How to Grow Your Blog: Part 1 – Newsletter Setup

Following up on my ‘How to Start a Blog’ three part series, it’s now time to talk about how you can take your blog to the next level! There are many resources and tips available from ShareASale about maintaining your blog, but I want to discuss three main components that can help you grow your blog.

This three part series will begin with setting up a newsletter. Next, we will discuss popular blogger plug-ins, and we’ll end with different strategies to monetizing your blog. I hope you’re ready to take your blog to the next level!

Setting up a Newsletter

You may think you’re not ready to set up a newsletter, but the sooner you can, the better! No matter if your blog does not have a ton of traffic just yet, there is never a better time to learn how to use newsletter platforms and connect with your audience.

Newsletters have many benefits, including:

• Reminding people to continue checking into your blog and most recent posts
• Allowing you to have a more personal interaction with your followers
• Capturing your audience and persuading them to take an action
• Helping to develop loyalty and trust
• Helping you determine what your readers are truly interested in
• Most importantly, allowing Affiliate links to monetize your content

What do I need?

You are going to need a couple things in order to successfully set up a newsletter. First, you will need a plug-in or service to capture your newsletter sign-ups, and then a platform to create and send the newsletters.

When looking for tools to help build an email marketing list, the service that I found to be both straight forward and user-friendly is the WP Email Capture. Not only is it free, but it gets the job done. You can set up an auto-respond email when the user signs up to your site and use it directly with platforms like Mailchimp or Aweber. 

ShareASale Merchant NinjaForms is another good option to create newsletter signup forms. They integrate with Mailchimp, as well, and provide easy instructions directly on their website!

Also check out ShareASale Merchant OptInMonster, which is a service that provides tools to help grow your email subscribers and increase conversion rates.

MailChimp

What is MailChimp? It is a widely popular newsletter platform that offers brilliant features, such as numerous, customizable templates, A/B testing, reports, mobile options, and more! The service allows you to make attractive newsletters, even if you’re not the most skilled in HTML or graphic design. Their platform is also easy to navigate and user-friendly. I highly recommend MailChimp for your newsletter purposes! 

Keeping in touch with your loyal following is a key step in growing your blog. It’s never too early to familiarize yourself with newsletter forms and services. So, start learning now and you’ll thank yourself later! Stay tuned for Part 2 of ‘How to Grow Your Blog’ where we will discuss popular plugins.