Email is much more personal than reading an article on a blog. You are in their inbox, a 
somewhat sacred place. People share gossip, family news and other important information in their inbox. When you are in there it means your content has to be that bit more personal than a blog post.
Email is the most responsive marketing tool that you have at your disposal.
Email marketing is easy to set up and you can re-use content for each user as they move through subjects in a linear process. They wouldn’t move through your blog in a linear process, it’s a completely different way of working. It also means you can direct your users to anything you might be selling – it’s a great way to build income.
What is double opt-in and why is it important?
Double opt-in means that when someone signs up on your email list they need to confirm that they did this by clicking a link an email that automatically gets sent to them.
You’ll have to set this up in your Aweber system and it’s much better that you do as you’ll dramatically decrease spam complaints which means all your emails will get through to their intended recipient.
Find out where the traffic currently goes.
Market research is currently key. Take Ted’s example. He wants to set up a blog about meeting new people. He needs to brainstorm some keywords on what people might search on Google to find his blog and other blogs, things like:
– How to be better at social interactions
– How to be more social
– Social dynamics
– Persuasion
– How to be more attractive
and so on.
He needs to look at all his competitors. For example, when I search ‘how to be better socially’ I get: http://www.succeedsocially.com/ coming up as the number one result in Google.
My analysis of this site is that it has a lot of content but it’s very visually unappealing and has no real brand to it. The person behind it isn’t selling himself enough. There is no picture of him, just an ‘about me’ section. It also seems to focus on really introverted people and the negative sides associated with that. I.e. It’s not the most uplifting site!
A lot of the blogs in this niche seem to be a bit like that, no real substance behind the site – there may be some opportunity for Ted to create something new and exciting!
Ted also needs to research how many people search for the keywords with this Google Tool.
When checking for ‘social skills’ the competition is ‘very low’ and there are 246,000 people who search this phrase per month, wow! Could be a great niche for Ted.
He needs to pull out the best keywords which will drive traffic to his site. Preferably the ones with ‘very low’ competition and a high number of searches. Remember, most keywords will be ‘medium’ or ‘high’ competition.