Get Subscribers with an Email Newsletter

If you're blogging on a regular basis, you don't want to miss out on having an email newsletter on your blog site.

Why have an Email Newsletter for your blog? They help you track who's reading your blog while giving them updates on your blog posts and progress.

An email newsletter basically gives your faithful readers updates on your posts as you write them. It patrols your site and when it sees that you have added a post, it emails your subscribers a post summary with a link back to your site.

For my site's email newsletter, I use FeedBlitz.com. It's free and basically does all the heavy lifting for you -- it gives you the code for an online subscription form on your blog, then collects emails as people subscribe, then sends out an email when you have a new post, automatically. It's very low-maintenance on your end once it's installed in your blog.

Here's a sample form from FeedBlitz for this blog:

Enter your Email Address Below
to Get 'If My Pastor Had A Blog' Updates


Powered by FeedBlitz

To get your FeedBlitz email newsletter, here are some steps:

1. Log in and get a FeedBlitz account
2. Enter your blog's address -- FeedBlitz will find the "feed" for your blog (i.e. for this blog, it's: http://IfMyPastorHadA.blogspot.com).
3. Copy the HTML code -- Follow the FeedBlitz instructions.
4. Paste it into your Blogger's template -- Blogger makes this easy with the new and improved Blogger. In your Blogger "dashboard," click on the "Tempalte" tab, then "Add a page element" on the sidebar. In the popup window, click on "HTML/Javascript" and paste in your FeedBlitz code and "save changes."
   
5. Save your blog template
6. Test your email form

Here's a Blogger Help topic for more information: Layout Guide

One side note: You've probably noticed that I don't use FeedBlitz for my main email newsletter. If you've looked carefullly, I use Zookoda. Here's why ... FeedBlitz is an automatic email newsletter program. Zookoda allows me to send out specialized emails and are not necessarily automatic. I have to do some work to send it out with Zookoda. But I want more control of my email newsletters, so I use Zookoda. But my suggestion for pastors is to use FeedBlitz because it takes the work and sweat out of it. Once your subscription form is on your site, you don't have to worry ... FeedBlitz does the rest. :-)

BONUS: See how I use all this to keep my readers updated on my ChurchCommunicationsPro.com blog site.