I'm starting a quarterly newsletter!
I've had a mailing list sign-up for nearly a year but I've never promoted it because I've never had plans to send any mailings. After realizing how little control I have over who actually sees my posts on social media (500 people have chosen to follow my page yet my pinned post on Facebook has been seen by less than 200 people), I decided it is time to start utilizing my mailing list.
I signed-up for a free account on MailChimp and began designing the forms and templates to start a quarterly newsletter. I don't want to spam anyone, but I do want to know that those who have an interest in my work – and have chosen to support me – are not missing anything. Social media just can't be relied on to reach the right people, or enough people.
Though building a mailing list is no easy task. As I just said a couple weeks ago, it is even harder to get people to hand over their email address than it is to get them to like a Facebook page. Speaking of which, I have just 4 days left in my goal to reach 500 page likes for my birthday and I still need 10 more. I don't want to keep begging so, at this point, I just have my fingers crossed that a few new people will find their way to my page soon.
Working on designing the templates for the newsletter and trying to promote and build the mailing list consumed much of my time this week, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I am really looking forward to the first mailing in March.
The only new writing I accomplished this week was done before I started working on the mailing list / newsletter project, when I made the most of another rough night of anxiety by writing a new poem and submitting it to a poetry journal for consideration.
My latest piece has been performing well, though! It broke 100 fans and 1.1K claps on P.S. I Love You, making it my best performing piece on Medium, so far. And its syndications were featured in The Good Men Project's newsletter and shared on the InspireMore's Facebook and Twitter pages.
A couple of my other essays were making the rounds, this week, too. One was featured in the InspireMore newsletter on Valentine's Day and another was featured on The Mighty's main Facebook page on Monday.
The Mighty also republished my piece about writing with anxiety yesterday.
Despite having written very little, I felt like I experienced a growth spurt as a writer this week; I'm feeling invigorated about what is to come!
