Content & List Building

3 Profit Sucking Content List Building Mistakes

And more importantly, what to do instead

Content is a great way to build your highly responsive list. At the same time, there are a great many mistakes that can be made when building a list with content.

One of my students recently told me she was listening to a webinar where the speaker said that using content marketing to build a list no longer worked. My response was let’s just hope all of our competition believes that.

So here are 3 of the biggest Content List Building Mistakes and what to do instead:

Content List Building Mistake #1: Not Even Building a List With Your Content

Some people just don’t take the time to build a list. They think they can just market to one person at a time. And do all the work to get a new person. And hard sell them. And then it doesn’t matter if you are on the list or not. Well, that can work, one, if you’ve got the personality for it, and two, if you want to just work, work, work too hard to get one sale.

What to Do Instead: Having a list is a very, very valuable thing in this regard because you can learn from them before you offer them the next success step.

So don’t make the mistake of thinking that you don’t need a list. When you are marketing on the internet it just doesn’t make sense to not have a list.

If you want a long term business, and that is what I focus on, building long term businesses over time, a highly responsive list is the only way to go that makes good sense.

Content List Building Mistake #2: Focusing ONLY on the Numbers

The second most common mistake made when list building with your content is to focus on the numbers instead of responsiveness. Many internet marketers focus on the number of people on their list, so they can walk around at meetings saying:

“I’ve got 37 bagazillion people on my list”

They don’t care if some of them are responsive or some of them don’t even read their stuff. They don’t care if some of them are dead. Kind of like old church rolls. They just want to be able to say they’ve got 37 bagazillion people on their list.

What to Do Instead: I would rather have a small responsive list than a list with 37 bagazillion people on it that are not responsive. If I had to choose between a small responsive list and a large unresponsive list, I’d take the small responsive list every time.

Now, of course, you want to create a large responsive list. The point is that over focus on the numbers will hurt you.

Focus on responsiveness when list building with your content.

Content List Building Mistake #3: Getting Comfortable Once You’ve Built Your List Community

One of the most common mistakes to make when list building with your content is to get comfortable. I’ve done it, and I bet you have too. You build your list and you get to some numbers that you feel good about and it’s fun to tell people about your list.

Your list is responsive. You are making sales. Then you get comfortable. It’s human nature, folks, and there is this deadly disease along the road of success called Arrival Syndrome. That’s the notion that we set a goal, work real hard to get there and then we get there and stop doing all of the things that got us there in the first place.

It sounds so dumb, but it’s human nature. We get comfortable and boom! We stop doing what got us there and sure enough, the thing begins to slack off.

What to Do Instead: Getting to the top of something is good. It’s difficult and it takes work. Staying on top is harder. And so my cure for the Arrival Syndrome is when you meet a goal, when you reach a goal, in this case, when you’ve built a good, highly responsive list, don’t relax.

In order to keep it going, not only keep doing the things you did to get you there, do more of them. Do more of them.

Not only keep doing the things that got you there but do more of them.

This will keep you at the top.

Bonus Content List Building Tip 1: Once You’ve Built a List, Follow Up with Your List

Content Marketing helps you to build a very responsive list. Then you have to follow up.

Do you think the people that sign up for my list, and they get a confirmation email, do you think that’s the last one they’re going to get?

No. They are now subscribed to an auto responder series. There will be another follow up email, and there will be a couple of invitations inviting people to their next success steps.

On all my lists, on all my auto responder sequences, when people subscribe to something, there will also be one 365 days from now. You can set your auto responders to do that. 365 days from now, they will get an anniversary email.

“You’ve been with me for a year, happy anniversary, thanks for doing that, here’s a free report on X and a half-price offer on Y.”

Now, what I’ve just told you is golden in terms of developing a long-term business. Because once you get enough content out there to drive consistent daily traffic to your website and you get new subscribers to all your things every day like I do, what that means is once you’ve done that for a year, here’s something I know. Without me lifting a finger, because it’s all automated and people subscribed a year ago, every day, somebody in the world, and usually lots of somebodies, are getting an email from me, all automated, giving them something for free and offering them something for half price.

So if you want to build long-term residual passive income, this is a great way to do it.

BONUS Tip 2: Ready to get started? Cool. Here’s a mercifully brief “WorkShop-It! Webinar Show” in which you create your first (or next) opt-in give away.

I know it’s a radical notion to actually get something done on a webinar, but hey, why not? Get started here.

And for more great list building tips and tools visit my List Building Hub: