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  • Brand Strategy 101: 7 Important Elements of a Company Branding Plan

    Just as an architect draws out a building plan before they start building, you need to develop a brand strategy for your business.
    Strategic branding helps you set yourself apart from your competition and build customer loyalty.
    In this article, you’ll learn all about the branding methods and essential elements of a branding strategy you need to grow a brand that’ll stand the test of time.

    (We’ll get into that more in a bit.)
    A well-defined and executed brand strategy affects all aspects of a business and is directly connected to consumer needs, emotions, and competitive environments.
    First, let’s clear up the biggest misconception about brand strategy: Your brand is not solely your product, your logo, your website, or your name.
    Your brand is all of that and more — it’s the stuff that feels intangible. Your brand is that hard-to-pin-down feeling that separates powerhouse brands from forgettable brands.
    To objectively understand a subjective matter that many marketers consider more of an art and less of a science, we’ve broken down seven essential components of a comprehensive brand strategy that will help keep your company relevant for decades.

    The elements of a brand strategy include:

    1. Purpose
    While understanding what your business promises is necessary when defining your brand positioning, knowing why you wake up every day and go to work carries more weight. In other words, your purpose is more specific in that it serves as a differentiator between you and your competitors.
    How can you define your business’ purpose? According to Business Strategy Insider, purpose can be viewed in two ways:

    Functional: This concept focuses on the evaluations of success in terms of immediate and commercial reasons—i.e., the purpose of the business is to make money.
    Intentional: This concept focuses on success as it relates to the ability to make money and do good in the world.

    While making money is essential to almost every business, we admire brands that emphasize their willingness to achieve more than just profitability, like IKEA:
    Image source
    IKEA’s vision isn’t just to sell furniture but rather to “create a better everyday life.” This approach appeals to potential customers, demonstrating their commitment to providing value beyond the point of sale.
    Key Takeaway
    When defining your business’ purpose, keep this example in mind. While making money is a priority, operating under that notion alone does little to set your brand apart from others in your industry.
    Our advice? Dig a little deeper. If you need inspiration, check out the brands you admire, and see how they frame their mission and vision statements.
    2. Consistency
    The key to consistency is to avoid talking about things that don’t relate to or enhance your brand.
    Added a new photo to your business’s Facebook Page? What does it mean for your company? Does it align with your message, or was it just something funny that would, quite frankly, confuse your audience?
    To give your brand a platform to stand on, you need to ensure your messaging is cohesive. Ultimately, consistency contributes to brand recognition, which fuels customer loyalty. (No pressure, right?)
    To see a great example of consistency, let’s look at Coca-Cola. As a result of its commitment to consistency, every element of the brand’s marketing works harmoniously together. This has helped it become one of the most recognizable brands in the world.
    Even on the surface of its social media accounts, for example, the seamlessness of its brand is very apparent across Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn:

    Key Takeaway
    To avoid leaving potential customers struggling to put the disconnected pieces of your business together, consider the benefits of creating a style guide. A style guide can encompass everything from the tone of voice you’ll use to the color scheme you’ll employ to the way you’ll position certain products or services.
    By taking the time to define and agree upon these considerations, your brand will benefit as a whole.
    3. Emotion
    Customers aren’t always rational.
    How else do you explain the person who paid thousands of dollars more for a Harley rather than buying another cheaper, equally well-made bike? There was an emotional voice in there somewhere, whispering: “Buy a Harley.”
    But why?
    Harley Davidson uses emotional branding by creating a community around its brand. It began HOG—Harley Owners Group—to connect their customers with their brand (and each other).

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    By providing customers with an opportunity to feel like they’re part of a larger group that’s more tight-knit than just a bunch of motorcycle riders, Harley Davidson is able to position themselves as an obvious choice for someone looking to purchase a bike.
    Why? People have an innate desire to build relationships. Research from psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary best describes this need in their “belongingness hypothesis,” which states: “People have a basic psychological need to feel closely connected to others, and that caring, affectionate bonds from close relationships are a major part of human behavior.”
    Not to mention, belongingness—the need for love, affection, and being part of groups—falls directly in the middle of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which aims to categorize different human needs.
    Key Takeaway
    The lesson to be learned? Find a way to connect with your customers on a deeper, more emotional level. Do you give them peace of mind? Make them feel like part of the family? Do you make life easier? Use emotional triggers like these to strengthen your relationship and foster loyalty.
    4. Flexibility
    In this fast-changing world, marketers must remain flexible to stay relevant. On the plus side, this frees you to be creative with your campaigns.
    You may be thinking, “Wait a minute, how am I supposed to remain consistent while also being flexible?”
    Good question. While consistency aims to set the standard for your brand, flexibility enables you to make adjustments that build interest and distinguish your approach from your competition.
    A great example of this type of strategic balance comes from Old Spice. These days, Old Spice is one of the best examples of successful marketing across the board. However, up until recently, wearing Old Spice was pretty much an unspoken requirement for dads everywhere. Today, it’s one of the most popular brands for men of all ages.
    The secret? Flexibility.
    Aware that it needed to do something to secure its place in the market, Old Spice teamed up with Wieden+Kennedy to position its brand for a new customer base.

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    Between new commercials, a new website, new packaging, and new product names, Old Spice managed to attract the attention of a new, younger generation by making strategic enhancements to its already strong brand.
    Key Takeaway
    If your old tactics aren’t working anymore, don’t be afraid to change. Just because it worked in the past doesn’t mean it’s working now.
    Take the opportunity to engage your followers in fresh, new ways. Are there some out-of-the-box partnerships your brand can make? Are there attributes about your product you never highlighted? Use those to connect with new customers and remind your old ones why they love you.
    5. Employee Involvement
    As we mentioned before, achieving a sense of consistency is vital if you wish to build brand recognition. And while a style guide can help you achieve a cohesive digital experience, it’s equally essential for your employees to be well-versed in communicating with customers and representing the brand.
    If your brand is playful and bubbly through Twitter engagements, it won’t make sense if a customer called in and was connected with a grumpy, monotone representative, right?
    To avoid this type of mismatched experience, take note of Zappos’ approach.
    If you’ve ever been on the line with a customer service representative from Zappos, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, check out this SlideShare which details some of its most inspiring customer support stories.
    Key Takeaway
    By holding all Zappos employees to its core values and helping other companies implement the same approach, Zappos has built a strong reputation for solid, helpful, and human customer service.
    6. Loyalty
    If you already have people that love you, your company, and your brand, don’t just sit there — reward them for that love.
    These customers have gone out of their way to write about you, tell their friends about you, and act as your brand ambassadors.
    Cultivating loyalty from these people early on will yield more returning customers — and more profit for your business.
    Sometimes, just a thank you is all that’s needed. Other times, it’s better to go above and beyond. Write them a personalized letter. Send them some special swag. Ask them to write a review and feature them prominently on your website. (Or all of the above!)
    When we reached 15,000 customers here at HubSpot, we wanted to say thank you in a big way while remaining true to our brand … so we dropped 15,000 orange ping pong balls from our fourth-floor balcony and spelled out thank you in big metallic balloons:

    And while it may have seemed a little out of the ordinary to some folks, the gesture made perfect sense for those who know our brand.
    Key Takeaway
    Loyalty is a critical part of every brand strategy, especially to support your sales organization. Highlighting a positive relationship between you and your existing customers sets the tone for what potential customers can expect if they choose to do business with you.
    7. Competitive Awareness
    Take the competition as a challenge to improve your own strategy and create greater value in your overall brand. You are in the same business and going after the same customers, right? So watch what they do.
    Do some of their tactics succeed? Do some fail? Tailor your brand positioning based on their experience to better your company.
    Keeping tabs on your competitor’s social mentions for HubSpot customers is easy using the Social Monitoring App. Check out this article to learn more about setting up custom social streams.
    Key Takeaway
    While staying in tune with your competitor’s strategies is essential if you want to enhance your brand, don’t let them dictate every move you make.
    Sure, you probably sell a similar product or service as many other companies, but you’re in business because your brand is unique. By harping on every move your competitor makes, you lose that differentiation.

    Let’s discuss each branding method.
    1. Attitude Branding
    This form of branding refers to a feeling or attitude that customers associate with your brand.
    Nike is a brand that has perfected this type of branding. With the ‘Just Do It’ slogan, Nike promotes a lifestyle that customers can enjoy by wearing this brand of products. With such a slogan, Nike promotes the idea that all customers are athletes when they’re wearing Nike products.
    2. Individual Branding
    This type of branding is when a product or service gets a unique identity, perhaps in a different brand name to attract new customers in the market.
    Unilever is an excellent example of a brand that uses individual branding. The company has three divisions, each creating some of the best-known brands in its niche.

