UPDATE YOUR WEBSITE THEN TELL PEOPLE WITH YOUR DELIVERY TRUCK

I’ve said recently “your newsletter isn’t your permanent address, it’s a delivery truck.”

It’s tempting to build on a platform, but as we know platforms come and go. They can lock you out. Lose your data. Shut down in the middle of the night.

I recently hosted a “let’s work on our websites together” virtual co-working session (next one is Tuesday, May 20 – it’s free, but RSVP here). We’re updating our bios, moving stuff around, setting up Now pages.

We’re re-using the videos we posted on Instagram (that 95% of our audience never saw), and putting them on our sales pages. We’re making videos that inform and build trust, and putting them next to our BUY NOW buttons.

Videos on our website recreate that vibe of the friendly shop owner who says hello when you walk in. Embedding voice notes to our About page lets the internet traveler know a bit more about who you are.

With our own website, our own zine, our own videos, our own voice – we get to fully show up as who we are, instead of twisting and contorting ourselves onto social media platforms, trying to fit in and appease algorithms.

It’ll take a minute to get people at large to return to websites. Lots of people are happy to just scroll on social media all day, and that’s fine. Maybe they’re not your people.

But if you’ve got a dozen people on your email list, you can send them a newsletter and tell them about the great new exciting work you’ve got on your website.

Because writing on your own site a few times a week isn’t all that different than posting seven times a day on multiple social media platforms. You’re just focusing your energy on your platform instead of someone else’s.

And when you’re constantly putting work on your website, when you sit down to write a newsletter once a week you’ll have no problem thinking about what to send, because you already wrote it.

You’ve already made the meal, now you just need to serve it to people who gave you their email address and said, “yes, let me know what you’re working on from time to time.”