Don’t call it a full redesign, but there are a number of changes coming to this website in the near future. No, they don’t include guys holding balloons, but they’ll still be pretty cool.
Intent
I have always blogged here because I enjoy it, even if nobody reads it. But if I can use my writing to reach people and give them something that helps them, that gives me satisfaction. Not just that, but if I have something to offer that can help people, I have an obligation to share it. And not just an obligation to make it available, but to share it as far and wide as I can. Not that I’m any smarter than anyone else, but I’ve made so many mistakes it would be a shame if I were the only one to learn something from them. If, by reworking this site I can increase my reach and help more people to avoid the missteps I’ve made, then I’d be in the wrong to not do it.
Tactics
I’ve been diving into what other successful individuals have done to promote their ideas and copying them as much as I can. To be specific, I’ve been looking a LOT at Michael Hyatt and Ryan Holiday, and quite a bit but not quite as much at a bunch of others. One thing that has become clear to me (as though it weren’t clear to me years ago) is that I need to focus on building my email list. I only have 203 subscribers right now. Ryan Holiday has over 40,000. Michael Hyatt has 567,485. I’ve obviously got a ways to go. I’d like to get to 5,000 by the end of 2016. To achieve this goal here are some of the specific changes I’ve been making and others that will roll out soon:
- Email going weekly. Instead of sending out an email each time I post, the email will go out weekly. Why? That’s just how I would prefer to receive it myself. If I send out 3-4 emails in a week I think it’s easy for people to get overwhelmed and not look at them at all. This change has already been made.
- Email including more content. Until now emails have included one post, or two if I happened to post twice in one day. They will now include all the posts made since the prior week’s email, but they will also include links to articles I’ve written on Forbes/Mashable/Entrepreneur/etc., and to other content that will be new this website.
- New content. Ryan Holiday built a huge email list largely based on his book recommendations, which are stellar (definitely go sign up to get them). Like Ryan, I also read a ton of books, and I like sharing what I’ve read, when it’s good. And yet it never occurred to me to share anything about what I’m reading here, with a few rare exceptions. Why shouldn’t I be building my email list by sharing book recommendations? If I can do it half as well as Ryan that should take me a long way. To that end I’ve added a “Reading List” section to this website and reviews will start showing up soon. Links to these reviews will also show up in the weekly email, so just sign up for that and you’ll never miss out.
- Book section. For the books I’m writing I’ll be adding a book section to promote those. The first will be the CMOs at Work book I’m working on right now. I’ll write a post soon about the other books I’m working on.
- Book trailer. As part of this book section I’ll be making a video book trailer to promote it. Want to see what a good book trailer looks like? Here’s Michael Hyatt’s trailer for his book Platform.
- Email signup integration everywhere. Per this post on the Buffer blog I’ve created some Twitter lead gen cards, added signup to my Facebook page, I’ll soon be changing my email signature, etc.
- Email popup. Oh yeah, I’ll be implementing an email popup on this site. There is already a sort of popup that shows in the lower right corner. I’m going to try one that pops up right in the middle. Yeah, I know, you hate those. The good news is that if you sign up, you won’t ever see it again, and I’ll give you a “Never show this again” option on it as well, so if you don’t like it, you’ll only see it once (unless you clear your cookies).
These are just some of the forward facing changes being made. With all of them I’ll be blogging about what works, what doesn’t, and how you can learn from what I’m doing so you don’t need to go through all the trial and error.
I’m excited! What gets me excited is the tech/process behind the scenes that makes it so easy for me to do what I need to do on this website, and will take it all and put it together into a weekly email for you. It’s the next step for me, and I hope you enjoy it too.
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