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    3. Product Branding
    Product branding is perhaps the most popular type of branding. Here, the brand associates a logo, name, color, and design with a product to create a unique identity for the product.
    It’s one of the best branding methods because it gives life to products and increases uniqueness.
    A great example is Apple’s MacBook offerings. The ‘Air,’ ‘Pro,’ and ‘Mac’ branding conveys unique messages and reinforces the quality of the product offering.
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    4. Co-Branding
    In co-branding, also known as a brand partnership, different brands contribute their identity to create a fused brand.
    The advantage of this method is that it combines market strength, increases customer bases and perceived value.
    One of the most popular co-branding examples is the Nike and Micheal Jordan collaboration. This collaboration has made Air Jordans some of the most sought-after and most recognizable footwear around the globe.
    Image source
    This type of branding is usually used by brands that prefer to let products speak for themselves.
    5. Minimalist Branding
    Mastercard is an excellent example of a brand that uses minimalist branding. We might not know what the red and yellow circles mean, but you’ll know that it belongs to MasterCard.

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    6. Brand Extension
    This unique branding method is when a company uses one of its popular or established brand names on a new product. The idea behind this method is to use the already existing brand equity to boost the latest product. Companies that use it hope customers will be more receptive to the new offering because of the brand extension.
    The Importance of Strategic Branding
    Managing a brand is hard work, and it’s more challenging when you’re in an oversaturated market where every brand looks the same.
    One of the crucial steps to growing in an oversaturated market is highlighting what makes your brand unique — which is what strategic branding is all about.
    With strategic branding, you future-proof your brand and develop it in a way that differentiates you from others. By communicating uniqueness to customers, you strengthen your selling power, brand value, and customer loyalty.
    Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

  • When the gauge is broken

    When your watch stops, it’s unlikely that you believe that time is now standing still. It’s obviously the watch that’s broken, not time.

    But when a metric on our culture or a complex machine is functioning poorly, it’s easy to get confused. Is this work actually unpopular, or is the bestseller list not an accurate reporter of what people care about? Is the pump actually overheating, or is the temperature probe broken?

    The more complex the system, the more likely we are to believe a broken gauge, even if it’s only right twice a day.

    If you’re not satisfied with what you think is happening, it might be worth recalibrating.

  • According to Snap’s study, 93% of Gen Z wants to use AR for an immersive shopping experience

    CXM would like to present to you the Snap research study which uncovers that Gen Z (born between the late 1990s and early 2010s) are shaping online and retail culture. The global (Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States) study, of…
    The post According to Snap’s study, 93% of Gen Z wants to use AR for an immersive shopping experience appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

  • Headless Commerce Vs Traditional E-Commerce. What’s The Difference?

    The world is speeding up. What seemed unthinkable yesterday is now commonplace. And the world of eCommerce is evolving as well — competition is escalating, as are customer demands. People are examining many more criteria before buying anything from anyone online. It’s no longer just about providing the right goods at the appropriate price, it’s…
    The post Headless Commerce Vs Traditional E-Commerce. What’s The Difference? appeared first on Benchmark Email.

  • Crazy customer says she’ll put a curse on me

    So I was working a night shift and I was going to relieve my colleague. So when I came into work there was a lady in her car parked in employee parking, I asked my colleague about it and they replied with. “I don’t know she’s been parked there since 3:33Am I’m too scared to go over there” Then the car drives up to our booth. So I try and ask her if she would like to park here with us and we can take her to the airport, but she said “Nobody likes you here” and then she rolls down her window and starts waving this bracelet in front of me.. So instinctively I grab the bracelet and throw it, the lady gets out of her car and goes to find it. While she’s busy finding her necklace I called the police and so when she heard me calling the police, she ran to her car saying “I’ll put a curse on you” and went to park in employee parking yet again. Police arrive and go to her car and try and talk to her but she puts a blanket over her head and acting like she’s invisible. Finally she gets out of her car and comply with police to leave. submitted by /u/Karl1171 [link] [comments]

  • Seriously, What is the Metaverse?

