On Creating an Email List

There is a great deal of discussion going on today about what can and cannot be seen on various social media platforms. No, I have not been suspended or removed from any social media platform that I have seen. I am not leaving any social media platform. My content will still be shared as much as possible on those platforms.

However, even before this current situation, social media visibility has been a concern for many writers. I always thought it was kind of odd when I posted something to my Facebook page with hundreds of friends and only received maybe five clicks through to my website.

On one hand, I just might not be a very good writer, so people see my post and decide it is not worth their time.

However, as I have managed other Facebook pages, such as the one for the journal I edit, An Unexpected Journal, I have learned that even with the excellent articles we publish from authors who are far more talented than me, the majority of people who have liked our Facebook page do not interact with the posts that we make on a daily basis. Obviously, there are financial reasons that Facebook and other social media platforms want to incentivize you to pay for greater reach, but I think there has to be a better way.

So far with the articles I have posted on this website, I have just thrown the links on Facebook and let people see them when they do. Most of them have gotten positive responses which is certainly encouraging. However, I started thinking that there is truly no guarantee that someone who enjoyed something I wrote last week might see my article next week. Facebook’s algorithm dictates what is seen, and I would not pretend to be smart enough to understand how it works and why certain things show up in a newsfeed when other things do not. I don’t know enough to figure out what I need to do to my content to make it rise through those hidden steps of favorability.

I am intelligent enough to understand, however, that if I send you an email, it is going to arrive in your inbox. Unless I input your email address wrong or you see that the message is from me and delete it immediately, we can communicate without bits of code dictating what shows up where. If you want to hear from me, I want to make that happen.

Consequently, I have added a new feature to this website in the footer on every page. You can sign up for what I am calling my Life Update. These updates are going to come at most once per month, and if nothing overly exciting is happening in my life, perhaps less frequently than that. I will of course share the things I am up to that appear on this website as well. I will share my most recent posts with you and any exciting publications or CV developments.

However, there might also be some other fun things. Maybe I will want to talk about something incredibly ridiculous that doesn’t really fit the tone of this website but I want to tell you about. Maybe, when we get back to playing, I will keep you posted on how my power soccer team is doing. Maybe I will just want to send you a link to a hilarious video I saw on YouTube along with my most recent blog posts.

Ultimately, the purpose of this mailing list is quite simple. If you enjoy my work, I want to make sure that it gets in front of you no matter how social media companies value blog content or how many of my friends they want to show my content to. I value having a way to get in touch with you, and I hope that when I email you and you can email me back if you want to, maybe we can reliably hear from each other. I would enjoy that. If you have any questions, feel free to let me know by commenting here or shoot me an email through the contact page above. Otherwise, I hope you will consider signing up.