Building Your Author Platform with Newsletters

• October 4, 2020
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As an author setting up a newsletter and writing editorials for it was very challenging for me, to the point that I gave up on it. I came to the realization that writing on my blog was more than enough to keep my followers informed on what I was doing, as well on giving them insights on who I was as person. It wasn’t until I decided to establish myself as a publisher that I realized how wrong I was.

Blogs are great! You go into your page, type up something from the heart about your writing or your life and click post. A couple of Tweets and Facebook mentions and you are done. But in my experience if you are just doing this, you are not doing enough to get results on book sales and recruiting followers.  How many times do you consistently visit authors’ blogs and read their entries? Furthermore, for how long do you keep at it? With all the authors I consider my favorites, I can tell you that I very rarely take time to explore websites randomly, never consistently. However, I will most likely explore a newsletter that I find in my inbox which I subscribed to myself.

Just think about it, we check our emails multiple times a day, not just from the computer, but from our phone and tablets as well. If you take this reasoning further, look closely at what people younger than forty and note where do they go when they are on the internet. I can strongly guess that you will find most of their internet interaction is on social media, and emails. So why not complement your blog announcements with an emailed newsletter?

Here are some tips:

• Keep the newsletter short and visual. You want people to get the main message or purpose of your newsletter, so make it attractive. That way they can click to read more on the link if interested.

• Offer content that is useful to your readers. If your reader doesn’t find the content in your newsletter useful, they might unsubscribe. So keep it true to your expertise and research for topics that are applicable to what your readers are interested in.
  
• One of the goals of the newsletter is notifying your fans and customers of special events and sales. Make sure they are short and sweet, but loud and clear.

• Have fun with it and discover your own editorial voice. If you are genuine and let your personality come through in your editorials, your followers will be true to your voice and will enjoy reading your newsletter and keep coming back to your website.

Getting the discipline to consistently send out a newsletter takes time so don’t rush the process to a weekly broadcast. You can begin with a monthly version to work the habit. In the beginning,  it may seem daunting, but as time goes by you will find it enjoyable to the point to scout for editorial topics on everyday happenings! Happy writing!