What happens when people start following you? You will find yourself needing an email platform. However, I use AWeber; there are others to choose from.

In other segments we talk about “How do I… blog?” I also exposed you “What happens after writing a blog? Part one and part two”. To pick up where we left off, I want to mention that he will start to gather a following. This is a group of people who are interested in what you have to say. Once you start getting these followers, you need to organize them. How do you organize these people? Well, one way is to use an email platform.

What is an email platform?

Simply put, it’s a way to store the email addresses you get from those interested in following you. Once you have emails, you can now communicate with these people over and over again.

Let’s say you’re writing a blog every day and sharing your knowledge. You are doing everything mentioned in the previous articles and now people are following you. Now you need a place to put these interested people so that you can continue to connect with them. You may want to share special information only with them that you don’t want to share with everyone on the Internet. How are you going to do this? With a mail platform.

However, there are different companies that offer mail platforms; the one I use is AWeber. They offer $1 to try them. If you like them, continue using them. If you have another platform and want to try something else, try AWeber and remember that it costs $1 for a trial. They make it easy to change with migration software. They also provide step by step instructions for this. Learn more here.

If you’re new to email platforms, there are a few things you should know. They help you set up newsletters, collect subscribers, and track your progress. They also integrate with your Facebook accounts, Twitter feeds, and your blog to allow you easier ways to send your messages.

Starting with the newsletters. Maybe you want to write something special (an offer, technical training or just a warm welcome) to the people who follow you. You write a newsletter on your email platform and it will be mailed to the people you choose. You can even schedule your message for a certain day if you want. An example would be for Valentine’s or something like that, you may not want to send it in January so just put it on a schedule.

I don’t know of other platforms, so I’ll tell you about the one I use, AWeber. The AWeber platform gives me really cool templates that make my newsletters and blog posts stand out; they become unique to me. I love having this ability.

There is also a feature where I can tell AWeber my blog info and every time I write a new blog they take it and put it on my mailing list for me. I no longer have to remember to do it myself or waste time doing the steps over and over again. This saves me probably 10 minutes of time for each post I write. I know 10 minutes doesn’t sound like a long time, but it can be if you forget to copy your posts into the mailbox, like I did, and you have a lot to catch up on. AWeber simplifies my life.

Email platforms allow image hosting. The images will be stored in a gallery to use whenever you want. Images are added to your Masterpiece newsletters by simply dragging and dropping them into posts. Images you upload can be moved, resized and replaced with just a click.

Another great feature that email platforms offer is the support of Facebook and Twitter. They send their followers a link to their latest information. This helps you grow a list (people who follow you) by adding a record to your message.

I could go on and on about how having an email platform will help you, but you really need to try it for yourself. I found some helpful videos explaining how email platforms are a valuable tool for you.