I use feedburner and I have two separate links – folks can subscribe using a feed reader of their choice or by email. (Surprisingly, more folks use feed readers than email.)
I also have “subscribe” info in my email signature.
This fall I did a “NPR” style subscription drive – just one post really, to remind folks to subscribe and teach them how. I think I will do this a few times a year just because it was an easy way to get a handful of new subscribers.
PS – I think you could probably have a more obvious “subscribe” button on this blog and also over at the Tri-cities real estate blog.
I think it will probably depend upon the geographic area in which you live. Progressive, hip, coffee shop and art walk folks will probably respond favorably. Small, rural and communities who ask for your fax number before asking for your e-mail address will do miserably.
Matt, you know I’m not much of a Twitter guy but I’ve always been much fonder of Facebook. We have been concentrating more on Facebook Fans to grow a list instead of e-mail.
Thx for the comments, guys. Geordie – good idea on the NPR drive. I’ve done that a couple times on my small biz mktg. blog and it always seems to work a bit. And yes, I’ve done a terrible job of making the email subscribe option on this blog visible. Frankly, ALL of my blogs are in need of some updating.
Steve – with you on the Facebook thing. Can’t stand it myself, but I know from my wife (who loves it) that there are a lot of local folks using and connecting on Facebook.
It is about 50/50 between RSS Subscribers and E-mail RSS subscribers for my site. The first thing in my sidebar is a widget prompting readers to subscribe via e-mail. It is all done through Feedburner, which gives me a list of all the addresses active.
Lately I have been thinking about doing a promotional contest. Where readers who subscribe via e-mail and become a Facebook fan will be entered to win a prize from a local business. I would love for a business to sponsor it in trade for advertising but am having trouble approaching them.
What’s the easiest way to setup an email list? And what software would people recommend for sending the emails?
I’m using a Feedburner subscription. It’s easy, and I like how I can set it up to aggregate the days postings and get it to readers. And from what I am hearing, my readers like this too. I am currently doing a subscription drive, and the numbers are growing.
Aside from that, I am going to start using iContact or something similar to create a monthly newsletter. There are many people who don’t subscribe to the feed (people I meet at Chamber of Commerce events, local politcos, etc.) that I want to get in front of.
Someone mentioned Facebook. I created a fan page (wish I had done a group, arghh!) earlier this year. There are 6 times as many Facebook Fans as I have feed subscribers.
What does everyone normally do when they do a Subscription Drive?
Am curious to know. Thanks
Ed. W. — I’ve seen people say good things about Aweber for mailing list management. I think ConstantContact is another one, although I may have the name wrong and Ed K’s iContact is what I’m talking about.
I totally agree with compiling an email list rather than just relying on RSS. RSS is a great way to syndicate content but a personal email, to a potential client, is much stronger and effective.
We use Constant Contact for both our business and blog traffic. It’s great & allows you keep detailed lists of people, where they came from and what they are interested in.
I’ve always had a problem with RSS – nobody knows what it is, what it means and frankly, they don’t care. Nor should they. I’ve always favoured using the word ’subscribe’ instead and then helping people to do that.
I use Feedburner for The Lichfield Blog and our “Subscribe” widget gives equal prominence to the RSS feed link and the e-mail signup.
Saves the hassle of using mailing list software and, if you customise your blog (I’m thinking of Wordpress here) you could even write posts that would only go out to subscribers, which might be useful (maybe for promotions).
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