Category: WebsitesCategory: Websites

Taylor Swift controls all her music, and she even controlled the news, driving zillions of people away from social media to her website with a post saying “Letter on my site.”

No, you’re probably not as big as Taylor Swift. But will you get to her level faster playing the same social media lottery with everyone else?

What if you spent hours every day practicing? Honing your skills? Connecting not with legions of people but a few good ones?

Sure, social media can help you find an audience. But a website with a newsletter sign up form can help you keep one.

 

Lex Roman talks about wanting to write more, and how you can’t exactly always do that with a newsletter. Something written generally… gets sent out, and you don’t want to send multiple emails per day (or per week, maybe) to your readers.

Plus, it gives your work a home. Your newsletter generally isn’t your permanent address, it’s the delivery truck that transports your readers to the places you want to take them.

(link via Alex Dobrenko)

From Dan Blank, in “10 things I wish every writer knew about marketing.”

“What if instead of redesigning your website, you reached out to one person each day for three months? Where your goal was a meaningful conversation, a generous act, or a thoughtful reply.

I have seen writers not only learn so much in this process, but create wonderful connections and opportunities. Besides, wouldn’t it be nice to spend your days talking with people who love to read?”

I say do a little of both, but with a twist.

Let’s stop redesigning our websites, or rather, let’s just strip them to the bones and get back to the writing. I’ve had enough of the Squarespacification of what a website should be.

The blog format has endured because it works. One of the most popular websites in the world uses the blog format. Just a photo, followed by a block of text. Then another photo, with a block of text.

It’s called Instagram. Look it up.

Magazines, newspaper articles… photo, then text. Photo, then text.

THEN… then share some of those posts with people from time to time. That doesn’t mean blast it to “everyone” on social media. Instead, send one link to a person from time to time.

“Here, I wrote this is a bit ago and was thinking of you…”
“Hey, remember that time we did this thing?”
“I know you’ve been struggling with X, and I just wrote something about that.”

Our website is the library in our cozy cottage in the woods – not everyone visits, but for the right people it’ll feel like home.

One of the biggest things I push is to backup your work on your own site, which means if you write on Substack, your work should be duplicated on your own site, which led to this question:

Q. Hi, I read something yesterday about search engines getting confused if you have the same article in two places. I’ve been copying my substack pieces across to an old blog but now am wondering… what do you think?

A. SEO advice is avoid duplicate content, as it upsets the algorithm. But I don’t work for the algorithm, I work for me, and serve my readers / subscribers first. If it means less random traffic from search engines im fine with that. My hope is that work is good enough that some of readers might tell a friend about it, which I find much more valuable.

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.”