I’ve said it before – when it comes to getting our message out – we’re all desperate to grab any attention we can get. That’s me, that’s you, that’s everyone. Hey! Pay attention here I’m talking to you! 😉
That’s why I would LOVE it if you shared all my posts with your social networks.
What could be better than that?
The “SUBSCRIBE”!
Confession Time: We’re about to talk about mailing lists, subscriptions, and lead capture – all of which I’ve done a horrible job on here at AreWeConnected. For years I passively managed all that via FeedBurner. I had a simple sign up box on my sidebar where people could enter their emails and automagically when I posted, they would get the post in their inbox. FeedBurner worked like magic.
In case you haven’t heard FeedBurner is probably going away soon. We have to look at alternatives. One of the first things I’ll mention is FeedBlitz. We’ve had Phil Hollows on the show a few times and I am a BIG fan of the service. When it comes to mailing lists, there’s quite a few options out there. MailChimp, aWeber, Constant Contact and yes… even FeedBlitz.
That said, whatever you use – it’s time to start building your mailing list!
The first step is getting them to sign up. That’s either a link or a form. Guess what is better? The one with the fewest steps of course and that’s a form. Right now, I have a call to action button on my sidebar that leads to a form that’s not even on my site. I suck. What I will replace it with is a simple box. Enter your email, click submit and you are subscribed! This works better because you are already on the website, you know what kind of content you’ll be getting, and it’s a simple single box. I’ll work on that (later).
But what happens when the potential subscriber is outside of the website? Let’s talk Facebook. I’ve been building a bunch of mailing list apps in Facebook lately. Some, mailing services allow the page owner to easily create a Facebook App for their page. Sadly, all of them lack the 3 things that app needs.
Increase your form success with these 3 things:
1. Branding. Click on an App in a Facebook Page and most all of the branding for that page is gone. Gone is that fancy cover image. All that’s shown is the small square icon and an abbreviated title of the page. Yes, I know they just clicked from the home page to get there but remember… (hey are you still listening to me?) we’re talking a very very short attention span. Every App should contain some mount of branding. Think of it as a header image for your App.
2. A Simple Box. The simpler the better. Require the smallest amount of information you need. Nobody wants to fill out field after field. All you are doing is asking them to sign up for your posts – you don’t need the name of their 1st born.
3. Tell them what they’ll get. Yet another simple little thing. Tell them what they’ll get in exchange for allowing you to email them. Just a sentence or two. Here’s the content I’ll be sending you, how often – oh and you can unsubscribe at any time – that kind of thing.
And finally #4. Wait! I thought there was only three? Relax, there is only three. See you really are paying attention. Number 4 more of a #doh! And it’s one of my favorite caveats when dealing with Facebook Apps. Make sure your App is secure. More than half the people sign in to Facebook securely these days. You want your app to show to everyone right?
Heres’ the one I built for The Clean Bedroom. Would you like a “proper” mailing list app built specially for you? One that contains all FOUR things?
I’ll be your private Facebook App Developer for only $100. One fee, one time, built right, that’s it. How does that sound?
He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike, sometimes rides a road bike, has a few motorcycles (he had a really fast one, bought a cool orange one, rode a really slow one, and now,a perfect "BDR Weapon"). If that isn't enough, he makes cheese and sourdough bread, loves strong beer and good red wine, and poorly plays the Mandolin.
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