Week 3: My New Favourite Feature

Ok - I’m diving straight in with my new favourite feature. I only discovered it this week and I can’t believe I missed it.

Beehiiv lets you have your own custom mobile app.

On the free account.

For free.

How cool is that?

You can get a mobile app version of this publication right now.

You need to be reading this on your mobile phone, then click the ‘read online’ link at the top right of this email. Click on your profile pic in the top right corner and select Add App to Home Screen.

Now you can read all the content in this publication using the app and get notifications when I add new stuff.

Ok - I know it’s probably not that appealing right now as I’m only adding text posts at the minute (although, I guess if you like going back to stuff, it acts as a bookmark). But if or when I get to the point of offering paid subscriptions, it will make it easier to access the stuff you’re paying for.

And imagine how useful it is if, for example, you are a personal trainer and you add workout videos or you put short videos in showing your subscribers how to do exercises safely. Having it on an app just somehow makes it seem more accessible.

Anyway, that’s my favourite feature this week. And I think it would be worth getting the paid plan just for that. But you don’t need to because it’s free.

Honestly, I’m loving these platforms. I went into this experiment thinking it would focus on email newsletters, but all three platforms offer so much more.

Ghost gives you a super cost-effective basic website and blog with the built-in capability to build a subscriber list (which you can then offer paid subscriptions to). I’m not sure there are many cheaper options, certainly not any as good or as easy to use.

Beehiiv’s free plan is so generous and the mobile app feature makes it even better. I think it’s fantastic for anyone looking to share high-value content with their audience. Courses, recipes, guides, videos - anything really.

And then there’s Substack which allows you to build a community, add chat features, and share short bite-size updates in the form of notes. It’s like social media, but better because you can communicate more directly with people rather than depending on the algorithm gods.

The trouble with social media (and why you should start your own publication or newsletter)

I genuinely feel a bit silly that I didn’t know about these platforms until recently. Or at least I didn’t really understand their full potential.

I'll openly admit, I’m not an email fan. I often sign up to newsletters and then never open them past the first two or three.

It’s why it took me so long to start an email list. I started my business in 2014 but didn’t start an email list until 2021. I let my own bias get in the way: “I don’t read emails so nobody else does.”

But I admitted early on that I was wrong. I actually got a lot of business from my emails and it allowed me to build stronger connections with people who wanted to hear from me. My emails did the hard work of building those “know, like and trust” elements that people always bang on about.

So, yeah, I’ve come around to email (even more so now I’m making it my focus for this year). And I know I might be late to the party compared to some people, but at least I made it.

Like anything, email marketing has changed. If you send me spammy sales emails that are generic, impersonal and (all too often) completely irrelevant, then I’ll probably just hit that delete button before getting to the end.

And I rarely open emails from retailers. Usually, I’ve signed up to get some welcome discount code, but after that I rarely pay attention to them. I get so many.

But emails that contain useful content? Yes, I’ll pay attention to them. And you probably do too since you’ve read this far down mine.

So I think there is a huge place for email marketing but it’s more about doing email content marketing rather than just sending promo emails when you have an offer on or need to push a new product.

I found this interesting article from Beehiiv on the state of email newsletters. You have to subscribe to read it all but you can always unsubscribe afterwards.

The results are only based on Beehiiv newsletters, with fitness, health and mental health coming out as the most popular topics.

The average open rate on all Beehiiv newsletters is around 37% which means for every 100 potential customers subscribed to your email, 37 of them will open it and read it.

That might not sound all that impressive but I doubt 37 out of every 100 of your social media followers see your social media posts. 🤔

And let’s face it social media is getting a bit shit.

I’m not saying social media isn’t still a good marketing tool, but it’s hard work.

People just aren’t using platforms in the same way they used to.

I’m old enough to remember when Facebook was new and shiny. It was a place where you could stay in touch with friends and share updates about your life. It was great for me because I was a holiday rep at the time and it meant I could stay in touch with friends and family.

But Facebook is so different now. My feed is always full of ads, suggested posts and posts from groups I’ve followed. I barely see anything from friends and family. I barely go on there myself anymore.

And that’s because most people use WhatsApp groups (or similar) to stay in touch with various friendship groups and family. Those groups are where they share news, photos and updates about their life - they don’t need to do it on Facebook. They can communicate directly with the people they want to communicate with.

LinkedIn used to be for job hunters and recruiters, then it gradually moved more into general business stuff. But it saw its biggest change when the pandemic hit. It became a networking platform - a place to communicate and connect and do business with people.

