I’ve encountered an annoying problem lately. I’ve started following fewer book blogs and more freelance/designer blogs. Some of their posts are pretty awesome! However, most of these blogs don’t offer a normal RSS email subscription service. I follow blogs via email. That’s how I stay updated with their latest posts. But many of these freelance/designer blogs, don’t have a simple “get my blog posts via email” subscription feature. Instead, they offer a newsletter.
The newsletter usually talks about some of the same things they discuss on their blog, but it doesn’t actually inform me of blog posts! Here’s an example:
I followed this one blogger about two or three weeks ago. I never got an email notification about new blog posts so I kind of forgot about them. Then I got a newsletter email that talked a bit about crafting your brand and went on to say:
[…] we’ll not only talk in depth about all the things that goes into your brand (I talked about some of those other things on the blog today), but we’ll also […]
I was immediately like, “Woah, a new blog post? Why wasn’t I informed???” So I clicked on over to the blog and found like FOUR new blog posts since I subscribed. And this “newsletter” didn’t tell me about any of them.
Please help me follow your blog—I like it!
I don’t care about your newsletter. I don’t want you send me random ramblings once or twice a month. But your blog? Your blog ROCKS! I want to stay updated and read everything. So why won’t you give me a way to stay notified?
I’ve seen this with a few book bloggers too
I don’t think the book bloggers are doing it intentionally, but I have seen it in this community as well! Most of the people who do this use MailChimp and fall into one of two categories:
- 1. They don’t know how to set up an automated RSS-to-email campaign that sends out email updates every time they make a new post. So instead, they manually set up a campaign when they remember and link to their latest posts.
- 2. They intentionally send out a newsletter only about once or twice a month with a few of their recent posts.
If you fall under category #1, try reading this RSS-driven campaign tutorial for MailChimp. If you fall under category #2, please consider letting people choose whether they want to receive posts as soon as they’re published or a monthly newsletter. I have a tendency to auto-delete all emails that are just monthly newsletters with 10 posts crammed in there.
Yes, I can totally relate! I really enjoy reading blog posts from this particular person, but I never get notifications whenever a new post is published. I have to check the blog for updates every now and then, which is quite troublesome. It’s also upsetting when I don’t find any new posts/I miss out on a whole bunch of posts. 🙁
Yeah I hate it! 🙁 If I can’t access the blog posts in a reliable way, then I just won’t be able to follow. That’s a lost follower/page views on their part. 🙁
I follow my favorite blogs via email and I wouldn’t want just a monthly newsletter. I think of newsletters as something for authors to use not bloggers.
I completely agree! Newsletters are good for authors to talk about new releases, available excerpts, giveaways, and tour dates. But if you run any kind of regular blog, you need to have an email subscription service just for your blog posts!
I totally agree! I don’t understand bloggers who don’t offer an email option for following them. I’m the same way, I only follow blogs via email. I unsubscribed recently to a few blogs who only offer a newsletter because it was too much work, LOL!
Exactly! I know a lot of people use Bloglovin and stuff, but I don’t. So if they don’t offer an email subscription option, I won’t be (and can’t) follow them!
I follow very few people via email (just my super super favourite ones) but I’d definitely be upset if a blogger I wanted to follow via email only offers newsletters. I couldn’t care less for newsletters.
Yeah it’s really annoying! 🙁
This is one area where the business world differs from the book blogging world. Businesses need to sell, and blogs aren’t the way they do it—they do it with their email list. I tie my business blog posts in with my newsletter, but by not offering an RSS to email option, I also have the ability to announce information, like new services or promotions. that I wouldn’t do on my blog.
I do think the mainstream practice is “no new content” for their newsletter, so they share their blog posts, but it’s not uncommon to offer exclusive content for newsletter subscribers. The truth is, businesses don’t benefit from people who just follow their blog, which is likely why they don’t offer those options.
I would actually disagree. My job is writing content for a business, full-time, and blogging is responsible for much more new customers than email is. Emails might be sent to a prospect in the sales process, but those prospects know who we are and gave us their email address because of our blog, so in our reports, the sale is attributed to the blog.
