FuneralVision.com recently launched a free weekly newsletter on LinkedIn to keep death-care professionals and their allies better informed.
While various names for the newsletter were considered, Thomas Parmalee, founder of FuneralVision.com, ultimately decided on the simplest one he could think of: Funeral Service News.
“Frankly, I was surprised that no one had created a LinkedIn newsletter with that name yet,” he said. “I could not think of any other term that I would first enter into the search bar on LinkedIn if I wanted to find a newsletter about the profession.”
Of course, Parmalee did think about giving the newsletter a name that aligns more with the FuneralVision.com brand, such as FuneralVision.com’s Weekly Notes or FuneralVision.com’s Weekly Update.
“But the entire reason to create a LinkedIn newsletter is to try to reach people who are not already familiar with the FuneralVision.com brand – and make no mistake about it, that is what I am seeking to do – build a brand,” he said. “My focus is not on making money but on providing value and building an audience.”
The entire process of naming the newsletter, however, got Parmalee to thinking about why when you visit www.funeralservice.com, nothing comes up.
Someone out there owns that domain, that’s for sure: If you enter it on GoDaddy to see if it is available, you’ll pay about $70 just to research who owns it and to explore whether you want to acquire it. The same holds true for funeralservice.com.
“Other domains are more interesting,” he said. “For instance, you could buy www.mortuaryscience.com right now for about $4,000, which I think might make a lot of sense if I were running a mortuary college. There are a lot of other good domains out there available for less money, but the key is you have to be willing to invest some resources to actually build a business around a URL – and that requires time and an action plan. It was one of the reasons why when I first launched FuneralVision.com, I started with FuneralVision.org – because the .com URL, while it did not cost as much as MortuaryScience.com still cost thousands of dollars.”
Fortunately, creating a newsletter on LinkedIn is free and is just one more way FuneralVision.com seeks to keep funeral professionals informed.
“It’s going to be one more way for me to direct traffic to FuneralVison.com, get more page views for advertisers and provide valuable insights to funeral professionals who might not be familiar with FuneralVision.com,” Parmalee said. “Already, we have almost 200 subscribers to the free newsletter, and if I can end the year with about 1,000 subscribers, it will be a nice base to build upon to provide more value to everyone.”
Check out the first several editions of Funeral Service News and subscribe for free here.
Follow FuneralVision.com on LinkedIn.
Follow FuneralVision.com on Twitter.
Follow FuneralVision.com on Facebook.
