by James MetzgerHow to Promote Your Mailing List With a Blog
Probably the most common way to promote and grow a mailing list is through a landing page. This is a single page on your website that will be dedicated to selling the merits of signing up. It will detail what the new subscribers can expect to get from signing up and it will provide the opt-in form where they can go ahead and enter their email address and name.
But while this can work well, it’s important not to overlook one of the other most effective ways to grow a mailing list: through your blog.
Why a Blog is Perfect for Growing a Mailing List
There are several things that will make a blog ideal for growing your mailing list.
The first of these things is that a blog is well-suited to gaining more traffic via Google. Google brings people to websites based on the content. This is what people are searching for in the first place in most cases and it is what you use in order to provide value for your readers.
Simply by blogging regularly, you can get more people to actively look for the page where your opt-in form will be and this is something that you wouldn’t have been able to accomplish as easily with a landing page – seeing as that will only have a small amount of copy focussed on promoting the list.
The other big benefit of a blog is that it is perfect for growing more readers over time. The more you will attract people back to your site. They’ll eventually start checking your site regularly because they will know that it’s likely to provide information that is useful, interesting or just entertaining.
And if they read your blog enough and they become fully engaged, then eventually they might decide they want to get more information from you. Thus, they might choose to sign up for your mailing list when otherwise they might not have done. You’ve given yourself the time and the space to build interest and trust and this is what has eventually led to people signing up for your list.
To make this work for you then, you need to make sure that you place your opt-in form somewhere prominent alongside your posts.
How to Make it Work for You
To make this work for you then, you need to make sure that you place your opt-in form somewhere prominent alongside your posts. One good tip is to put it in a widget in the sidebar, as this way your readers will see it at all times, even if they skipped the homepage. Likewise, consider adding it to the bottom of your posts. And while you’re at it, make sure you mention it in your content – sometimes the best way to get subscribers is simply to ask!
