Lessons

Lesson Info

Blacklists, Ethics, Consistency and Feedback

The next tip is to keep it clean and what what we're talking about here is how to stay out of spam filters how to not get blacklisted, how to keep things on the up enough totally ethical and you know just relevant to your readers so some specific tips on that is I recommend using a double often what that means is when somebody goes to your website uh and they enter their email address into your little sign up box then you click subscriber or join or whatever you're called action is and then typically you get another email sent to your in box that says please confirm right we've all gone through this process and then you confirm and then you're in and if you don't confirm you're not in that's called a double opt in process it's to opt ins basically you go to the website you entry email address you opt in there then they send you a confirmation and you often again you confirm why would we want to do this? Why would we want to have to opt ins? You make sure that they're they're on board w...

ith u verse is uh I'm interested sort of want to make sure good absolutely and that they're checking that email and it's arriving in their in box what else makes sure there's a really mail address? Make sure it's really a melon dress anything else so what if I take joe bob's email and I go? I really want him to be on my email list and I go toe goings writer dot com and I just put it in there and I click subscribe if I don't have a double often set up what happens, I just subscribe somebody to my list or somebody else's list without that person giving permission so a double often is a great way to protect from the wrong people you know, getting on a list where they didn't ask for it because anybody has your email address, your mom could go so I really want him to get get this get these tips and people sometimes do that you know, people do funny things, so this is a great way to basically confirmed okay, you really did ask for this, you know, because as you mentioned for sometimes he will go I don't remember this. So the double often is make really, really sure that you really, really want thes e mails and it's a safeguard to protect the reader from not getting on a list that they didn't ask to be on. And so some email services like male chimp require a double opt in others make it optional I recommend that you take that option because it's going to safeguard you from getting people that didn't ask to be on your list on your list and you don't want that. I mean, the downside to a double often is some people will sign up, and they won't ever confirm this is the downside, so there is a little bit of risk, the upside to it is the people that are on it really, really want to be on it, and they actually read their email because they confirmed the email, so you're going to have maybe not as big of a list, but, um, or engaged list and, well, I mean, you know, they're going to be they're going to be engaged, and so ah, double opt in is essential, teo, you know, creating that engagement from the get go and we don't want is you don't want somebody who got through on the list or accidentally entered something he didn't know they're setting up for an email is because there wasn't that second confirmation, and now the senate now thereon subscribing, others say I never signed up for this. You get enough of those you blacklisted because you're creating this reputation that I or somebody is putting e mails on this list, and they're not asking to be on it. And so you become a spammer, sending lots of unsolicited messages to people, and you didn't mean to you just have the single opt in. But they weren't confirming it, and they were either forgetting that they signed up for it or somebody else's signing them up for it. Terry, to joe question, you're going back to the case where you're transferring email addresses from your blawg into male champ, you're just starting to build your list. Those people are going to get the opt in that confirmation email even when you put it in your own list or is that only when they subscribe not a few important that them so if you have already, who have already gotten people on your list and every every platform is a little bit different, but if you have gone from a single opt in to a double opt in, then there is some question about whether or not they will accept those messages being imported because they're going to be flagged as this was a single opted not a double, often and certain platforms like a weber will not take email addresses that haven't haven't had a double often, but we're talking about is I've got this list of people, and I just want it. I've already gotten permission to communicate with them, and I just want to import them when you import them in a male chimp, they will not get a confirmation because they've already given you permission to communicate with them now that's a great question, because some of you are going to be moving from one system to another and and some of you already have done that some of you online have done that so you have a choice with your auto responded when you set this up, especially with male gym where you say I've got a thousand people that were on feed burner I'm going to import them into male chimp and I've got an auto responders set up of, you know, four messages messages that people are going to get the first four weeks do I want people that I'm importing in soo my newsletter list to get those messages that's up to you but that's a check box that you can say you know yes yes to import or just two new subscribes that really depends on your