❤️‍🩹 Healing FOMO, Newsletters vs Email Marketing & My Take on Paid Ads [Listener Q&A]

Amelia [00:00:01] [Sparkly synth music begins to play, overlapping with the introduction to the episode] Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients.

Melissa Kaitlyn Carter [00:00:08] [Music continues to play as Melissa Kaitlyn Carter begins to sing] Let's go, off the grid. Okay! Let's go, off the grid. Okay! I know that you really want to put your phone away. Yeah! Let's go, off the grid.

Amelia [00:00:24] [Singing fades out but synthy sounds continue] Have you ever wished that you could have a successful business without social media? Well, you're in luck. I'm Amelia Hruby, writer, speaker, and founder of Softer Sounds Podcast Studio.

Amelia [00:00:34] On this show, I share stories, strategies, and experiments for growing your business with radical generosity and energetic sovereignty. Download the free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig. That's b-y-e-i-g and join us in doing it all Off the Grid.

Melissa Kaitlyn Carter [00:00:56] [Music gets louder as Melissa Kaitlyn Carter sings again] Let's go, off the grid. Okay! Let's go, off the grid. Okay! I know that you want to put your phone away. Yeah! Let's go, off the grid [music fades out].

Amelia Hruby:

[1:00] Hello, hello, and welcome or welcome back to Off The Grid, a podcast about running a successful business with no or minimal social media presence.

I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. I am the founder of Softer Sounds, a feminist podcast studio for entrepreneurs and creatives, as well as the co-founder of the Lifestyle Business League and the co-teacher of Living Systems this year.

And on this podcast, I share my journey running all of those businesses without social media and how I have grown Softer Sounds from a tiny, tiny kind of side hustle-y freelance practice to a business that now supports a tiny team of contractors, myself, and a few dozen podcast clients.

And we did all that in only two years. What a dream.

If you're on the Softer Sounds email list, you probably saw our two-year yearbook that just went out a few weeks ago, if you're listening live.

If you wanna get on that list, head to the show notes, you can learn more about my podcast studio there.

[2:11] But this episode is not about me.

It is all about you, my friends, because today is our listener Q&A episode.

I love doing these episodes. I just said it's not about me, but I will say I love doing them.

I love answering your questions. I love hearing from you. I love making sure that Off The Grid is supporting the things you're actually thinking and wondering about and facing in your businesses.

This is a show that's meant to serve you and support you in your journey off social media and into a successful business.

And so the listener Q&A episodes are where we really get to dive into your questions.

In today's listener Q&A, We are gonna talk about newsletter ads.

We are gonna talk about email marketing.

We are gonna talk about how I handle the FOMO that shows up when you're not on social media anymore.

But before we get into that, two quick reminders.

If you're new around here, if this is your very first or one of your first episodes, I want to invite you to download our free Leaving Social Media Toolkit.

It includes our five-step plan for leaving any social platform, a list of 100 ways to share your work without social media, and a database for planning creative marketing experiments for your business.

You can get all of that at softersounds.studio/byeig, that's B-Y-E-I-G, and you can find that link in the show notes.

[3:43] If you are not so new around here and you have been listening for a while, maybe you've even been listening since season one, first of all, I am so grateful for your time, your attention, your care. It is truly an honor to be in your earbuds. And if you've been listening since season one, you might remember that last year, we wrapped season one with a listener Q&A episode that went live the week before the refresh. Now this year, once again, I am sharing a listener Q&A episode right before the refresh, which is next week, if you have been paying attention.

[4:26] But unlike last year, we are not ending the season right here. So rather than thinking of the refresh as a celebration of the end of the season, I'm thinking of it as a really beautiful way to gather at the end of summer and before the start of fall to make sure our businesses are set up for success in the season ahead by mapping our marketing ecosystem, getting really clear about our core offers, core channels, and core community. All of that is happening in the refresh next week, but the podcast is not going away for six months after that, which is what I did last year.

This year, we are extending season two for another 10 episodes. So for the next six weeks, you can expect an amazing interview series here on the podcast. I am going to be talking to some of my favorite artists, influencers, small business owners, who are going to be here to share their favorite tools for having a successful business and or wonderful life off of social media.

