Monthly-ish Update: How It’s Going – Month 6

It’s time for another update on this ongoing newsletter project.

Considering it’s been 4 months since my last update, it’s definitely time.

To be fair, I did say it would be monthly-ish. However, it has been 6 months since I started the Email Marketing Ecosystem newsletter and I can honestly say that the slow but steady progress has continued.

If you’re new here, hello and welcome. I write these updates periodically to give you a back-stage view of how I’m building my own email marketing ecosystem. You’re welcome to follow along and do this yourself, or contact me about building one for you.

What I’ve Been Doing

I have continued to write one newsletter issue a week for the last 18 weeks. This week’s issue is #28, so I’ve been at this for a total of 6 months.

Each issue has continued to be long-form, between 1200 and 1800 words. Every once in a while, I’ve written a bit more, or a bit less, but that’s the average.

Every issue has been its own entity, based entirely on what I’m writing about that week. Sometimes they are very business focused. I usually write about issues with using AI for your marketing, or about why email marketing is still the best marketing channel and how to use it to your advantage.

Every once in a while, I’ve shared a very personal story. For example, I recently lost one of my cats. My mother was in the ER a couple of weeks ago.

I share these stories because I feel it’s important that you know I’m another human being, going through the same day-to-day life issues that you are. I also feel that we should all share these stories with our subscribers, for the same reason. I hope you model that if you are writing to your email subscribers regularly.

My newsletter goes out to my email subscribers every Thursday afternoon. (If you want to be on that list, go here.)

The following Tuesday, I take this newsletter and post it on:

• My website (under the heading “Newsletter”)
• LinkedIn (as a newsletter)
• Medium
• Substack

My goal is to put this content out there where more people can see it. (Case in point, you are reading it right now.)

Promoting My Newsletter to the World

I have admitted that I hate social media. It’s a time suck and it regularly sucks me in. However, I still use it, just like everyone else. Especially when it comes to promoting this newsletter.

I’ve been better about posting regularly on all 4 of my current channels and they have all seen an uptick in visibility.

LinkedIn:

I typically post 4 times a week about that week’s newsletter issue and another 2-3 times with some sort of thought leadership or entertaining/personal post.

My LinkedIn posts are getting seen more often, and they’re getting more engagement.

The number of people who are seeing my posts has also increased dramatically, so the regular posting is working in terms of getting more exposure.

Facebook:

Now that I’m posting regularly on Facebook, I definitely see an uptick in views and engagement.

Again, like LinkedIn, I am posting 4 times a week specifically about the newsletter and 2-3 times with thought leader or fun, entertaining stuff. I have also started asking questions. Mostly this is because I want to hear what people have to say. But it does help with engagement too.

I was part of a challenge in March to post every single day on my business page, all month. I think I missed 3 days total. I can say it did a lot in terms of boosting my visibility.

I will try to keep up with this as much as possible. But I am human. I will probably miss a few days here and there.

Instagram:

As I have reported before, I am NOT an Instagram person. I don’t use it as an end user. I do post there as often as my other two platforms.

Since my last report, I have increased my number of followers (for whatever that’s worth these days) and I have also increased my views, at least over the last 90 days. (I couldn’t change the reporting to a custom view for the screenshot below.)

With all 3 social media platforms, I know I’m reaching more people because of the algorithms. I am also seeing more engagement overall, which is good news.

The Publishing Platforms

My Website

My views and visitors are up overall here too. The social media posts are doing their job, driving people to the website. Facebook seems to be the most prevalent, in terms of referring traffic, followed by the search engines.

I’ve been adding more AEO or Answer Engine Optimization oriented copy to my website, so that should be helping as well.

I am building my email list because of this newsletter, which is the intention of this entire project.

LinkedIn Newsletter:

I have increased my LinkedIn Newsletter subscriber list from 135 as of my last report to 168 as of today. Growth is slowing on that front. However impressions, engagements, and article views are all up, which means people are seeing, engaging with and reading my content, which is the point of publishing here.

I’ve also noticed a lot more people are looking at my profile. I just updated my profile, so I hope to get even more people looking at and engaging with it due to those updates.

Medium:

I’ll be completely honest, I haven’t been promoting my newsletter here at all, just posting it every week, so there isn’t a ton to report. My newsletter is presented to readers a few times each week. A few people view it and one or two read it.

I need to spend some time getting more exposure on Medium to make it worth continuing to post here.

However, the fact that it is getting presented and viewed occasionally is nice, considering how little effort I put into this site.

Substack:

I am happy to report that I am up to a whopping 7 followers and 5 subscribers (one of whom is me) on Substack, since I started publishing here.

That being said, my newsletters are getting seen a lot more, so I’m doing something right.

I have been posting Notes on Substack more regularly, which means people are finding my newsletter. I think that is contributing to my little bit of growth here.

Again, I haven’t put in a ton of effort, so I’m not surprised at the results.

My Plans for the Next Month (or Whenever I Report Next)

I will continue to post regularly on social media and change up what I am posting to get more visibility, especially for the people I am looking to attract:

Small business owners with email lists who want to write regularly to increase engagement and sales

Conscious businesses interested in improving their email marketing.

BTW, if this is you, I’d love to talk with you to see how I can help. Please schedule a free consultation at your convenience here.

That includes you just picking my brain a bit for ideas if you’d like to.

I’ll also put more effort into Substack and Medium, probably focusing more on Substack, as that is a more popular platform these days.

In addition, I am revamping my website, so I’ll give you more updates on that as it progresses.

That’s the latest Monthly-ish Update on how my Email Marketing Ecosystem is growing.

I hope you’re enjoying all of these issues, whether they’re business related, updates, or personal stories.

Finally, today’s picture is my Black Cat Clowder. They all posed so nicely. How could I resist?

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