Aweber Blog Broadcast Tutorial

Posted at September 12, 2009

I spent a little time this afternoon making a little tweak right here on this blog that might interest you. I’ve been meaning to do this for a good two weeks, but thought it would be to difficult and thus have been very good at putting it off. (Yes, it’s been hovering on my to-do list for almost that long).

You probably noticed the email update box at the very top right hand side of the blog. The template I am using was originally set up to accomplish this through feedburner, but I decided that Aweber’s Blog Broadcast was a much better tool for the job.

I’ve been using Aweber for my lists and newsletters for a few years now, and had been aware of a blog broadcast feature, but never quite could wrap my head around it. As it turns out, it’s super simple. Let me walk you through it.

I’m assuming you already know how to set up a new list in aweber for the purpose of this post. I’ll probably do a tutorial on doing just that in a separate email. Back to our task here… set up a new list.

Alternately you could also add this feature to an existing list, which is a great idea as well. If you have a current newsletter list, but struggle to send them fresh content on a regular basis, but do update your blog regularly, this would be an excellent way to leverage your time and efforts.

If this is a new list, set up a web form (very easy through Aweber’s interface) and add it to your blog. In my case this was actually the most difficult part of this whole process because I wanted to keep the existing “Subscribe via Email” box that I had and which was set up to work with feedburner. I ended up copying and pasting the code from aweber and the code that was in my template file for this blog and compared them to each other. I had a pretty good idea what I had to replace with what and then gave it my best guess and luckily it worked. With most other templates you’re not going to run into this issue since most of them won’t have a subscribe box integrated in the basic design. In that case you would simply copy and paste the code aweber gives you into a text widget, or in the raw sidebar code in your template folder.

If you do have the same issue as me, feel free to look at my source code, or contact your favorite web designer who should be able to get this set up for you in a matter of minutes.

Now to the part that I thought was going to be oh so complicated …

In your aweber account, hover over the “Messages” button and then click on the option that says “Blog Broadcast”. Here’s what that looks like:

Aweber Blog Broadcast Then click on the Add Blog Broadcast button. Which will bring you to a screen that looks like this:

Aweber Blog Broadcast Setup Enter the feed for your blog. If you are using wordpress, your feed url will be your main url and then /feed tacked on at the end. For this blog for example it is http://www.affiliatetreasurechest.com/feed/

Next, choose a template style. As you can see in the image below I chose “Big Foot (blue/ light blue) as the initial template. I’ll probably change and tweak it down the road, but it’s a great start. I simply clicked on that template and then the load button you see in the bottom right-hand corner of this image.

Choosing a Template for the Blog Broadcast

Lastly we have a few options as to when and how often the blog broadcast is sent out and if we want to track clicks.

Aweber Blog Broadcast Options In case you are curious, for this blog I chose to send them immediately, once 1 new item was on the blog (meaning it sends out a new email each time I make a new blog post. I may change this down the road depending on how often I end up blogging on a regular basis.

I also chose to have the messages sent out automatically, which makes this hands-free for me. I don’t ever have to think about it again. I simply write my blog and everyone who’s interested automatically gets the updates.

That’s it Just click on “Save Blog Broadcast” and you’re done. Don’t forget to sign up for your own list and then go write a new post and check your email to see the automatic email update.

You may also be wondering why I chose Aweber’s Blog Broadcast over the feedburner email updates. It’s quite simple actually. Aweber gives me more flexibility in how the messages are delivered and more importantly I am building a list in the process that I can email to any time. In other words, if I chose to send a regular email broadcast out, I can do that. This may come in handy when I want to remind my readers about something or if I want to send them a special report or ebook as a thank you for being a regular reader.