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So should you offer an RSS Service to your readers? Collect Email? Collect Phone? Or spend your time pushing “likes”, “pins” and “follows”? Well. . .

Our job is to make our audiences smarter, better, happier. We create and distribute information and entertainment. But our ability to provide value to our readers is hampered by our ability to reach them.

Thus one of our primary goals is to collect contact information of those interested in our solutions, so that we can provide this value over and over and over.

We can only reach them when they “like” us, “follow” us, “subscribe” to us and/or “register” with us. If we choose to not offer one of those options we chance losing a reader who enjoys that particular method of communication at that moment. Thus offering all services means our audience gets to engage with us how they want to.

But our greatest asset is email (and more specifically the email autoresponder). That is because with email we have the ability to send exactly what we want, when we want and targeted to whom we want.

But more importantly email is an asynchronous media. That means you don’t have to be there when it is sent. The problem with Radio, TV, Pinterest, Twitter and somewhat Facebook, if you’re not there you’re not going to see it.

Good email and RSS services allow you to create topic-specific lists so that your reader only gets the information that is of interest to them. When your blog covers multiple topics (recipes, deals, homeschool printables and gluten-free diet tips), your gluten-free reader will not open your messages very often if they are often riddled with topics other than gluten-free diet tips. That lack of relevance translates into lower open rates and fewer dollars earned.

The benefit of an email autoresponder is it gives you leverage. An autoresponder is a “pre-written” set of messages that go to your audience with message #1 starting whenever someone signs up. That frees you up to run your business while you’re autoresponder is educating and marketing to your audience.

The part of an autoresponder that is far superior to email and RSS is just that. With everyone getting email #1 when they sign up, you get to hold their hand as you take them on their journey with you.

(But don’t let that fool you, RSS still has its place).

With RSS and email blasts, when someone signs up today they get whatever you happen to be communicating about tomorrow. And often that is not the “101 How-to” information then need to get.

Some clients like Feedblitz, AWeber and 1shoppingCart offer all three services in one. What you choose is purely up to you.

In the end the goal remains the same. Gain the ability to reach out to your audience and draw them back to your site. If you have any chance of creating a “community” of your readers, you can not simply “hope” your content will bring them back. Send them a message and ask them to come back.

Dan R Morris is the author of LettersFromDan, a marketing strategy program dedicated to improving your revenue stream from online efforts. Dan is an infomercial producer, niche website owner, product developer, author and Mastermind leader. Dan actively encourages marketers to take that extra step so that “Hope” doesn’t become the marketing plan.