Once came a Reddit post titled “Are newsletters better than social media following?”
It went as follows:
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I see a lot of talk about newsletters on here and am about to publish my first (and possibly only) book. As I consider how to connect with readers and what to put as a hook to connect at the end of the book, I was wondering… isn’t social media more engaging than newsletters? Would an invitation to follow a FB page, for example, not be more effective at regularly having a dialog? Why or why not?
I appreciate you guys being willing to share your experience with a newb like me.
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Short answer: email is superior in every way
Longer answer: Take a look at this and think about how “useful” this is.
You create a Facebook page, Instagram profile, Twitter account—or whatever social media you prefer—and invite all of your readers, customers, and other folks interested in your stuff to follow your profile.
Then, even though you’ve already got them to follow you (a difficult step on it’s own) you’ll still have to compete against hundreds of other people (friends, family, influencers, theme pages, other businesses,…) to get the attention of your followers whenever they happen to doomscroll (or zoomerscroll) through their homepage—most of the time while taking a dump at work to avoid working.
And as if that alone wasn’t enough.
If you do happen to grab their attention, then god forbid if you want to show them something nice, guide them to a new product of yours (a podcast you were on, a new YouTube video, your latest book, or even a free novella as a gift) because you will be heavily punished by the platform for “sending traffic away” aka, including a link that points to anywhere else but the social media you’re using.
Hell, let alone if someone doesn’t like something you post and decides to report you. With how today’s social landscape is looking, that could easily mean a total loss of your profile (losing everything you’ve worked for in the process).
You don’t even have to piss someone off to have it happen to you.
Many creators get their accounts banned or closed for no reason at all (and trust me because I’m one of them).
Long story short, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
Using email as the main form of communication between you and your customers is the only certainty and security you’ll ever have.
Make sure you’re using it.
Anyway.
If you’d like to learn more about all things email-related, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla