Yesterday, I received an email with an opportunity to be average!
You can imagine how underwhelmed I was when I read this:
I was looking at your latest email newsletter, which I found on Twitter. I recently developed a free tool that I think can help you increase engagement in your email newsletter.
For example, I noticed your newsletter had 1 link, while the average newsletter has 31.4.
The problem isn’t that I received the email, but that people are falling for it. They are trying the free tools that aren’t free. They are spending time, energy and money learning how to send average newsletters with an average number of links and then spending even more time asking the wrong questions.
- What is the best time to send a newsletter?
- Where is the best place to include a link in a tweet?
- How many times should I post on Facebook in one day?
Ask different questions. Focus on what matters. Don’t be average.
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to receive future posts via email and connect with me on Twitter.
I think that it’s necessary to pay some attention to these sorts of things, but the amount required is really minimal. For example, I know that if I want to ever get by blog off the ground, the optimal posting schedule is “regularly” and “more often than I am now.”
I think there’s a tendency, especially among new bloggers, to focus on these sorts of things because it’s something you can do: You can’t go grab readers by the scruff of the neck and drag them in, but you can try to “optimize” your site to pull them in. And people have noticed this tendency and found ways to make money from it. (I’m not going to necessarily say these people are “bad” or “unscrupulous,” but if the shoe fits…)
Ultimately, once you’ve done the minimal amount of scheduling that’s required to demonstrate that your blog is an ongoing thing, you live or die by your content, as well as by some degree of luck. And I think that’s really hard for some people to accept.
This was just excellent Courtney! If there is one thing to take away from you here, on the article you linked to and from our Goodblog project is to engage, engage, engage! And send out content worthy of reading! I am working toward that and very excited!
Thanks for the reminder, Courtney! I was just at work today and having this discussion with some colleagues. Content (and engagement) is king. It’s time to break away from being average and focus on what really matters. Thank you!
Short, sweet, simple, thoughtful.
Great post!