Blogs are actually one of the best ways to attract new customers.
But even if you wanted to sell via email, that doesn’t mean you don’t have to offer an email subscription service. You’re just losing potential traffic if you don’t offer that.
And let’s say you use MailChimp, you can set it up so the subscribers receive email updates about blog posts AND you can also send them a separate campaign (that’s not RSS-driven) for any business stuff.
I just think that setting up an email subscription service is zero effort. If you don’t offer that, you’re losing out on potential page views/followers.
I don’t have an email sub option for my business blog, but I do send out an email for every post I publish (with link to post). I’m not blogging for page views or followers—I’m blogging for a return: to build credibility, to showcase my expertise, to get people on my list. Business blogging is a transaction that way; you give me your email address, I give you my blog updates. My blog is part of my sales funnel. I rope you in, then keep wowing you with my content, then hopefully convert you to a sale later on. This is, I suspect, why many businesses don’t offer strict email subs. It’s more difficult to convert.
BUT. Someone who doesn’t provide notifications of new blog posts in their newsletter at all—that’s just stupid, for the reasons you mentioned. The smart and savvy businesses *will* give you links to their blog posts (though usually the beginning of the post and a link to read more; I summarize my post and provide a link), though they won’t offer email subs.
If you do send an email for every post with a link, that’s fine. I’m just complaining about the people who don’t do that. When enter my email on a blog subscription box, it’s because I like the blog and want updates. So when I get something completely different instead of any blog post notifications at all, it’s annoying and feels pointless. They should connect, not be completely separate entities.
I have the same pet peeve! I feel like too many bloggers still assume everyone uses RSS…even though it never was really mainstream anyway. I frequently hear the objection “I feel like if I email people every day they’ll get sick of me.” And I get that. I really do. Some people probably will. But most services that offer RSS-to-email, like MailChimp, let you set the frequency. You can send an email once a week that still has all blog posts from the past week. And that kind of auto campaign is so much easier than writing a separate newsletter, too. Why wouldn’t you do it?
You’re right—so many bloggers just assume everyone uses Bloglovin’ or Feedly. But I don’t! And it’s so weird that people in the blogging community assume that, because in every other online aspect (especially businesses), the #1 thing you want to promote and draw attention to is your email subscription list/service.
And I don’t really get the “I feel like if I email people every day they’ll get sick of me” argument. As a blog reader, when I choose to subscribe via email, I know what I’m getting into. If I see that you publish a new post every day, then I EXPECT to get an email notification about that every day. And if I do get sick of it, then oh well. That’s my problem. I can choose another method to follow if I want.
I think this is the main problem with my blog. I keep forgetting it. Thank you for this post, Ashley! 🙂
Oh, good, there ARE actually people who follow blogs by e-mail haha
I don’t know why, but whenever I see someone subscribed to my blog via e-mail I’m like YAY cool, but are you an actual person or just a spam bot? TELL MEEEEE 😀
Haha 😀 Sometimes you can tell just by looking at the email address. The spammy ones often make no sense.
Yes, SOMETIMES. Some people have weird e-mail addresses, man. 😀
Yes, I have a few blogs I follow that do that! I hate it so much. When there’s multiple posts in one email, I’m more likely to miss them. I like to have an email for each blog post!
I just created a little image for my signup it says newsletter but on the bottom it says posts, freebies and tips, would people know it’s blog posts plus more or would they assume that it’s a monthly newsletter and they don’t sign up. check it out it at http://twoeasels.com/ on the right.
Well when I first see “newsletter” I would assume a monthly newsletter that doesn’t include all blog posts. In my experience, whenever people say “newsletter” they DO NOT notify me about each blog post. They just pick a few blog posts to share like 1-2 times a month, and I don’t like that. 🙁
Thanks for sharing..! Sure, I subscribed a blog because it provided the quality content which educated me something that I want to know. You know..? I found some blog offer me the freebie, but I am not so interesting with that. Also, what the messy is that some blog sent me a lot self promote or their products. I am not really enjoy with those, what I did is that I hit unsubscribed live the list. LOL