The Socialize Podcast

Helen: 00:00

Happy Friday, and welcome to the socialize strategy the Friday edition of the socialize podcast where we take a deep dive into the topic of the week. And I'm excited because this topic has been requested a few times recently from some of our subscribers who are interested in starting their own newsletters. And we decided to take this one on since it related to social media and in particular, it's related now with social media apps being a little frustrating with the algorithm where you're not videos are not being seen necessarily, and also the possibility that apps may be going away, which is really frustrating. And so, therefore, your audience is going with it. So we don't own the social media audience of the app it's on.

Helen: 00:47

However, when you have an email list or newsletter type of thing, you have a way to reach your audience on a regular basic basis that does not depend on an algorithm. So we do recommend if you are serious about what you're doing, if you're trying to build community, promote a business, or even just provide value, a newsletter is a great way to do it. And you can decide a lot of different things about how frequently you wanna do your newsletter and how you want to use it to value to add value to your audience. There's a lot of different ways you can approach it. So we're gonna take on that topic this week.

Helen: 01:24

Where we kick it off, just a reminder on a few things. Number 1, we do have a free editing workshop coming up on April 19th, where we're going to teach stop motion. And this is gonna be a very specific lesson about how to do product videos and different ways that you can be interesting and unique in your product videos. Especially for people who don't wanna have their face in their videos, this is gonna be a nice one. And we will cover if you like to do it with and without your face.

Helen: 01:53

So there'll be a lot covered. It's gonna be a really nice, rich workshop. I'm looking forward to it. So grab that one and sign up, register. It's free so that you're not missing out.

Helen: 02:02

And the second thing is just a reminder that last week, we had a nice fashion discussion with Alicia Lankan. It was so good. If you haven't listened to that episode, so much of what I've learned about style and styling for on camera has been learned from Alicia. She's a stylist I work with on my commercial sets, and she's also now a personal stylist. So she's really, really great with making making bringing out the real you in your style.

Helen: 02:30

So I highly recommend you taking a listen to that episode if you have not listened to it yet. And now let's move on to the topic. And we'll start off with one of the best things you can do as a creator, an influencer, or a small business owner is to start an email list. And it's especially important as we said, that in case the social media app goes away or in case you are frustrated with the algorithm because it's not showing your content to your audience. And these apps get very saturated very quickly, and it can be very frustrating.

Helen: 03:00

So it's a great way to guarantee that you can reach the people who you wanna reach and the people who want to hear from you. It's Primo. But how do you start an email list? So we're gonna give you a few quick tips that we believe you can you can easily implement for your content. First thing to think about is a topic for your newsletter.

Helen: 03:23

And a lot of times the topic is going to be obvious because of your niche or whatever you're doing already in your content. But sometimes it might allude you as to how you can add value through a newsletter that is different. If you're a business owner, a lot of times you're able to send out newsletters about new products. You can send if you're a skin care company. You can send out updates about things you've you're you've just brought into your skin care line, and there's lots of different things you can do.

Helen: 03:50

But when your content is not so driven by product, it might be difficult to think about what your topic should be. So just give give it some time. It it can be the part that can change. And once if you start with one topic, you can slowly evolve. You have to find something that feels natural to you.

Helen: 04:12

And just to to use an example, I mean, you really, it's really helpful to what to think about newsletters that you like to subscribe to already. If you're a newsletter reader, that might give you some ideas right off the bat. But if you're doing content already and for example, when I started doing tutorials, I thought, oh, I'll put it on newsletter and this way my I can make sure my my tutorials are reaching my audience, my core audience who really want to see them. And and what I would do is add some extra value, and that has evolved into a a much more rich up newsletter that we're putting out with a lot more information. But it started out very simply with me sending out an update of something maybe I was featured on.

Helen: 04:53

If it was a a panel that I spoke on, and I would show a clip from it or a workshop I did, and I'd show that. There there are things I just wanted to make sure that my audience wasn't missing. So it was more for them to be able to access my content in a more, I guess, consistent way than what was happening on social media. So think about that. And and a good way to think about it is say, if you had control of every person who was gonna see your videos, which are the key ones you'd wanna share with them?

Helen: 05:23

Because maybe there's something very simple where you can say, every week you're gonna make sure that your audience sees your hottest 3 videos that you put out or the 3 that you really think are going to be helpful to them. And then you can just put links to those 3 TikToks or those 3 Instagram reels, those 3 Facebook reels or YouTube videos, wherever whatever your platform is. It's a nice way to organize for your followers. So you can do it something as do something as simple as that, and that would be a start. Or you can figure out how you'd wanna share something with followers that you are not doing in your content already.