    Recently, at my daughter’s birthday party, I asked a 15-year-old computer whiz named Emmett to explain the metaverse. He referenced Fortnite and Second Life (a favorite of the hacking group Anonymous), ran through NFTs, crypto and blockchains, and then said, “Really, it’s just a vibe.” Really!? A vibe!? https://preview.redd.it/at0atuqew5s81.jpg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=077a682d39a474ae8afa04e872f53100099ef0b8 https://www.customerengagementinsider.com/digital-strategy/articles/seriously-what-is-the-metaverse submitted by /u/philmandelbaum [link] [comments]

  • 10 Features Michael Scott Would Look for in an Email Newsletter Service

    Learn what everyone’s favorite boss would look for if he was tasked with picking an email newsletter service.
    Michael Scott, a character from the hit TV show The Office, is best known for his inappropriate (though humorous) office conduct. And while it’s probably not recommended to do most things he does, we can learn a thing or two from him. There are a lot of hard decisions to make when you run a business like Dunder Mifflin, and Scott takes on each one with a fresh and enthusiastic approach.
    One of the most crucial decisions a company can make is choosing the right email newsletter service. A strong email newsletter is essential to growing your business. It is one of only a few owned media channels companies have. Email allows you to directly and consistently reach prospects and customers without the limitations of a hosting platform’s algorithm or other limitations.
    Basically, your email newsletter service is a big deal. And as Scott says, when it comes to growing your business, the only time you should set the bar low is for limbo. To set the bar high for your email newsletter service, look at the core functions that contribute to a great email newsletter.
    1. Collaboration
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    “In the end, life and business are about human connections,” says Scott, which couldn’t be more true when it comes to email marketing campaigns. Without the ability to collaborate easily, teams will find themselves duplicating work, producing less diverse or less inspiring content, and ultimately becoming less effective.
    According to Gartner, “building more synergistic relationships across the organization to better communicate digital marketing vision” was cited as marketing leaders’ greatest challenge. The ability to connect with your team and collaborate on content is essential to producing timely and impactful newsletters.
    So, when choosing your email marketing service, look for one that provides easy collaboration among your team. In Campaign Monitor’s email marketing software, you can use tags to assign team members and categorize campaigns by date, type, audience segments, and more. This makes it easy for team members to find relevant email campaigns and work together on content.
    2. Signup forms
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    If Scott learned anything from trying to get an intern to sign up at a job fair, it’s the importance of an effective signup form. “[People] are very wary of being lured,” Scott points out. Your signup form represents your company. Its importance is equivalent to Dunder Mifflin having their signup sheet on their own quality paper — not “some Pendleton crap.” If your audience doesn’t immediately see the value of sharing their personal information with you, they’re not likely to sign up for your newsletter.
    The basis of a great newsletter is an engaged subscriber list, which starts with intuitive signup forms. Intuitive signup forms are easy to navigate and integrate with multiple marketing channel platforms to draw your audience in wherever they find you. For example, maybe your newsletter sign-up is in the form of a website pop-up, or maybe it’s a branded landing page that you link to on social media.
    Look for an email service provider that offers fully-customizable signup forms and landing pages that will reflect your brand image and value. Your signup form and landing page should make a promise to your audience about what they can expect from subscribing and showcase quality design and content.
    3. Customization
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    Scott dances to the beat of his own drum. If there’s a standard way of doing something, he will do the exact opposite. He’ll always find a way to be the center of attention. In the words of his alter-ego “date Mike,” “let me do my thang!” In email marketing, you need to be able to “do your thang” to stand out in a crowded medium by customizing your emails.
    With a forecasted 333.2 billion emails sent every day, you need to compete for your audience’s attention. Being competitive in email marketing includes customizing each email message to the individual subscriber. To customize your email messages, you’ll need to use an email marketing platform that enables you to segment your subscriber list and tailor the design to your brand.
    Campaign Monitor’s email builder allows you to customize your email newsletters with the customer’s name, location, gender, interests, or other custom fields. Instead of a generic greeting in yet another marketing email, your subscribers can be invited in by a subject line that features their name and content tailored to their needs and wants. And personalization can have a significant impact on consumers. In fact, according to Accenture, consumers are over 90% more likely to shop when they have an experience personalized to them.
    4. Automation
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    Whether it’s paper or his infamous catchphrase “that’s what she said,” Scott is always keen on delivery. Similarly, email delivery takes finesse to achieve the greatest impact. Marketing automation is the key to delivering email at the most opportune moment in your customer’s journey. Automation takes email list segmentation to the next level by personalizing the timeliness of delivery through app integrations.
    For example, through e-commerce store integrations, you can automate transactional emails after a purchase is made or with CRM integrations that automate welcome emails. Automation features can send emails at the most crucial moments in the customer journey. Automation frees your team up to focus on larger initiatives like long-term retention and product offers while still maintaining the customer connection.
    In addition, automation can improve email deliverability rates by enabling delivery throttling. Delivery throttling is when you send your email in small waves to avoid hitting rate limits or getting marked as spam by email service providers (ESPs). With automation, you can easily set the parameters for send times, hit play, and get back to running your business.
