If you are going to write a newsletter to run your
Web-Savvy, Dirt-Cheap Internet business then you’re going to have to think of
how to use it effectively ahead of time.
There are three key questions that need to be answered if you’re going
to use this strategy:
What are you going to write about?
What is my scheduling frequency going to be like?
When am I going to sit down to write it?
Writing With Your
Audience in Mind Using the Magazine Example
Just like blogging, writing eBooks, and all other forms of
marketing messages, it’s not all about YOU.
You need to be more concerned about
what your readers want to hear than anything else. A good example of this is
your standard magazine. If you look
through most magazines, you’ll see that they are targeted to specific audiences
and of course, they serve a specific niche.
So if you are reading Mother Earth News, you’ll notice that
there are homesteading articles, articles about farming, raising domestic
animals, etc. Those are articles that
people which are interested in that niche read.
Inside each of those magazines, there are advertisements. Those ads are related to the niche the magazine is dedicated to. You won’t see advertisements about model
airplanes in a magazine about doll collecting.
It’s the same with your newsletter. You can advertise your wares there, just make sure that you’re
providing articles and ideas that your clients will find value in. If you’re going to promote your business,
just make sure that you don’t over hype it in the newsletter. People usually
don’t like to be sold to when you are running your newsletter on the premise of
trying to help them with free information.
So, if you are running ads, you want to make sure that you
are not sending them an advertisement, but a newsletter that will help them.
How Often Should I
Send Out A Newsletter?
There are no rules to this game, therefore you can send out
your newsletter as often as you like. I
think the main thing to worry about is the quality of your newsletter. If you are sending out a poorly written, unorganized
newsletter, then chances are you’ll be wasting your time. So the frequency isn’t nearly as important as
the quality of your publication.
However, if you have to come up with a time frame, I’d say
at least once a month will do it. If you
are sending out newsletters through email, you can send shorter versions of
them alerting your readers to blog posts and videos of interest to them. This way, you can write shorter and more
frequent email newsletters.
Tip: Here’s a strategy for you. I subscribe to Seth Godin’s newsletter and he
has a clever method of writing his newsletter.
Just about every day, he writes a post for his blog, and that post
doubles as his newsletter which arrives in subscriber’s mail boxes each
day. The posts are usually not more than
a couple hundred words in length, but it is very well written. There are never any advertisements, except
once he sent a notice letting subscribers know that they could get a book of
his on audio for free.
However, that is an excellent strategy.
Let your blog posts double as newsletter material, when you write
them.
But I Don’t Have Time
To Write A Newsletter!
Well, if you want to have a monthly newsletter, a good way
to do that would be to plan 12 newsletters all at once. Sit down for a few days, and plan out a table
of contents for all of them.
Then you
could do one of several things:
Idea 1 – Use your
Table of Contents for each newsletter and record your articles into a digital audio recorder. Then send them to an
online transcriber so that they can type them up and send them to you in a word
processor format.
Idea 2 – Using the
table of contents above, use voice recognition software to write your subjects
quickly using your voice. I have used
Dragon Naturally Speaking and it is EXCELLENT!
Idea 3 – Hire a
ghost writer. Give them the table of
contents and tell them to go to town on it. However, you will have to hire and
pay someone to write your newsletters. This
may not be seen as a dirt-cheap method, but when you add up your precious time
that you’d have to spend writing your own, the money you may have to fork over
to have them written is well worth it.
Putting a
Subscription on Your Newsletter
If your newsletter ever gets real popular, you can actually
start charging a monthly subscription. Dan Kennedy has a monthly newsletter
that’s known world-wide and is world-class!
It will run you pretty close to $30.00 a month, but it is loaded with
all sorts of goodies, to include CD’s and marketing tools you can use right out
of the box. But, once again, that is a
high-end newsletter.
Yes, you can charge for an online newsletter, but you’ll
have to produce excellent material for it.
But, people do make money from their newsletters and get marketing value
from them at the same time.
To Your Success!
Mark “Elmo” Ellis
"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"
www.MarkEllisCopy.com
(859) 797-9560
Mark “Elmo” Ellis
"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"
www.MarkEllisCopy.com
(859) 797-9560
elmo033057@gmail.com
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