[5:33] Those conversations will be about things ranging from money to emails, to blogging, to community.

And I'm really pumped for the folks that are gonna be here to join us for that. So you're definitely gonna wanna stay tuned, make sure you're subscribed, send the show to a friend, get them subscribed too so we can all talk about these things.

And then in October, I'm gonna be launching something super special that I am so excited about just for off the grid listeners.

So if you want all the goodness now, it's not too late to sign up for the refresh next week, head to the show notes, get all the info, grab your ticket, and then stay tuned for our interview series coming up through the end of September and a big announcement in October.

I'm really excited to be extending this season, to be spending more time with you all, and for everything that's coming up, It's gonna be fantastic, starting with today's listener Q&A episode.

So let's go ahead and dive on in to our first question.

Victoria:

[6:43] Hi, it's Victoria. In the Substack episode, you talked about content versus like email newsletters.

And yeah, I'm just so curious about that. Are those two things like very separate or do they blow sometimes? Like sometimes your newsletters are a combination of content and marketing or is the content you offer your marketing?

Have a wonderful day and I look forward to hearing from you.

Amelia:

[6:06] Thank you so much for this question, because we all know that I love to talk about email. And we in fact, have a whole episode coming up about emails and newsletters and email marketing with Holly Wilkoszewski in a few weeks. So stay tuned for a whole hour long conversation on this topic. But for now, I'm going to give you my answer in brief.

So the difference between content and email newsletters, I think in that episode, the way I framed it was the difference between email marketing and an email newsletter.

To me, an email newsletter is an email that you send regularly to your mailing list with updates on what is happening in your business or your creative practice or your life. The way I think of it is quite literal, it is a letter full of news. And sometimes that news may be I have a new course, I have a new product for sale, We've sold a ton of this thing. Would you like it? You know, sometimes that news can be, sharing offerings, which is similar to marketing or sales. But often that news is more so, you know, an update on something personal or an update on what's happening at the business.

[8:19] And often I've really started to see newsletters more and more, you know, contain links to many other things and share kind of a lot of different sorts of information and asks.

And don't get me wrong, I love a good email newsletter. But I think that email marketing is something slightly different.

So to me, email marketing is going to be an email or a series of emails that are really geared toward raising your audience's awareness around things that you are selling and selling those things to them.

And so your newsletter can do some of that.

But I feel like it's pretty rare that I see a newsletter that is really making the sell for something.

Some of that comes down to, in my opinion, the difference between sharing and selling. So to me, sharing an offering or a product would be saying, look at this cool thing I made, you can buy it. That's sharing. You've let people know it's out there and that it's available for purchase. But selling to me is more persuasive. It's really making the case for or why this offering or service or product is important, how it will impact the buyer or the client, how it will support them, what transformation it will create for them.

Selling requires taking your reader, in the case of email, on a journey. And sharing is more so like putting up a flyer.

[9:50] I think this is actually a common struggle for many business owners, especially new business owners and creative business owners, where we put so much care into the things that we are creating, the offerings that we are selling.

There's so much care in there.

There's so much value in there.

By the time we create them, we might write a sort of info page about this beautiful thing that we have made or our teaching or our selling, but we're not actually taking the next step of painting that more persuasive picture of why this thing is so important and why it matters for the person purchasing it.

And full disclosure, I used to sell this way and I still do sometimes.

Sometimes I'll just put something out there and write a nice little like info page and people will buy it.

And sometimes they won't buy it because I really have to do a better job of telling the story of the journey that this offering or product will take the customer on.

And telling that story not just in a literal way, but in an emotional way, in a personal way.

I think about this a lot as the founder of a podcast studio. Of course, I'm selling podcast editing to people. Of course, I'm selling the transformation from you don't have a podcast to you do have a podcast. But my sales pages are much more about the feeling that you're gonna get when you work with us. They're much more about the softness of our support, the way that we blend tender and technical approaches to this skill of podcasting. They're much more about the emotional journey from someone who is timid about sharing their voice to confident in speaking aloud.

[11:31] That is really uncovering what people are buying when they purchase a podcast package.

And that is sales, not just sharing.