list if you've had a list of a thousand people that have been falling, you're blogged for years and all of a sudden you've got these orient you've got this auto responder orientation serious of messages it might not make sense, teo, you know have the auto responder go out to imports, but if you've had this list of people on another database and it's kind of been a dead list and you wantto kind of reinvigorated and get that list healthy again, then it might be good to, you know, send out the auto responder to imports ok makes sense so use a double opt in you're gonna stay out of spam filters more you're going toe, you know make people happier and you'll have more engaged readers avoid importing emails we just talked about important e mails this is not something that you want to get into the habit of doing unless you just have explicit explicit permission two reasons for that is one it's messy I just mentioned about, you know, using auto responders and doing that sort of thing you've got choices to make and they're arbitrary choices depending on where these people came from there's nothing you know incredibly wrong about it it's just kind of messy, thie other reason that importing is not a great idea and it should be avoided if possible is how much permission people have given you is questionable because they're just lots of scenarios and we talked about this already if somebody sees your band at a concert and they write down their name teo, you know, win a free t shirt because you did some sort of raffle there, but now you have this email address on a notebook and you take this back and you walk out of these email addresses we should put him in our newsletter list, but if they didn't explicitly asked for that, then you don't really have, you know the right to drop them into your email list so the best way I think to build an email list it's not tow import from this place over here it's to earn their attention by sending them clearly to your website so they know that they went there have a clear promise have some bait tio really incentivize them put them in, you know have a little place to capture their information have them opt into you know what their email then senate confirmation message to their inbox and have them them confirmed there just a lot of steps that they have to go through so that when they're in they go oh yeah, I remember that as opposed to I signed up for your updates at a random coffee shop three months ago because who knows when you're going to import those names and how much time is going to be between those we want engaged readers? We also want a big list want a healthy list and that means engaged readers who remember signing up and are responding and falling along with each message that we're sending I hope this is is, you know, self explanatory and I should go without saying but don't buy lists you know don't pay money for information to market to people and I know that you guys get that a lot of you are nodding this was, you know, very commonplace in the marketing world even a decade ago you go buy a big list of a hundred thousand or a million people he been kind of point one percent conversion right you'd pummel that list and then you go buy another one and there's still people who do that and that is really questionable borderline illegal you know there's an act that came out number of years ago called the can spam act on it's basically about this this idea of you need to get explicit permission from the person you're delivering content to and at any time they need to be ableto have the ability to opt out and you may have forgotten this let's think back to you know the early days of the internet when you would randomly get a marketing message from somebody and spam filters are pretty smart nowadays I don't get a lot of spamming messages unless I go to my spam filter but remember when you get like a newsletter from someplace that you had no idea what it wass and for a while that worked that's because at some point your email list was listed somewhere and some company sold that to a marketing company or a publicity company or you know somebody some department somewhere and they said ok, we're going we're going to pay a one hundred thousand dollars for this and we're gonna slam this and we're going to make a hundred thousand dollars off of it we're going to keep doing this all day long you know, and if they made one dollars, more than they spent, then they could do that forever and, you know, do that into infinity and make a profit, and so a lot of people did that now the loss as that's, not a good way to do it, and I could tell you from experience ethics aside, it's not practical, it won't work, and and it won't work nearly as good as slowly building a permission asset that builds a tribe of dedicated followers who want to hear from you, even when it does sometimes work. When the numbers just work. The problem with buying lists is there is this law of diminishing returns that happens, a violist, you know, there's one hundred thousand people on it, I get a thousand people or one hundred, people to take action, and then I kind of burn that list out and, you know, because nobody asked to be on this list, I keep pummeling them, and the engagement keeps going down because they didn't ask to be on it now contrast that with a list of one hundred people or five hundred people where every time I send them a message, I'm earning a little bit more trust earning a little bit more respect, and I'm giving something of value to them over time, the value of that list grows, they tell their friends about it, the numbers grow, the trust that