    5. A/B Testing
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    A/B testing (also called split testing) is to marketing teams what gift-giving is to Scott. It’s a litmus test for what your audience is responding to. A strong email marketing tool should give clear attribution to specific elements so you can optimize your marketing strategy accordingly. In the immortal words of Scott, “It’s like this tangible thing that you can point to and say ‘hey, man, I love you this many dollars worth.’”
    Rather than making assumptions based on general email performance, A/B testing allows teams to optimize based on tangible data. It’s imperative your email newsletter service has the capability to run A/B tests, determine results, and automate optimization accordingly.
    This means you should be able to send two versions of an email campaign to a portion of your subscriber list. And then, after a set period, the platform should be able to determine the best one based on whatever KPI you set. Once it determines a winner, automation should trigger the winning email to be sent to the remaining audience.
    A/B testing allows you to create something your audience engages with and continually improve upon it. Just like Scott’s advice to beet-farming Dwight Shrute, “Nobody likes beets boring emails, Dwight! Why don’t you grow send something that everybody does like? You should grow candy send something that’s proven to be engaging.”
    6. Real-time analytics
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    The success of your email campaigns will only be as strong as your ability to track overall performance and conversions. If you can’t track this data in real time, it’s difficult to estimate the business impact of your newsletter. And if there’s one thing Scott hates, it’s being underestimated. To grow your audience and business, you need granular information about engagement and performance.
    A good email service will make analyzing your email performance easy by not just measuring KPIs but surfacing actionable insights to build on. Email analytics should allow you to compare your email marketing performance to other channels so you can gain a holistic view of audience engagement. With a complete view, you can then build comprehensive strategies to increase your bottom line.
    For example, when you have annual data in view, you can uncover seasonal trends in the data. Once you identify trends, you can better understand what type of content will perform the best and adjust your content calendar to optimize for conversions.
    7. Email templates
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    While Scott definitely has his fair share of unique ideas (i.e., fake firings, the golden ticket idea), when he needs an idea with a quick turnaround, he often will look outside himself. For example, when he needs help coming up with an idea to fulfill his lifelong dream of leaving his mark in wet cement, he asks his employees.
    When it comes to delivering impactful email marketing, quick turnarounds are often the name of the game, which is where email templates come in. Rather than wasting time building every email from scratch, email templates provide proven designs you can customize on the fly.
    Better yet, if you use an email marketing tool like Campaign Monitor’s custom template builder, all you have to do to get a customized template is enter your company’s URL. The tool will identify logos, brand colors, and fonts and then build a template perfectly tailored to your brand.
    8. Ease of use
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    Scott is not a man of nuance, and when it comes to technical explanations, he’d rather just keep it simple. Preferably the kind of simple that also helps him avoid working or thinking too hard. In Scott’s own words, “Why don’t you explain this to me like I’m five.” If he were choosing an email service provider, it would be one with a simple, easy-to-use interface.
    Your email service provider should be making your life easier, not causing more headaches. If you want to customize something, you should be able to drag and drop exactly what you need without complicated HTML or CSS codes or a janky workaround. You’re a professional with too many things on your plate to be wasting time on an email service platform that doesn’t work for you.
    Campaign Monitor’s drag-and-drop editor, free templates, and developer tools like our CSS inline generator make designing one-of-kind emails easy even for beginners.
    9. Automated link review
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    We’ve all been there: you work for days on perfecting the design and messaging of an email newsletter, do a final grammar check, and hit send. And then you get a response. Only it’s not the response you’re hoping for; it’s the dreaded “ Ummm… the link isn’t working” response. After all that effort, all you can do is shake your head in defeat with Scott and say, “I tried!”
    But there’s a better way. With automated link review, your email service provider can catch those broken links before you ever hit send. So, when you do hit send, you can rest assured the only responses you’ll get are the ones saying how great your newsletter was. To which you can reply as confidently as Scott, “I am Beyonce, always.”
    10. Price-conscious
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    If there’s one thing Michael values, it’s a good deal. “I basically decorated my condo for free with all of my swag,” Scott brags after sharing the true definition of SWAG (Stuff We All Get). While a strong email marketing platform is invaluable, it is important to know that your investment is worth it. It’s especially important for small businesses and startups that have to be extra budget-conscious.
    Campaign Monitor allows you to try its tool out with a free plan, so you can be certain it’s a good fit before making the investment. And, if you choose to move to a paid plan, pricing is based on the size of your email list, so you’re not paying for what you don’t need.
    Build your brand without wasting time and energy
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    If you have an inefficient email service provider, you might be “working so hard, [you] forgot what it’s like to be hardly working,” in the words of Scott. What you need is an email service provider built for busy professionals who have stuff to do. Campaign Monitor is here to make building high-converting email campaigns easy.
    The post 10 Features Michael Scott Would Look for in an Email Newsletter Service appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

