I get it. You read somewhere that you need to post on your blog regularly to keep your subscribers engaged. But are you aware if you're posting WAY too much?
Regularly means on a predictable schedule. Not every time you have a burst of blogging inspiration.
When visitors subscribed to your blog, they gave you access to their Inbox. It's a privilege that bloggers need to respect and remember. That email address was entrusted to you... it's not a license to be spammy. Your subscriber gave you permission to whisper in his/her ear... directly. It didn't say you can yak nonstop when you felt like it.
Even seasoned bloggers commit this blogging misconduct, especially when they're running a campaign. I've subscribed to some of them because they do offer useful content. But when they became too chatty for comfort.... I unsubscribed. It's so simple to do. Just click that unsubscribe link or tag it as spam and the yakking stops. Is this what we want as bloggers? I don't think so. Subscribers are valuable... we do so much to entice them to join our mailing list and they should be handled with care.
You can post to your blog everyday if you want, but don't send to your mailing list daily. You can configure your email service to send only on a specified schedule.
- 1 update Daily (still too spammy for me)
- A Weekly Newsletter with a summary of your latest articles
- A Monthly Newsletter
Oh wait.... are you even aware that every time you published a new or updated post, it was sent to your mailing list? If your RSS Feed is connected to your email service, that's what happens. Like how my RSS Feed is connected to Twitter. So, every time I published something on my blog, it sends a tweet. Turn the feature off or define a schedule. You can do this on Mail Chimp, Feedburner, Aweber - depending on what you use.
What prompted this post is the fact that I received multiple emails from a blog I was subscribed to in the last 2 days. I don't enjoy being an audience to someone experiencing brain gas. (Sorry!) That's what it felt like. So... it will now go to the SPAM folder moving forward. Eloquence in blogging is not conveyed this way. It's called spamming.
I've turned off my broadcast option on Mail Chimp and Feedburner. I hid my RSS Feed subscribe option on my blog.... cause sometimes, I tweak the articles on my website... sometimes, I also have brain gas and I want to avoid unintentionally spamming my subscribers during those times. I send out a scheduled Newsletter through Mail Chimp instead. No accidents can happen that will cause the loss of my hard earned subscribers. If they leave me, it won't be due to spamming. They simply don't love me anymore.
Give your subscribers the option to read what they like from your blog, when they want to. Offer them your blog for their reading pleasure, so they don't forget all about you... but don't shove it in their faces. Your mailing list is not Twitter. You'll lose your audience if you continue with this practice.
Here's some helpful articles on scheduling the emails of your blog posts:
Subscribe to your own blog so you can track what's being sent to your list.
Be Nice. Don't Spam.
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