they haven't mean grows the amount that they're willing to pay me for a service or product tends to grow. Where is this list? Over here? I burned that out. I got to go find another one. And so this is a smarter long term strategy, too, building out the marketing for your company, your brand, whatever it is that you're trying to sell or share one, compounds and value over time, the other quickly diminishes, so don't buy lists, so when you're keeping your list healthy, there are some trigger words and there's a lot of them. I didn't list all of them here, and you would do well to google a list of trigger words for spam filters, but there are some words, and especially when they're associated with anchor tax remember anger text is that clickable piece of text where you have embedded a u r l, a website address into a certain piece of text. There are some trigger words that when these appear in a new email in the message of an email or, you know, even in the the subject line that's, some spam filters and everybody spam filter is is different depending on, you know, the email software that they're using. It will immediately send them to a spam filter and so it's not just your address it's not just your reputation as a content provider that will get flagged but that will happen too if lots of people say oh he's spanning me I didn't I didn't ask to get this or you know she must have you know what my email address or I never signed up for this? Um that'll get your get your address flagged but what will get each individual message flagged is words like this easy free click here by now really free click here you want to avoid those I mean you'll notice if any of you are on my email list for those of you who have signed up over the course of this course, I know some people have done that whenever I send out a message and I'm telling people I really want you to go here wants to come see this course than teaching online instead of saying it's free uh I'll say something like no charge doesn't cost you a dime you know those kinds of things because free has become this overused way to grab people's attention and it will occasionally get flagged by spam filters. I wish I knew the science too because some emails kind of creep on by and other emails wind up of people's spam filters but as you're sending out messages this is a great way tio this is great opportunity look, your metrics so as you're sending out messages, if you notice that a certain message that when I had a really low open rate or didn't have, you know, a great click through rate, and you expect expected it to do really well, you shared a little bit about that, jessica, and it didn't want to go back and look at what did we do wrong? You know, and one of the things that you may have done wrong is you may have you some of these trigger words or you just in right content that was relevant, but sometimes when you write something that's, killer and like people really should have responded, sometimes the answer is it wound up in people's spam filters and with lots of email services, there is usually a service to check with. The spam score is a weber has a great one of these, where it will tell you a certain spam score, and a weber has one of talked a lot about male chimp today where there is a great service to I know, some people have asked in the chats about whether or not to use a weber male chimp constant contact infusion soft, I think, a weber male chimp or are some of the best sources? That I've used on a weber has a very high reputation in the industry for a high delivery rate where it actually gets into your inbox and one of the reason reasons for that is they have this little score where they're going to test the message of your body and they're gonna look for certain key words and if you have an abundance of those and I think it's like a score of five and I don't know exactly how it's calculated but if you have a five or more it like won't send your message so you'll have to change the message because they've got a reputation in the industry for having the highest delivery rape there's also some things that you could do in militant they have some resource is about how to write smart subject lines how'd I stay out of spam filters and how to use thie inbox inspection to make sure everything is is this clean as it could be so that people are going to get the message that you want to send the hardest, most depressing part of email marketing is that a lot of the messages that you sand won't get to your reader because of filters like this and so you've got to kind of do some gymnastics just tow share your message in a way that it actually gets the person because because frankly, you know people abuse the system for years and bought and sold lists and grab people's email lists and so now there are a lot of boundaries around protecting readers and subscribers from spam and you've got to understand how that works actually get your message to the person that asked to receive it and this would probably be a good time to talk about filters and gmail. So a question that I get sometimes is, you know, how do you get your message into a person's inbox? And if you have an email newsletter, there is a change that was made recently with anybody uses female in a lot of people used female it's, a free email service offered by google and what happens just a few months ago, I think is ah, gmail had always had this tabbing system, but they created kind of this automatic switch for people who were sending out mass email newsletters to individuals where all of the sudden it wouldn't arrive in a person's inbox it would go to a new