  • Artificial Intelligence in Digital Marketing

    The evolution of chatbots responding to client inquiries is the most well-known application of artificial intelligence in digital marketing. With deeper data analysis, artificial intelligence aspires to surpass humans in spotting marketing trends. Read more submitted by /u/ridamughal110 [link] [comments]

  • Artificial Intelligence in Marketing Examples

    There are several artificial intelligence in marketing examples and its success in industrial growth. Ad optimization, engagement, and high revenues are essential to compete in digital business marketing. Advertisers are employing AI in marketing to automate and improve their promotional ways. Read more submitted by /u/ridamughal110 [link] [comments]

  • How to Set Up Twitter Newsletters and Why Newsletters Aren’t Going Anywhere

    You probably check your email every day, whether for work or personal reasons, and so do millions of other people. As a result, newsletters are an excellent vehicle for reaching an audience, whether you have a brand or you’re trying to build one. And in a day and age where almost anything can have a subscription model, there’s more opportunity for the average person to create a valuable source of income.Revue is an online publishing platform aimed at writers and publishers that Twitter acquired in 2021. Now, Twitter users have access to an integration that allows them to set up and display their newsletter on their profile quickly. Thanks to its simple interface and Twitter integration, anyone can start creating and publishing a newsletter and immediately find an audience.How to Set Up Your Twitter NewsletterStep 1: You can only set up your newsletter from the Twitter desktop app, so open that and click on More → Newsletters.Step 2: This gives you a ‘Find Out More’ screen, which takes you to RevueStep 3: Click Sign up with Twitter or Sign up with emailStep 4: Follow the instructions to set up your account and start publishing!Why use Revue?What gives Revue an edge over other online publishing platforms like Substack or Medium? Along with features like analytics and scheduling, here are some reasons to consider:Retroactive viewing: Your past issues can easily be viewed by interested subscribers, making it easy for them to revisit your older work.The Week Ahead Horoscope2. Ease of discovery: Newsletters are easily discovered and subscribed to when pinned to a Twitter profile.3. Monetization: You can set up your newsletter to receive free and paid subscribers (and Revue only takes 5 percent of your earnings, compared to Substack’s 10 percent). Another opportunity for monetization is through newsletter sponsorships – a growing option for brands looking to create targeted ads. Ghost has a great guide to getting newsletter sponsorships.4. Cross publishing: Along with publishing your newsletter, Revue also has integrations that allow users to share content on other platforms like WordPress and social media.5. Custom domains: You can get a Revue domain name or connect your custom domain. Revue beats platforms like Substack and Medium in this instance because you can make this change for free.6. Own your means of production: Because you can cross publish so easily with Revue, it’s easier to control what happens with your content. You never have to worry about censorship or losing access to your primary platform for reaching your audience.Best practices for newsletter creatorsIf you’ve landed on newsletters as your method of creation, there are some things you need to keep in mind if you want people to read your work.Figure out what you want your newsletter to cover. Newsletters come in different forms, with people sending their opinions on news to others sharing job postings. It helps your readers know what to expect, and you know what to create every week.Balance your newsletter content. Create material that is less promotional and more helpful. For example, as long as your readers didn’t subscribe to an ecommerce website, they shouldn’t receive a newsletter packed with CTAs to purchase something or the other.Set clear expectations on your Subscribe page. Get specific with potential subscribers and tell them exactly what to expect from your newsletter and how often they’ll hear from you. Matthew Cassinelli’s What’s New in Shortcuts newsletter does a great job.What’s New in Shortcuts profile pagePick one primary call to action. It