Blog vs newsletter

[image error]One of the Ten Commandments of marketing is ‘thou shalt have a newsletter’.

The idea behind it is that people who subscribe to a newsletter automatically care about you, your product or the service you provide, so the newsletter helps you communicate with these dedicated people.

But I’ve always wondered why you would bother if you already had a blog?

The people who come to my blog do so of their own free will, and there is no obligation on their part to Like, Comment or Follow. Yet many of them do, so I’m already communicating with them. How is this any different to a newsletter?

In the interests of fair play, I have to admit that:

I rarely read the newsletters to which I am subscribed [but I do visit blogs that I follow].
I abhor the lack of privacy and the assumption of entitlement to data that is practised by the companies that provide free newsletter functionality [the owner of the newsletter may not abuse subscriber data but the companies do].
And I’m lazy, meaning that I can’t imagine where I’d get the time and energy to create yet more worthwhile content for a newsletter.

For all of those reasons, I don’t have a newsletter, but I do still feel guilty about not having one, especially when I read articles by successful writers who swear by them…