tab that said it was called promotions and so all of a sudden you know, you you have twenty thousand people on your email list, maybe two thousand actually getting in their inbox now and the rest it's going to this promotions so I bring that up because right now you know, that's an issue and a year from now there will be something else the technology is always changing but the short answer to how to avoid that is to one educate your readers on how to as soon as they get that first message you say even on your web site even before they get the email you say ok, now you just signed up for my my email newsletter we're going to need to go team up for using gmail and pull it out of there a great example of website that's making that very prominent that realize a lot of their users are using gmail is I mentioned it earlier on the course's daily lit dot com if you go to daily lit dot com this will remind you is just a web site where you get free, you know, backlist classics fiction books delivered to your email address there's a big fat you know, email opt in box on the home page and there's actually a little uh link that says ok, gmail users click here to find out how to actually get these messages in your in box instead of having to go to the promotions tab and all it does is it sends you straight to google where google walks you through how this works and how uh, gmail user can move a promotional email into you know their in box so the two ways to overcome that is to educate your readers on on how to anticipate that and the other way to do it is to just, you know, share what what google has has made readily available. You can google about, you know, gmail filters and getting out of promotions tab, and they've got resource is on their home page, by the way, for those of you are watching, we've included a link to that in the workbook. So if you've got questions about that about delivering stuff, tio content to gmail users and you don't want it to end up out of their inbox, there's just a link to that google article that I'll tell you how to do that. So any questions about that about staying out of spam filters? We've got, you know, a few more points to cover, but I want to make sure that, um, everybody's following along, I think we're all going along. You told him how they stand on the web, it's challenging things are always changing. Best thing you can do is take care of your readers, and I always deliver value, and you try to be as upon some of this technology as you can, but the main point is deliver value and watch the metrics so that if things drastically change, you know about it, and then you can go find the answer to it, so you don't need to be reading, you know, dozens of articles every day about this sort of thing if you're watching your numbers paying attention to metrics you've got a system and then something unexpected happens you can go and look at things and you know, making a decision based on that because you've got the data as tim shared with us which I thought it's a great system those numbers air there when you need them but you don't have to obsess over them wait a couple just popped up for us one was in regards to not using the word free if they're offering a free e book how do they get around that word usage yeah uh so you can use free if you want and you can see how it works I've experimented not using it and seen better results so all of this is about trying stuff and seeing what works clarification point it's ok to say free on a website it's ok to say hey, get this free thing when you join my email list but once you're delivering content to email subscribers using words like free click here etcetera those tend to get flagged not always but it's just a way to keep your email a little bit cleaner so instead of using free in an email you could say something like no charge doesn't cost you a dime um you know you could think of like pick up your thesaurus and look up but I think that was basically the question can we actually just supplement it with a different I love using the word no charge I think I think it it actually kind of creates more value than free free is kind of a cheap word now I love you know going to a website and somebody say in reading somebody's excited for my newsletter to send you all these amazing tips you're going get this this this incredible resource no charge because it's kind of like I should be charging you for this people would pay for this but this one's this one's on me and janet just wants a little bit of clarification on the gmail filter when you tell all your gmail users how to move your newsletter out of the promotions tabal they have to do that more than once no once they do it it's it works for every message that would come from that email address okay, all right so you sent from multiple email addresses as some people do because they've got different you know, email lists and they're coming from you know, different addresses for you know, for an organization for example uh and you might have one user who's getting multiple newsletters that might be an example but it's all from the same email address once it's out it's out and then just one last current clarification donna it seems to think that the auto responders service that male chimp uses makes it look like an email which helps it to avoid the filter process is that true are well it ought to respond er is is an email uh and so um yeah I mean, you can you can use an email to tell people how to get out of you know how to get out of the gmail trap how to get out of the promotions tab there's a good chance that at that point it's already gonna wind