help me with my big badass banana (and why you might want one for yourself)
I was on the phone with online marketing genius (among other things) Marie Forleo and she told me that my site immediately needed two things: an opt-in box and a Big Banana.
(I like to think of this as one of the [many] blogging mistakes I made so that you don't have to. I put off and I put off and I put off my opt-in box and my Big Banana. And now, how I shake my head ruefully at myself. Don't let this happen to you, boys and girls.)
An opt-in box is that thing you see just below my photo in the sidebar. It urges you to ENTER YOUR NAME AND EMAIL ADDRESS so that you can be on my List. Once you're on my List, I can email you stuff that you will hopefully find cool, interesting and useful. Theoretically, this will be my Newsletter. I'm psyched to finally be starting a Newsletter, although I'm not entirely sure what I'll put on it.
So any suggestions you might have are totally and eagerly welcomed.
A Newsletter is a chance for me to get a tad more personal, do updates and round-ups and also to go above and beyond the Tribal Writer blog: reflect on the blog posts and comments that happened that month and take a certain aspect of what we were talking about and go a little deeper. Since a Newsletter is, when you think on it, asking a lot of a person – to give up her email, space in her inbox, time and attention – I think it should deliver a little something extra. Another dimension, if you will, to your experience of the Tribal Writer conversation.
(And I totally want to do book giveaways. I love giving away books that I love, books I think are really cool, books that can work some magic in the world, or in your head. So if you're on my List, you can potentially get me to send you a book. For free.)
My opt-in box is powered by Mailchimp and I hired Amanda Krill to set it up for me. I still need to write the text for it.
And I still need to come up with my Big Banana.
The Big Banana is the thing that you offer your visitor in exchange for her email address: a free video or guide or ebook or PDF document that contains such dazzling information that the aforementioned visitor leaps – leaps, I say – to put herself on your fabulous List.
It would be easy for me to repurpose one of my older blog posts, or a series of blog posts, into a Banana. But I'd rather come up with something new, so that even if you've been reading me from the dawn of time you would still want my succulent piece of fruit. (I should probably rephrase that, but whatever.)
That way I can get you exactly where I want you: on my List (….cue maniacal laughter….) for highly nefarious purposes!
(Kidding. My purposes are not that nefarious, I only kind of wish they were.)
So could you help me with this? Say you're a dude (of either gender) who landed on this website. How can I help you? How can I tempt you? If you would be so kind as to comment below (or email me at soulful@me.com) , I – and my big, badass, so-far-nonexistent-yet-I-remain-hopeful Banana – thank you much.