But it peaked during those lockdown years. Now it’s full of sponsored ads, fluffy motivational quotes, people sharing outdated tips for using it as a marketing tool, scammers sharing get-rich-quick schemes, and people moaning about the algorithm and the quality of content. Every now and then, you see a couple of useful, interesting or entertaining posts but most of it is just shit.

I’m not saying LinkedIn is a complete waste of time. I still use it almost every day, but I think it’s had its heyday and it’s becoming a bit of a swamp. People are getting bored with it.

And that’s the problem with all social media platforms. A new one comes along and people use it as it was intended for a while. A few people have success using it for business so more people jump on the bandwagon.

Some people try to figure out how to game the system while others throw money at ads. It becomes oversaturated. It becomes harder to find the content you actually want to see (and harder to get your content in front of the right people) so people get fed up and stop using it.

You end up with platforms where everyone is just going on to share their stuff but barely engages with anyone else’s stuff.

Now, don’t get me wrong, some people have huge success on social media. And it does still have a place. But for new businesses, it can be really tough to get your messages seen or heard.

Email subscriptions are different though.

People opt in to hear from you. They want to hear from you. And when you send an email, you know that at the very least, your name will show up in their inbox. Whether they read your content or not is a different matter. But at least you know that they know about it.

Social media isn’t like that. You have no way of knowing who has seen your post. It could be your target audience or it could be people who have no interest in what you’ve got to say at all.

When you send out email content (like this), you have a captive audience. A subscriber might not read every email you send, but your name is still popping up on their radar regularly.

A reader might not read your email straight away - they might save it for a more convenient time. But if they do that, they are dedicating time to hearing what you have to say. You have their full attention.

And that’s where email gives you a huge advantage. Publications like this allow you to build more meaningful relationships or connections with your potential customers. You can add more value, you can hold their attention for longer (certainly if you’ve read this far, I’ve managed to hold yours), and you can build that trust.

You’re not just another face in their social media feed.

Weekly progress report

Ok enough rambling - here’s what I’ve been up to this week.

I spent around half a day on content for The Freelance Fairytale (TFF) writing my weekly email plus a blog post. I also took on the menial task of adding my subscription form to every page and blog post on LS Mentoring.

Prior to launching this experiment, I was sharing a monthly newsletter on LinkedIn. I am replacing it with my new TFF newsletter, so this week, I wrote the last edition. I have just over 700 subscribers to the LinkedIn version - so far three of them have subscribed to the new version. I suspect it’s because most of them don’t even open the newsletter (probably because LinkedIn is so saturated with them).

A big chunk of my time was also dedicated to New Brew Thursday (NBT). I wrote three new blog posts for the website and shared these as notes on the Substack page. I have templates set up for my blog posts, so they don’t take too long to do.

I also wrote a story for a food and drink publication on Medium with a link to my newsletter and references to my networking events.

This was selected for the Boost programme, which basically means Medium thinks it’s good enough to put in front of more people. You have to be nominated and selected for this so it’s quite a big deal in the Medium world.

I paywalled this story (although you should be able to read it for free using the link above) which means I earn a little bit of money when paying members view it. It’s been live since Tuesday and so far I’m up to $6.73 so I won’t be retiring from it. Hopefully, it will generate a few new subscribers though.

I also faffed about making some Insta posts for NBT. My design skills are, quite frankly, shit but I thought these were actually ok.

All in all, I probably spent around three hours on TFF and six or seven on NBT stuff. Then this email which took me around 90 minutes to write and then another 30 to edit and proofread (although I’m sure some typos will probably sneak through).

I still haven’t quite gotten the hang of tracking my time - it has been so long since I’ve needed to do it that I’m out of the habit. But I am trialling a free app (Toggl) so we’ll see how that goes.

I’ve had a couple of new subscribers on each publication but nothing to shout about - I’ll be sharing the full results at the end of each month.

I’m still not making any profit from these publications, so if you do want to support my business, please buy my stuff.

Alternatively, you can help me by giving this publication a shoutout on your social media pages or recommending it to your email subscribers. Here’s the link: https://makeyourcopycount.beehiiv.com/

That’s it from me for this week. As always, if you have any questions or would just like to let me know your thoughts on these updates, just reply to this email. I read and respond personally to all replies.

And if you’d like help with your marketing strategy, you can book a 90-minute one-to-one with me for only £180

Thanks for reading,

Lisa