up over there eso no, I would try to educate people as soon as they sign up on a website you know so that they're getting going to confirmation page or even before they opt in and I think a great example is that daily lit dot com it is first and foremost before you sign up do this as soon as you as soon as you sign up go check gmail to pull it out of there and I've seen videos of people showing how to do that. I mean there's lots of information online about this but I would try to do that. I would anticipate that it's going to go to that tab and try toe do that immediately even before the auto responders go out. Okay, thank you. Yeah. So how else do you keep your newsletter healthy? Well, you have to stay consistent and I know this is probably a no brainer but you're going too tired, you burn out uh, you know, it gets kind of burdensome after a while, you know, what am I going to rights? And sometimes you feel kind of empty and what are you going to say? And those I think are the most important times to stay consistent, to stay engaged with your audience? Because the truth is in general with marketing when you get to the point where you're tired of hearing yourself talk, when you're tired of saying the same things over and over and over again, or talking about this product or service that you have in general that's just what people are starting to listen, starting to pay attention and so that's the challenges we hear ourselves talk over and over and over again, and we think, oh, my gosh, I'm so tired of talking about this. I feel like I'm being too pushy and that's just when people are beginning to go oh, like you do that, you do those you do those workshops cool, you have a block. Oh, great people aren't paying as close attention as you are the only person who's read every single newsletter that you've written, it is you unless you've got like, a really dedicated fan or a stalker on, you know those those air nice, too. But most likely, your the one who knows your work better than anyone else, which means you're going to be very familiar with it and probably going to be the most critical with it. And so when you're starting to get tired, it's easy to check out or kind of play it safer, pull back, and that is precisely what you don't want to do and when you don't want to do it because that's, just when things were starting to build, when momentum is beginning to get created and you're moving towards conversion, so you want to stay consistent, how do you do that? Practically? Well, you pick a newsletter type, which we talked about yesterday, that you can stick with, you know, that you could do this consistently doesn't matter if you do it once and then never show up again, or you promise that you're going to do something weekly and you end up doing something every other week or every other month. You want to pick a newsletter type that works for you, and if you pick something and you find it doesn't work, then tell your readers that you're going to have to change change the expectations, change the promise, but let people know, uh, don't pick something that you don't think you're going to be able to keep up with. It's always better to under promise and over deliver it's always better to say, I can only do this and then tio, while them with something else. Now what I don't mean by that is to say, I'm going to send you monthly updates and then you start sending them something every day that's not under promising in over delivering that's just lying, but it's okay to say, I think all I can send is, like a month late tip on this, and then as you start to build trust with your readers, you know, I think I could do this twice a month, and you tell your readers I'm thinking about switching the format, would you be cool with that? What you think about that are, you know, maybe you create a separate a separate segment for that or give people opportunities to opt out if you're really committed to that, but it's okay to change the game as long as you communicate it within reason, but what you shouldn't do, so I'm gonna write every day and you're right once the month because people aren't going to be engaged because you didn't do what you said you were going to do, so try toe pick a certain type that you could be consistent with. And stick with it for a while and then you know if if you want to kind of change the frequency or the content type make those adjustments in tandem with asking for permission from your audience so pick a newsletter type be consistent with it don't you know don't break your promise don't send more than you said you were going to find another way to stay consistent is to schedule your email newsletters ahead of time so I mentioned chris broken who writes an email newsletter every sunday morning and it goes out it like three thirty a m or something at least that's what I get it and um uh I know for a fact because I know him he's not writing that on sunday morning you know, he's writing that on friday afternoon usually or even saturday morning he's not writing that right before he needs to send it and why that's beneficial is it gives you time to review it gives you time to schedule it ahead of time if you're using something like the service we talked about before we're using like male chimps time warp service or using another service that allows you to send at the same time in any time zone around the world you've got to have a little bit of lead time to do that it just gives you a little bit of space between when you wrote it and when it's going out so that if you need to change it, you can always go in and edit a scheduled email except right