And that is really hard to do in an email newsletter.

That requires email marketing for me because it requires multiple emails, It requires a journey, it requires time. So how do I apply this in my business?

Let's use off the grid as a case study. With this podcast, I'm always sharing our free Leaving Social Media Toolkit. That is what's called a lead magnet, which means it's something that I'm offering in exchange for your email address.

When you download the Leaving Social Media Toolkit, you get an email that delivers the toolkit to you, and then you get a series of follow-up emails. And in those follow-up emails, I am offering more support. I am painting the picture of the problem that the toolkit solves, and I'm taking you on the journey of where you can go if you actually implement the toolkit and step into what's next for you and your business.

And through that journey, I am selling a mini course or another resource that is a paid resource that comes after the free resource. And I'm making the case for why, if you liked the free thing, you will really enjoy the paid thing. That is email marketing. I am using email to raise awareness about this particular offering I have and to sell it to the reader of the email.

[13:02] Now, after you go through that sequence, then you end up on the off-the-grid mailing list. That is a weekly newsletter that I send out every Wednesday when there's a new episode of the show.

That is, once again, a letter with news. There's a new episode, here's your update, go listen to it. Sometimes in that newsletter, I will share an offering at the bottom. So, you know, there'll be an episode at the top. And then if you're listening right now, there will be the refresh at the bottom.

That's more sharing than selling, letting you know it's available or reminding you that it's time to register. And then you can go to the sales page where I'm actually selling it. But in the email newsletter itself, I'm giving you the news about the new episode and I'm just sharing that the offering exists and you can go learn more. That's very different than like the storytelling and selling that I was doing in the nurture sequence.

And to me, that's the difference between email marketing and an email newsletter.

[14:00] I think that for beginning business owners, sometimes a newsletter is all you need. I don't think you need to overcomplicate your marketing ecosystem, especially when you're just getting started.

But I also think it's important to reflect on how you are making the sale for your products and your offerings. Because the sort of simple sharing of like, hey, it's available for purchase, or even like, hey, look how amazing this is, it's available for purchase.

That is often just asking your customer, do you want this, yes or no? And it's not meeting them in the space most of them will be in, which is, I don't know, do I want that?

[14:39] Sales is how we take them from, I don't know, to a yes. Or I think in the most ethical sales practices, how we help them discern if it is a yes or a no.

I know I've used words like persuasive or sales as persuading people here, but I think maybe I should be replacing that with discerning.

Sales is about helping people discern if this is right for them or not. And one way people can do that is by empathizing or not with the story that you're telling about the journey or the transformation or the promise of this offering or product.

So again, email newsletters are about sharing, they're about information, they're about news updates, and email marketing is about selling, is about storytelling and is about helping your reader or potential customer client discern if your offering or product is right for them.

[15:44] Okay, obviously, I need to do a whole episode on sales because I had a lot to say there, a lot more than I expected was gonna come out when I started recording that answer.

So that's that for now.

[14:56] Let's move on to the next question.

Yoda:

Hi, Amelia. I just wanted to say how much I love your podcast and it's been game-changing for my life.

And I'm still working at getting off social media, but I'm an avid listener.

And I was wondering how you deal with FOMO.

I keep having this fear that I'm missing out on life because I'm not spending as much time on Instagram.

I miss event invites, I miss photos from weddings, and sometimes I'll miss an Instagram Live that I was really interested in. So I'm just wondering how you deal with that, more from an emotional perspective.

Thanks.

Amelia:

[16:38] Another amazing question, the FOMO question. This one I'm just gonna answer really personally, because it was requested from an emotional perspective and I only know my own emotions on this personally. So I'm gonna answer it that way.

I think that for me, I noticed FOMO come up a lot when I first left social media. I felt isolated from my friends. I felt like I didn't know what was going on in my community. I felt like I was missing out on these things that were happening. Whether that be a local event or a friend's life event or the news. But I would say that, over time I shifted my habits so that I was then getting those updates in other places.

So now I find out about local events from the newspaper or from friends sharing them with me or by checking the sites of some of the places I know that host events that I want to learn about and go to. I find out about events in my friends' lives by asking them, which definitely takes more effort than simply receiving the news on social media, but it also feels more personal and I think has strengthened many of my relationships.

[18:02] And I find out about the news largely through newsletters. I subscribe to many more email newsletters now than I did before I left social media. Those are kind of my practical tips. That's what I did to kind of cure those feelings of missing out in the beginning. And by taking those steps over time, the feeling of missing out faded.

How did I handle it when it was still really present? Well, I filled my life with things that I really wanted to do and spend time on. And I put extra energy and effort in reaching out to friends that I wanted to stay close with or spend time with.

But I think a gentle reflection that I want to offer is that in this question, our dear friend who posed it said, I feel like I'm missing out on life because I'm not on Instagram.

But I think that what comes up more often is the inverse of that statement — I feel like I'm missing out on life because I am on Instagram so much.

And so maybe within this question, there's this kind of piece of, what does it mean to you to be on Instagram? What does it mean to you to be in your life? And maybe those aren't antithetical. Maybe within this question is an invitation to change your Instagram habits without needing to leave the platform entirely.

[19:30] I know that in my experience, I had a rather like black and white on or off approach, but it's actually been very gray. I've shared on the show before, I had a Finsta where I did keep up with local events for a while. I recently deactivated it because it just wasn't interesting to me anymore. I feel like I didn't need it, but that was the step I took away from no more personal brand profile to just having a Finsta with very few followers to now not being on social.

So even though my journey may sometimes sound like I was on and then I was off and it was black or white, it was so many shades of gray in between. And I think that if you're really deep in the FOMO, that maybe there are some shades of gray to explore.

I feel like two places that I had really great conversations around this feeling or fear of missing out when leaving social media were in my conversation with Wallis and Michelle on the 12th House podcast. We talked a lot about maintaining friendships off social media and. Navigating all the feelings that that brings up. So I'll link that episode in the show notes if you if you want to hear me in conversation about that. And then Katie Dalebout and I also talked about this quite a bit on her show, Let It Out, in part one of the episode that we did together. So I'll link that in the show notes as well for more reflections on what it means emotionally to leave social media.

And I think that if this fear is coming up in any sort of business context, this is something that we'll address in the refresh. In our first workshop, we talk about the fears that come up when we imagine leaving social media. We also talk about the joys that come up.

So, you know, from FOMO to JOMO, which is a very over-simplified transformation I'm talking about there, but like joy can be the flip side of fear. And rather than focusing on what we might lose if we leave social media on the fear aspect of it, Can we focus on what we might gain and the joy aspect of it? So if you wanna do that together, we can do that in the refresh, which if you're listening live is happening next week.

And I'm gonna wrap this answer there and take us into our third and final cue of our Q&A.

Uma:

[23:44] Hi, Amelia. I synchronistically chanced upon you and your work.

I don't even know what led me to you, But I have been so inspired by your off-the-grid podcast episodes, I'm still working my way through season one. About three weeks ago, I deactivated my Facebook account, and as of yesterday, I pulled the plug on Instagram as well. So just know that you are making a real difference in the world.

And your podcast is really helping sensitive women who want to do gentle business, such as myself and many others. My question had to do with ads in, you mentioned that you were placing ads in community newspapers, did you say?

And so I wondered what publications or community newspapers you might consider to place an ad. Let me know your thoughts on that. Thank you so much.

Amelia:

[24:51] Thank you to Uma for this beautiful question. I love talking about newsletter ads and I think my answer here is a little bit short and sweet. So I often get asked how I find newsletters to advertise in.

And my first answer is that I subscribe to a lot of newsletters in the areas I'm interested in and I pay attention to which ones have ads.

Generally the best way to find aligned newsletters and audiences that you want to put your work in front of is to be paying attention to what you're interested in.

Follow your heart, babe. That is the path to advertising in newsletters.

Now, a few of my faves that I like to advertise in would be Anne Friedman's newsletter. She's got great classified ads.

I also love the I Love Creatives newsletter. That one spans so many different types of creative people that I feel like I'm always learning about new and interesting things there and I can share almost anything I'm up to with that audience.

[25:58] I think that in addition to finding or choosing newsletters you might want to advertise in, there are a few things that I want you to consider before you place those ads.

