Beware of Over Promising About Your Blog and/or Newsletter

Imagine one Tuesday you’ve found a website or blog you really like. The articles are informative and you suspect the newsletter will also be valuable. You find out where to subscribe and are told the blog post happen twice a week and the newsletter once a week. You sign up, confirm your subscription and go on about your day.

The following week you remember that site and realize you haven’t gotten notice of a new blog post and you haven’t gotten a newsletter either. You check your spam and neither notice is there either.

Something about that site really got your attention and you bring it up again. Yes, the articles are helpful, but you notice there’s nothing new posted. You double check and confirm the blog posts were supposed to happen twice a week and the newsletter once. Because you’re a forgiving soul and you know how much work can go into both, you resubscribe, only to be told you’re already subscribed so you wait again.

The following week notice of a new blog post comes in, but no newsletter. By now your frustrated. When a week later the newsletter does show up and there’s absolutely no explanation about the delay you find your trust level of the site and the author has gone way down.

This is a classic case where the person who started the blog and newsletter over promised and under delivered.

How over promising happens

When you first start a newsletter or a blog it’s tempting to promise you’ll blog every day or send a newsletter twice a week or some other schedule that’s actually likely to be more than you can comfortably deliver. Chances are you’re new to writing blog posts and newsletters; cut yourself some slack and don’t expect or promise to deliver weekly.

There are no requirements

There is no law that says how often you have to write blog posts or send newsletters. Sure, weekly or even daily can seem like a standard, and many writers maintain a schedule like that. It’s also true that many don’t. I have a couple of blogs where I promise ‘occasional posts’ and ‘occasional newsletters.’ Both have decent numbers of subscribers and no one complains if they don’t hear from me for awhile.

In other words, you get to choose just how often you write articles, do blog posts, and email newsletters. Yes, you will find real estate gurus who will tell you how they made a zillion dollars by blogging X times a month, etc. That may even be true for them. That doesn’t make it true for you.

Under promising works better

Now supposing the site you’d like so much had promised to let you know when occasional posts got written? How would you feel when one showed up? You’d be surprised and delighted.

Make no mistake about it, there is some evidence that frequency and predictability do count with blog posts and newsletters. What’s also true, however, is putting them together is hard work, particularly at first. That plus the fact that you’re a real estate agent means you’re a busy person.

It may make much more sense to promise that either or both will be delivered from time-to-time, at least until you’re totally comfortable with the ins and outs of getting either written and posted. Once you’ve gotten easy with the systems you may very well realize setting up a regular schedule not only benefits your websites traffic, but works for you as well. It’s much easier to increase your frequency than it is to decrease it – to over deliver rather than over promise. Or maybe occasionally posting and sending newsletters will just be your style. If so, that’s fine.

Feel free to ask questions about both blog posts and email newsletters – we’ll get answers for you.