How to shift focus from social media to newsletters and build a loyal, engaged audience
A few years back, every media outlet was obsessing over Facebook and trying to find ways to grow its audience on the most popular social network in the world. Today, the media obsession with Facebook is still here, but it took a different, darker turn. Instead of focusing on audience growth, getting likes on the shared articles, and inviting people to like their pages, almost every media publication out there now is trying to figure out how to escape from the shackles of Facebook and its sluggish News Feed algorithm, which by the way, is desperately trying to imitate TikTok.
I keep running into media outlets with thousands of fans and followers on their Facebook pages. Still, the audience engagement and all other supportive metrics show that the algorithm is not allowing the published content to reach even 10% of those numbers. This is most likely due to the oversharing by pages and other publications, while at the same time, there is declined posting from actual users and personal profiles, which was Facebook’s “bread and butter.”
So, what is the big lesson from the above paragraph?
Own your audience!
With Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and other social media, you are not the owner of the audience; you are merely a “contractor” voluntarily engaged on the social network to primarily increase their profits and stats while you get some breadcrumbs at the same time in the form of traffic or some engagement. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying not to use social networks for your media outlets; do so, but carefully and with strategy. Don’t just go ALL IN. Don’t let Facebook be responsible for 50% of your traffic and then cry in a dark corner when, overnight, they change their algorithm, and your Facebook page with 100,000 fans is barely bringing ten visits to your website. Do NOT be dependent on a platform that you do not control.
How, you ask?
With a NEWSLETTER!
Going Back to the Roots
Email newsletters are nothing new. They exist as long as email exists. The first email was sent in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson, the engineer at a US-based research company BBN. Just 7 years after, along came the first newsletter in May 1978 when Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), used ARPANet, the precursor to the modern internet, to send a promotional campaign for their Virtual Address eXtension (VAX) computers.
If they are such an old tool, why are we obsessing lately with them?
First of all, they work! When you send a targeted email to your reader’s inbox, given that they have allowed you to do so by subscribing to the newsletter, you are reaching the user in a state of mind when he is ready to absorb important information from a well-known source—directly in his email inbox, not on a news feed where there is a mix of serious and funny cats, random boxing fights from the streets, and other clickbait content.
Newsletters are direct and personal
When a user opens his email inbox, his awareness level is at a different state compared to the state of mindless scrolling on social media; on top of that, the provided information is direct and personal (just make sure to use $User reference in the hello greeting of your email). Beside personalising the name, there is also the content personalization – if you’ve done a good job segmenting your newsletter into various categories (ex. Politics, Sports, Business, Cooking) your user has chosen the categories he likes to find more about, therefore receiving tailored and very relevant content.
Tip #1: Segment your newsletter based on your content category. Provide different newsletters, for inspiration, just check what The Economist and The New York Times are doing.
Tip #2: Personalise wherever you can – reference users by first names, provide stats on their reading habits, etc.
Newsletters help you build a better relationship with your readers
When that weekly news recap newsletter arrives every Saturday at the reader’s inbox and gives the reader a digest of the most important news that happened over the week in the world or local area, that consistency helps the reader to trust the media publication even more. The consistent delivery of a high quality newsletter, at the given time also creates loyalty and builds a long-term relationship.
Tip #3: Be consistent with your email newsletter delivery. For each newsletter time, pre-define when it will be sent, and stick to the scheduled times. Let the user know what they will receive and when.
Tip #4: Test your newsletters before sending, make sure they look professional and are not misaligned or with typos.
Delivering the information at the right time
We already mentioned that emails are read with more attention than the distracting social media posts. This provides the perfect opportunity for the reader to take action and read the content, or follow-through on the links you’ve included in the newsletter to the full page articles and additional information or categories.
Tip #5: Provide useful information in the newsletter, but allow readers to be able to find out more content by adding links in the newsletter.
Newsletters can be profitable, too.
If you are hesitant to start a newsletter, thinking it is another waste of time for your resources, just consider the story of Morning Brew. This newsletter-first digital media publication was bought by Insider Inc., the parent company of Business Insider, for a 75 million dollars all-cash deal after bringing in millions per year with its 4 million subscribers.
Newsletters are just another digital product, so they can also be monetized. There is a form of sponsorship (displaying the powered-by logo under the title). You can go with classical advertisement banners within the content, native content advertising, sponsored PR articles, or just go bold with a paid members-only newsletter club.
Tip #6: Consider monetisation and start introducing it at early newsletter stages, same like you are doing with your website.There is no written rule anywhere that newsletters should be free.
You play by your rules with an audience you own
Maybe the most significant selling point I want to make in my comparison of social media vs. newsletters is the one I made in the first paragraphs of this article. Still, it is worth repeating… with newsletters, YOU OWN your audience and your content and can easily switch providers and distribution; in the end, you can even build your tools to deliver your newsletter. You decide when to send, you track direct stats of delivery, you measure click-through rates, and you decide what needs to be changed in the distribution, not the News Feed team at Facebook who suddenly got a message from their board that they need to serve more ads because their ad inventory is reaching maximum state and they need to make more money.
I would encourage you to prioritise newsletters for your publication over social media. Just take it seriously. Don’t just put a subscriber form in your sidebar and hope for the best, but be aggressive and tactical with your subscriber outreach campaign, get people to trust you and sign up for the chosen segment – make many calls to action for people to join, use the prime real estate on your website for sign up banners, and you will see how a simple, old-school newsletter can help you build a long-term relationship with your audience, and if you are good at it, create an additional revenue stream for your organisation.