before it goes out, you know, if you have any second guesses or whatever, and it just allows you, teo, plan a little bit more ahead of time, and you can kind of create this schedule for these messages, which becomes very important when you're moving towards and ask when you're building towards some sort of sale or a pitch or you want to get your readers t take serious action, you want to be thinking about how can I build momentum towards this? And you can't do that if every day or every time, you know, five minutes before you need to send news that you're freaking out going, what am I gonna right? So you want to work a little bit ahead? And one of the ways that I do that because I'm not a great planner is I'm constantly capturing ideas. I'm using a tool called evernote that allows me whether I'm walking, you know, around outside, I've got my phone with me or I'm working and I want to pull up the app on my computer if I get an idea immediately captured I captured on my phone, you captured it in a notebook, whatever, so that when it's time to write. I've got a source of ideas ready to go and I don't have to come up with something I don't have to feel inspired I've already got the idea is ready, and these kind of service prompts too, right? The email to write the message to write the blawg post that then is going to go out whenever I'm going to schedule before, ok, so another way to keep your email list healthy is to ask for feedback we've alluded to this. This is really important, I think, especially in the early stages of your email list, you want to invite conversation, you know, especially with the first two, three, five, ten, twenty readers you want to hear from people and then once you've got a big list, you want to give people opportunities once in a while to give your feedbacks that they feel engaged. And every time I do that with my readers, I used to do it every newsletter, and it became like, basically my job became checking email and replying to them. So now I've had to decide when and where I'm going to do that, so that I'm not disappointing people and kind of set up the promise in a way that isn't going to frustrate them when I say, hey, I'm really you know, I'm thinking about this tell me what you think reply here. I promise I'll read every message, but I may not be able to respond to all of them. You know, I'll tell people that ahead of time, so giving your readers and opportunity for feedback really does create that sense of relationship, and they feel like you're hearing them, you're there to serve them, and that is the best kind of trust that you want. There is this mutual exchange of respect and so asking for feedback great way to do that and doing that early in the process even plugging that into an auto responders is great. It is great for building that immediate trust with those readers within the first few days or weeks of joining your list. So some ways to do that are to ask them, and this is my favorite question. What are you struggling with? What big problem are you having people love to talk about pain? You know, they signed up for email us because they had a problem to solve on. Maybe that problem was I just want to feel more inspired. I just want to be encouraged during one of the breaks, lisa, you talked about, uh, a blogger that you followed for a long time and and and and she was a vegan baker cook. Gluten freak on and you're not gluten free don't care about being gluten free, but you resonated with her you know your story, you connected with her story and it is just interesting and so, you know, there's, sometimes the problem isn't it? Um, you know, I want to become gluten free. The problem is just I want to be entertained, you know, and our I'm bored, or I'm looking for some inspiration and the way that this person sees the world, not just what they write about, but the way in which they craft their content is irresistible, and as you build your list and as you interact with your audience, you're going to find that your true fans or the people that don't just care what you say they care, how you say it, they want to care about your perspective, your world view it's not just about the topics it's about your unique spin on your subject, so asking somebody, what are you struggling with? Gives them an opportunity to say here's, my problem here is the thing that I'm dealing with, and it could be completely off topic, but it helps you understand where your readers that and then you go how I enter that their world view while still staying on topic, how do I get into their world in a way where my email in their in box doesn't feel a relevant, you know, it speaks to wherever they're at in life right now and you know, we've all gone through tough times and, you know, somebody's come along and said something that just was completely irrelevant and then there are other times when a message or a phone call or a text from a french is something random that was timed perfectly and we go, oh my gosh, how did you know I was feeling this way? The truth is the person didn't know how you were feeling, but they know you, you know? And and so they care about you a friend or even somebody who is delivering, you know, content to your in box if they know how to connect with their audience, they're going to write emotional, interesting, engaging content, that's going to connect with where you are and so asking people, what are you struggling with? Allow issue as that center to hear that from your audience and be that person where you where they go, oh my gosh, how did you know and that's a fun message to get from readers and you don't you don't