So one is, what is your goal for the ad?

In the past, when I was a freelance audio editor, I did some newsletter ads just sharing, I'm a feminist podcast editor, learn about my work. And it just linked people through to a landing page to learn about my work. And I got some click throughs, but no inquiries and no longer lasting relationships because the people who clicked that link read the page and then disappeared from my ecosystem. It would have benefited me much more if at the very least I had got their email addresses.

So now when I advertise in newsletters, I generally share a lead magnet or some thing that's going to help me get the emails of the people that click through.

That way I can reach out to them. I can maintain a relationship with them. I can get to know them and nurture that relationship so that in the future I might sell them something. We can think back to my first answer on that sharing and selling distinction.

The ad is simply sharing. It's my job to find the way to sell after that if I wanna convert that person into a paying customer or client.

[26:20] Or if we go back to that framework of knowing how your marketing efforts grow your audience, nurture your community, or sell your offerings, newsletter ads are a great way to grow your audience. And then from there, you will still have to nurture that relationship and sell them your offerings. When people come to you from a newsletter ad, they're pretty cold lead, as they would say in the marketing world, which means they don't really know you.

[26:49] And it's your job to warm them up such that you have a nice, hot, sexy, spicy relationship and they want to buy things. The softer sounds of the Scorpio rising. So there's a little bit of sexiness there. But I think where I'll leave this thought about newsletter ads is to actually send you back to my conversation with Michelle Warner about relationship marketing.

Because I think that often what people want when they're buying a newsletter ad is they want a relationship with that newsletter's audience, with those readers. And an ad is a tiny, tiny opening into a relationship with a tiny, tiny percentage of the audience.

And after my conversation with Michelle, I think that it's often more valuable for us to have more meaningful newsletter swaps or cross promotions with creators that we know, I think that can be more valuable for our businesses than purchasing newsletter ads.

And of course, building those relationships takes time, creating those materials takes time.

Believe me, I know how tempting it is to just purchase the ad space and buy the relationship or attempt to buy that airtime, that relationship space.

But over and over again, in my business at least, I learn that relationships are where it's at and that I can't just buy them.

[27:21] No matter what social media taught me I could do or promised me I could get.

So that's where I'll leave us with newsletter ads.

Follow your heart and your interests to find great newsletters to advertise in and reflect on what your goals are for the ad, remembering that newsletter ads are audience growth efforts and you need clear ways to nurture those relationships and sell your products or offerings after those people enter your ecosystem.

And depending on what types of things you sell, that sort of cold lead coming in from a newsletter ad may not be what best serves your business right now.

[28:00] Okay, my loves, thank you so much for tuning in to this listener Q&A episode. And thank you so much to everyone who sent in questions. It has been so much fun to answer you and to speak directly to what's on your mind instead of just always floating around and what's on my mind.

[28:22] Again, if you are listening the week that this episode releases, I would love to see you at The Refresh. Registration closes Friday, August 18th at 11 59pm. If you're listening in the future, I hope you will head to the show notes to find more ways that we can hang out or work together.

And stay tuned next week as we kick off our interview series for the fall with a conversation about money with my dearest friend and collaborator, Grace Allerdice. That's what's to come here on this little podcast. But until next time, my friends, I will see you off the grid.

Melissa Kaitlyn Carter [Melissa Kaitlyn Carter begins to sing over sparkly synthy sounds] Let's go off the grid. Okay! Let's go off the grid. Okay! I know that you really want to put your phone away. Yeah! Let's go off the grid.

Amelia [Music continues to play softly] Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Find links and resources in the show notes and don't forget to grab your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig.

Amelia This podcast is a Softer Sounds production. Our music is by Melissa Kaitlyn Carter and our logo is by n'atelier Studio.

Amelia If you'd like to make a podcast of your own, we'd love to help. Find more about our services at softersounds.studio. Until next time, we'll see you Off the Grid.

Melissa Kaitlyn Carter [Melissa Kaitlyn Carter sings the new theme song again] Let's go off the grid. Okay! Let's go off the grid. Okay! I know that you really wanna put your phone away. Yeah! Let's go off the grid [sparkly synthy sounds fade out].