can be tempting to direct your readers to a million places (and that’s still possible by linking within your content) but resist it. Instead, share one principal thing you want your readers to do (forward the email? watch a video?) and make that the focus of your CTA.Go for minimalist copy and design. Cluttered emails get me to click off, and many newsletter readers can probably relate. Use a minimal design and keep the focus on your words/content to grip and hold readers’ attention.Make it easy for people to unsubscribe. Your readers should be able to choose if they want you in their inbox or not. If needed, make the unsubscribe button more prominent and remind users that they can unsubscribe at any time.Inspiration for your Twitter newsletterIf you’re thinking of starting a newsletter through Twitter, here are some great examples we love that might inspire you.Blaze-Maximus: Astrologer Blaze Maximus shares weekly astrological transits through their newsletter “the Week Ahead Horoscope.”Linda Ikechukwu: Everything Technical Writing was created by Linda Ikechukwu to share articles and advice for aspiring technical writers.Everything Technical Writing’s profile pageCarlos Silva: Carlos shares vetted remote marketing jobs through his newsletter, Hello Remote.Sam Dickie: The Creator Club is Sam’s brainchild where he shares the latest digital products, interesting articles, and resources from online creatives.The Creator Club’s profile pageThe Writing Cooperative: In an interesting move, the creators of This Week in Writing moved from Medium to Revue. The newsletter is now cross-posted on both platforms.Beyond the more traditional newsletter formats on this list is Pieter Levels (Levelsio), who uses the newsletter feature to back up his email list.💡Check out 14 Newsletters You’ll Want in Your Inbox in 2021 for some other newsletters that could inspire yours.Why newsletters aren’t going anywhereYou may think newsletters are an oversaturated medium — as the thousands of unread emails in your inbox can attest — but they’re not going anywhere just yet. Here’s why.Creative control: Newsletters give you control. This ties into the rise of the creator economy, which refers to the increasing freedom of creators to monetize their work (think Youtubers or writers). What sets newsletters apart from other forms of creation is that you own everything – your email list, what you choose to publish, and where you choose to publish it. As a result, the power to be heard is no longer concentrated in the hands of massive publications, and it’s easier than ever to share your work. Newsletters are part of this new paradigm, with people seeing enough success that they can quit their day jobs and turn their writing side hustle into a full-time endeavor.Big news! I quit my cushy tech job and have gone all-in on writing.I’ve been making my content at night and on the weekends. Finally, after 11 months of grinding, Napkin Math is big enough for me to bet the farm. Thank you to my readers and @every for making this possible.— Evan Armstrong (@itsurboyevan) March 23, 2022

    Increased mobile access: Smartphones currently account for 70 percent of the total digital media time in the US, as more and more people read things on their phones, newsletters included.Monetization opportunities: Thanks to newsletters, it’s easier to make writing a full-time job. In addition, essayists have a platform to make money other than hoping the New York Times. Platforms like Paved make it easier for companies to discover and connect with newsletter publishers. And collectives like Every have made it easier for writers to earn income from content.Falling ad performance: Newsletters are especially vital in light of data privacy issues and the increased use of ad blockers. As a result, advertisers that need to figure out alternative ways to reach targeted audiences will increasingly flock to newsletters.Should you start a newsletter?Newsletters aren’t for everyone or every type of audience. It’s a great way to achieve organic growth and gain control of your publishing, but like any type of creative endeavor, it takes time and effort. You’ll need to be consistent and have enough material to keep you and your readers’ interest. If you’re doing it for your business, you might want to research more in-depth before just starting a Twitter newsletter before putting in the work required to make such a project successful.