you are able to get that unless you ask these questions, so what are you struggling with or tell me what you think about this or simply how can I help you? What's something that I can do that's going to add value to your life what's something but I'm not doing that I could be doing whenever I'm kind of stuck you know with what direction to go with the content that I'm creating or even the the business decisions that I need to make other products that I'm going to create just looking for inspiration I don't want to go build something that people aren't interested in I want to find out what is my audience struggling with what are they dealing with? How could I help solve that problem so that when it's time to sell or when it's time to present something to them or get them to do something and know they're going to take action because I've touched the pulse on where they're at emotionally and what they're struggling with and on dyken help solve that need you know erica when you were including asking for feedback in your weekly newsletter was it did you sort of ask the same question each week or was it a little bit different? It was usually different I didn't always ask uh for it but when I was saying whatever the topic was you know so I usually touched done pain or struggles and so say I wrote an email about how to publish your first book you know in lessons learned from how I gotta publishing contract and then at the end I would say something like um you know what are you struggling with you know, if you ever want to publish a book um you know, talent tell me about it or tell him tell me one problem that you're having other times it wasn't so much a question as it was here's this idea and tell me how you're going to apply this and the best called action I ever wrote was for an email out of responders siri's for bloggers where I had been teaching blogging for years have been training people had a lot of blogging training organizations howto leverage blogging teo, you know, drive the marketing and I had a bunch of, you know, I had learned a bunch of things and I threw out this idea on facebook on my personal facebook profile asking friends if I did like a little mini course on blogging would you be interested in? And he was like yes, I just lots of yeses and so I went two male chimp and it created an auto responders siri's that was a twelve week trip campaign that people could opt into separately, you know, aside from my normal newsletter list just cause I wanted to see if maybe someday I could sell a product about blocking and I the first message you get is basically okay this is this is the blogging course we called it intentional blogging and here's lesson one and what I want to know is if you're in and at the end of that first lesson, I would say so here's a great opportunity to be all and I'm going to challenge you this is free or not paying anything for it, so I'm putting, you know, something of value out here, I want to know that you're in and it was kind of strong language I said, so are you in reply immediately to this message with the words I'm in? And I think almost everybody that signed up for that did that now it's interesting is when you look at the metrics day one, ninety percent open right day twelve, you know, week twelve is like, you know, forty percent open, right? So what I did was at the very beginning, when engagement was the highest, I tried to capture that attention and get feedback from people so that there was some immediate trust built so that as that progression as that attention naturally went down, is it often will in any kind of, you know, relationship over time, we're delivering content I wanted to kind of minimize that as much as possible, and so what I did was try to immediately build trust of people at the beginning, a couple of questions, this one's coming in from dr spamalot who I guess got their ph decent yesterday I think it could be an md as well right have you still did your homework? So does jeff have any thoughts on driving longer term engagement on one off businesses for example, I'm putting together an online in depth course on resume writing once people get to the point where they finished their resume, they're not as interested in my content because he's super focused on a resumes on ly at that point hey want here she wants to shift to referrals so how do how do they take it? Manage oven email newsletter in a referral scenario and also in a one off type business you know, for some email newsletters it's just one big long auto responder and for something like that I could I could see you doing that where your content on your website is, you know, maybe about how to get a job and you talk a lot about, you know, vocational occupational stuff and then your call the action is sign up for my five step process about how to write a kill, a resume that's going to get you a job and then at the end of email number five and these could be weekly e mails or you know whatever works frequency wise maybe it's more condensed because you know, people want to don't want to wait a month to write the resume and they can take small actions every day and then at the end of that, you know, you start sending messages again tripped out through not a responder that is something like, um you know, here's how to actually find your dream job? I mean, you could you could keep going through different stages of life for weeks or months or even a year just with an auto responders siri's where you start with that resume but then you move into here's how to find that great job here's how to get here is that to negotiate, you know, a great salary