Aweber is the number one choice for many bloggers and website owners because of its simplicity and flexibility. The service allows users to build a following without having to worry about the technicalities of building and launching a blog. If you’re looking for an alternative to Hootsuite, you should check out Aweber because it can get even more hands-off (and that’s a good thing). Here are the top 10 things you need to know about the Aweber experience.
Setting Up A Subscription To Get Started
You’ll want to set up a subscription with Aweber as soon as you log in. This can take a little bit of time, but it’s well worth it. Your first step should be to choose the plan that works best for you. There are four different plan options in total: Free, Pro, Pro Plus, and Enterprise. The Free plan gives you up to 200 clicks/day and a free domain. The Pro plan gives you up to 1,000 clicks/day and a free domain with pro features. The Pro Plus plan gives you up to 2,500 clicks/day and a free domain with all the features found in the Pro plan plus a few extra features. Finally, the Enterprise plan gives you up to 5,000 clicks/day and a free domain plus all the features found in the Pro Plus plan. You can try out the different plans for fourteen days before you commit to anything. You can cancel at any time during this trial period without penalty.
2. Building A List Of People To Send Emails To
You have two options when it comes to this step. You can either create a list of existing contacts or you can use a lead generation tool to find potential subscribers. You can use a tool like Contact King to find names and email addresses of people within your network. You should take your pick from the list of contacts and send out an email asking them to sign up for your mailing list. Just make sure that you give them a reason to why they should sign up. You can also use a tool like GetResponse to easily create an email list.
3. Getting To Know Your Subscribers Better
Each subscriber in your list will have a different level of engagement with your content. Some will read your emails regularly, while others will maybe click on a few links and then forget about your content. You want to improve user experience and turn occasional subscribers into regular ones. To do this, you need to study them. Look at what they’re doing and how they’re doing it, and then decide on a course of action (e.g., sending an email, following a link, or starting a conversation).
You can do this by looking at the behavior of your subscribers on your various platforms (i.e., email, social media, web). For example, if you notice that your Instagram followers are mostly women between the ages of 18 and 24, you’ll want to use that insight to your advantage when creating content that appeals to that audience. If you notice that your Facebook followers are mostly men between the ages of 25 and 34, you’ll want to make sure that your products and offers appeal to that demographic.
4. Configuring Email Marketing To Work For You
Once you have a small sample of your email list, you can start to tinker with the different aspects of email marketing. You want to make sure that your emails are engaging and that you’re using a similar tone and style with every one of them. Of course, you want to make sure that you’re abiding by email marketing best practices (e.g., unsubscribing, measuring email open and click-through rates, using a sign-up form, etc.).
One of the most effective things you can do for your email marketing is to use a tool like Segment to segment your list into different groups. This way, you can send out different email campaigns to specific groups. Maybe you want to send an engagement email to your list prior to the Christmas holidays, or you might want to send a weekly coupon to those that subscribed last year.
5. Measuring The Effect Of Your Email Marketing
You can’t improve something if you don’t measure it first. That’s why this step is so important. Before you know it, you’ll be sending out some more emails, trying to get that interesting spike in growth that you saw from previous campaigns. To measure the effectiveness of your email marketing, you can use Google Analytics to track the metrics that matter most to you (e.g., opens, clicks, bounces, subscribers, and engagement numbers).
You can also measure the impact of your emails using a tool like Google Analytics Keyword Planner. With this tool, you’ll be able to see how many people are searching for the terms that you used in your campaigns. For example, if you were doing an email marketing campaign for a sports drink manufacturer, and you used the terms “sport drink,” your campaign would show up in Google’s keyword planner. Not only that, but you can also see the days and times that your target audience searches for these terms the most.
6. Optimizing Your Website (And Other Media) For Higher Rankings
If you’ve been running a blog for a while, you’ll know that the organic traffic you get (i.e., traffic that comes from search engines like Google and Bing) is significantly less than the paid traffic heaps you get from social platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn. You need to make sure that your website is doing everything possible to get the rankings that it deserves.
You can start by doing some simple things like making sure that your website is hosted on a trusted platform (i.e., not something free that could go down at any moment), that your web content is up-to-date, and that your website is mobile-friendly. You can also use tools like Google Analytics to track the performance of your site and see which strategies are working and which ones might need some revamping.
7. Improving The User Experience On Your Site
When someone comes across your site in the organic results of a search or through a social media platform, you want to make sure that they have a good experience. You can do this by paying close attention to the little things, like load time, as well as the bigger things, like the overall layout and design of your site. Make sure that everything is clean, simple, and easy to understand. Keep things light and airy, even when talking about serious topics (e.g., business, marketing, or technology).
If you’re worried about your load time, you can use a service like GTMetrix to test your site’s speed and see how you stack up against other sites in your niche. The great thing about this service is that you get a free basic account, and you can upgrade to a premium account for as little as $2.95 per month (plus fees).
If you’re not happy with the overall appearance of your site, you can get a copyeditor to go through it (at no cost to you) and make sure that everything is up to par.
8. Using Analytics To Get Insights On Your Audience
You can use analytics to gain insights into who your audience is, what they’re interested in, and how you can engage them better. Some of the more prominent analytics tools out there include Google Analytics, Mixpanel, and Hitwise. You can use these tools to get an idea of where your traffic is coming from and what types of content is bringing in the most eyeballs.
Your analytics tool of choice will depend on your niche (e.g., Google Analytics for general websites, Mixpanel for apps and gaming, and Hitwise for marketing agencies and marketers). These tools can help you identify the strength of your digital marketing portfolio and guide your SEO (search engine optimization) efforts. They can also help you identify content that is performing well and determine what topics you should be covering going forward.
9. Leveraging Social Media To Get The Most Out Of Your Blog
You might be familiar with the term “digital nomad,” which basically means someone who makes a living from their travel blog or vlog (i.e., video blog). The great thing about the digital nomad lifestyle is that it doesn’t require you to have a huge following to be able to make a living off of blogging. You can literally start a blog in a remote location and then use social media to spread the word.
Blogs and other content-sharing platforms like TikTok and Instagram can definitely become a source of income. If you’ve got enough followers, you can use your platform to promote your blog or website and make money off your content.