Helen: 05:58

So it's almost like sign up for my newsletter for bonus content. I'm gonna be talking about this or maybe a blog post that you write that you wanna share. So it's a really it's almost like you need to sit back and and really self assess what is it about you that you think is going to be valuable to share in written form, in newsletter form. So that's the first step, and it might be the hardest step, but I think you can do it. The next thing is to, especially if you're new to email in general, is make sure you're subscribing to some newsletters that you can see how they're formatted, get a feel for the type of content, get a feel for how long they are, and how they're arranging it.

Helen: 06:39

Are there are there written articles in big bulk paragraphs? Likely not. Small digestible pieces are much nicer for an audience to read. So if you start seeing how other newsletters are formatted, you will learn very quickly how to format your own. So I highly recommend doing that.

Helen: 06:57

And it's also would also help you understand what information you're interested in. And so think about that, and then you can flip it around. Just like when you watch content and you think, oh, how can I make that my own? The same type of thing. Just kind of putting yourself on the other side of the fence.

Helen: 07:14

Also determine frequency. How often do you want to and realistically can you send out newsletters? It's much more time consuming than you think. It's like sitting down. Sometimes I will take hours to prepare a newsletter, and Julie and I write them together.

Helen: 07:30

So she'll do her part. And then I just get so in deep. And so time will go very quickly. It's just like when you're scrolling and the hours pass. Time goes faster when you're trying to write something, and then you're rewriting it, and then you're reformatting it, and you can't figure out how to get the little Giphy in there or you're trying to change the font.

Helen: 07:49

There's it takes time. It takes time. So I emphasize this because that will determine if you right away start off where it's not attainable, not achievable, you're going to give up much quicker. So think about what is a reasonable amount and how often you think you can realistically write a newsletter that would have value to your audience. Does not have to be once a week.

Helen: 08:09

It does not even have to be once a month. Time flies fast. If if I don't see a newsletter from someone for 2 months that I wouldn't even miss it. I would be like, oh, maybe they've took taken a vacation or something. I wouldn't even think about it.

Helen: 08:21

I'd just be great when I saw it again. So don't be thinking, oh, everybody's sitting there waiting for my next news letter. I better make sure I get them out once a week or something. If that's not attainable or achievable for you, don't don't try and do that. Don't put that kind of pressure on yourself.

Helen: 08:36

Tranquilo. That's what my Spanish teacher says all the time. Tranquilo. When I get upset that I'm not learning fast enough. So take your time.

Helen: 08:44

The next one is to pick a platform. You need to decide where you're going to send your newsletters from. And Julie and I have experienced now in the newsletter land, and we have used Mailchimp before. And we have landed on Beehive, and we really like Beehive. There is so much value to be gained from being in a platform like Beehive.

Helen: 09:02

So they're actually sponsoring this newsletter. But if they weren't sponsoring it, I'd still be telling you about Beehive because it's the one we use. It's the one we like. It is user friendly, makes it nice and easy and efficient. It's got great analytics.

Helen: 09:15

There's a lot to it. So that's why we we really like it. In our newsletter platform, there's also monetization opportunities. So if that's something you think you might be interested in in monetizing your newsletter, It's a great platform for getting started on that. I mean, it's slow monetization.

Helen: 09:31

We're not, you know, it's it's a very slow growth plot process. But so we're not promising you the world, but we're saying that the opportunities are there. So if it's something you're interested in, consider behind as your newsletter platform. And you'll wanna think about what you want to learn from your newsletter. Because right off the bat, I can tell you it was difficult that we started a newsletter, and we had very few we had very no barrier for entry.

Helen: 09:56

So it was just like a subscribe and sign up, and we never thought to have even a survey. So we had a we had to go back and do a survey to figure out who our existing viewers and subscribers are. So think about that kind of thing up front. Do you want to learn about your audience right off the bat? What things can you put in place to learn who they are as they're signing up?

Helen: 10:17

And I will say you don't wanna put a barrier where they have to answer 5 questions before they sign up because it'll slow your growth. But you can have an option after they subscribe. Can you please answer these few questions? And some people will. So that's something to think about.

Helen: 10:30

Just a little bonus tip. Okay. Then the final part of deciding and tackling a newsletter is the promotion. It is the hardest part of anything that you're doing. Any business, it's people find business super easy.

Helen: 10:47

They're gonna make their products. They figure out all the logistics, the back end, how to ship, and all these things can be figured out. But hello, it comes to down to promoting yourself and promoting your business. And it's the same thing with the newsletter. You've gotta figure out what is your strategy for promoting it.