and here's how to re negotiate a raise here's howto make career transitions? I mean, there's a lot of room to build in terms of content, and instead of just focusing on the news, what you could do, you could use an auto responded to kind of progressive he move people through those steps an alternative would be to maybe focus just on the resume stuff, and then the newsletter could kind of build out from there either would be fine, but I think that be really interesting to use the drip campaign, the auto responder to do a whole long siri's where it keeps building, so that the person who finds your website is interested in getting improving their resume, but obviously, when you have a great resume, doesn't stop there it's just beginning it also sounds like you could actually build a lot of great partnerships around other people who have expertise and not even have to write that content that just put that in your process way. We did have another question coming from doris, I'm saying content and getting tired of the same mate message is a big deal for me. What are your tips on inviting your followers and readers to grow with you? In other words, are tangents a big no, no? Uh, no, tensions aren't a big no, no if you're tired of saying the same things over and over again, then I would that's definitely a good reason to start an auto responder I mean, as you can tell him, bias towards this, I think this is an important part of having a healthy list. Uh, but another thing to consider is tangents aren't a big no, no, but you want to build bridges between topics it's ok to change the subject over time. It's not ok to become a different person overnight, I mean that that feels kind of crazy, and I'm going toe to bring it back to the dating analogy, and I'm going to disclose that I've seen how to lose a guy in ten days a few more times, then I should feel comfortable admitting but that, you know, so here's a movie where uh you know this this girl has basically made a bet that she's going toe lose she's going to get a boyfriend and she's going to lose him in ten days and she just tries to do every crazy trick in the book and there's this one part where matthew mcconaughey just goes you're crazy like one one one day you're really nice and the other day you're totally nuts so and what she's trying to do is she's trying to lose him but in the process she's falling love with him it's a sweet, sweet movie but that you want to do that you want to be that person who like you know sweetly attracts readers teo and then overnight you uh you know, buy them some sort of firm that you name or something you know you don't wantto be so all over the place that it feels like your brand is schizophrenic, that there's kind of these multiple personalities that are going on so I think it's okay to earned the right to kind of change topics over time as long as people are following your journey and the only way you know that is by asking questions about engaging with readers you can't just overnight change something this is relationship and in most relationships individuals grow over time they changed and that's part of kind of the tension the give and take of a shin ship but if overnight everything changes and you've become completely different people it's no longer a good fit and I would really caution you from making those kinds of changes because you might you might burn a bridge and might lose the readers that helped you build the reputation that you're creating but what I think and engaged tribe an audience that is interested in what you have to say is ready to hear your message they understand that life changes the life changes that business changes that things are evolving over time and if you have done a good job of earning trust with them, you earn the right to say look, you know, we're kind of changing things and I want to let you know, um you know, what's going on here uh in general, is it ok to go off topic once in a while? Sure, you know, I mean, like in any conversation, but if you're going off topic so much that you're never coming back to the center, that can feel pretty erratic as we talked about yesterday uh, a topic is a great way to begin a conversation, but ultimately your brand is going to be built around your your personality around the theme, your unique perspective on whatever your topic is and so it can be tangential as long as there's a thread there's a common theme throughout all of your content and if you're just randomly talking about a lot of different things, there's really no structure, there's, no there's, no canvas, and as tim mentioned earlier, you do want to have a system not only for how you measure engagement, but also for how you create content in the system is basically a predictable process that allows you to not have to think about it too much, and it allows your audience to not have to think about it too much. When somebody opens a newsletter from you, they should know what to expect unless you've given them good reason to expect something different. So yes, it's ok to change over time, but like all change, make that gradual have a plan for that and, you know, don't just change overnight because you get bored. Remember, by the time you're getting bored with your message, your audience is just beginning to warm up to it. And if you're tired of saying the same thing over and over again, put it into an auto responder so that everybody consistently gets that message without you having to repeat yourself and then with your newsletter you congratulate lead people through, you know, whatever evolution or changes in personality or brand you want, tio