Helen: 11:03

How are you going to get the word out without sounding salesy? How are you going to convince people that this really is something that they don't have to pay for necessarily? So it's challenging. I've noticed one thing. A lot of people, when they hear something is free, they don't believe it because we're so programmed to know that free is a little hook in for someone trying to sell you something.

Helen: 11:27

So I find this one of one of the greatest struggles that I'm personally having with with growth is I think people don't really believe that it's for free. I can't believe it, but it's true. But it's because so many people are out there. I don't wanna say scamming us, but trying to convince us, yeah, this is free. And the next thing you know, you know, we're in we're in a sales pitch.

Helen: 11:47

And that's just the nature of how how business owners can grow their business. And that's just a reality. So it's not a bad thing if you decide you wanna start a newsletter and eventually you wanna figure out how to promote things in it. Of course, we should all be doing that. We shouldn't all be working here for free.

Helen: 12:04

But it becomes challenging to get people to just accept the free part because they always think there's something else that you're gonna try and put into them, into their face. So it's it is not as easy as it seems like, oh, I'm just going to put a newsletter. I'm going to have tons of people signing up. Hell, no. That's not what's going to happen.

Helen: 12:23

So don't set yourself up for that because you're setting yourself up for disappointment. The the way to look at it is, who can I help? How can I help them? And how how can I convince them that I'm really here to help them or provide this information? So it's a there's a lot of parts to growing a newsletter and starting an email list.

Helen: 12:44

But if you think about it along the lines of how you wanna create a little community, and what are you going to provide to your community? How are you going to add value to your community? And think of it as a friend group. What are you sending to your friends? What do they want to know?

Helen: 12:59

What are you going to keep keep in touch with them about? And did you approach it from that manner, it does become a little more achievable, it becomes easier for your own your own self to keep up with because you don't have the pressure of you have to sell something in it or you have to have this promotion lined up or you've got to have a sponsorship lined up. Take it slow. Espacio. The theme today is Spanish because I'm really trying to practice my Spanish.

Helen: 13:29

But take it easy. Give yourself grace. Don't think it has to happen overnight but start because starting is the hardest part once you get over that hump have something in place and you've got it started it'll get its own momentum. And depending on the people who are reading it, if they like it, they'll share it. If you are adding value to them, they may pass it along to friends and say, oh, you should really be getting this newsletter because it's really, really helpful.

Helen: 13:54

So that's that's just some food for thought on how to start thinking about this idea of creating your own audience that you own. And it is not easy. I wanna say it to you plainly. It is not easy. It's the percentages very low that of the people that you are gonna convert from social media over to your newsletter.

Helen: 14:18

But baby steps get you moving forward. And if you don't start, you're not gonna have any subscribers. So if you start, you'll have some subscribers. You just gotta look at it in that way. You have to really take the pressure off yourself and decide you just want to do it because it's going to help somebody or you just want to do it because you want to get this ball in motion and see where it takes you.

Helen: 14:40

There's no, there's no permanence about it. You can at any time stop sending out newsletters. There's no pressure. It's the only the only pressure you have is the pressure that you put on yourself. So give that some thought and let us know.

Helen: 14:56

You can hit reply to the newsletter or drop a comment here in the podcast platform and let us know if you're going to try it. And if you have questions about it, we're going to do follow ups where we talk about how to, feed people into your newsletter using different types of I hate the word lead magnet, but that's really what it is. It's where you're offering something and then with that, you have to put the person has to put in an email so that you can begin to generate an email list that way. So there's lots of different strategies. I'm sure you've been you've known them from the the user side.

Helen: 15:29

So you probably can think now, oh, I'm going to identify these moments. I'm going to pay attention to times where I'm asked to put my email in and see what those times are that you're putting your email in and take note of it because it's something that you can then switch around and use it for yourself to build your list. With that, I'm going to leave you to have a wonderful weekend and wishing you all the best for a nice happy weekend. We hope we have some great weather wherever you are, and I hope I have it wherever I'm going. And, reminder that if you just landed here from a podcast that if you subscribe to the newsletter, hellosocialize.com, and you put in your email and subscribe to the newsletter, you will get a twice weekly update.

Helen: 16:12

On Tuesday, you'll get trends and content ideas. Fridays, you get a deep dive into a strategy, and you get all the links of things that I've talked about in the newsletters. And that's, that's a wrap for today. Have a great week. You know, I love being here and have a great weekend.

Helen: 16:27

You know, I love being here. And I, I hate to say goodbye apparently because they can't stop talking. And for the people who stay to the end, you're always gonna get a little bonus nonsense at the end. Bye.