How To Start Your Own NewsletterYour Road Plan To Email Marketing Success |
5. Free Resources on Writing SkillsFree resources on writing skills Free resources on writing skills If you do decide to write the articles yourself, it is advisable that before starting out you brush up your grammar and language skills. High school grammar will be long forgotten. You would need to get a grip on professional communication and how to write crisp and concise articles. Innumerable websites provide help with this aspect. You might be overwhelmed by the thought of writing all articles by yourself for every issue of your ezine. This is where professional writers can be so useful. The best way to find such writers is by subscribing to various ezines that are pretty similar to yours or at least cater to the same kind of audience. There is every possibility that you may find a couple of great writers from these ezines. You may contact these writers and ask them to write for your ezine as well. You can also hire ghostwriters for your Ezine articles. All you have to do is give them a fee for the articles they write. You can then pass off the final article as your own creation. Besides, you would also own all copyrights to the article. The point you should keep in mind here is that the ghostwriters should be totally trustworthy and your wavelengths should match completely. The writer should understand what you expect of him and how exactly he or she should word the article and set its tone so as to suit your Ezine. Too much trust can backfire, unless you are absolutely confident about the quality of the articles. It is a safe practice to proofread the articles written by your writer and double-check the content, grammar and quality of the articles. You don’t have to stick to writing articles or expecting articles from the professionals you hire. One interesting option is writing a column of questions and answers or tips. Hence, instead of writing something in article format, question and answer technique is also very appealing. For example, hire a pediatrician/child specialist who has some spare time every fortnight to write an informative column in the form of a questionnaire that tackles common issues that affect young children’s health in your Ezine about parenting. Instead of asking the professional to write a dreary article, you can make it interesting by changing the format to a question-answer session. You may also invite your readers to participate by encouraging them to ask a question to the expert. The beauty of Ezines and eBooks is that they can be written about anything and everything. There are innumerable subjects worth writing about. The key is to have an open mind and be aware of the situation around you. If you regularly study various ezines that are being published you would have a fairly good idea on what to write about. The more you research and analyze the easier it is for you to inspect a typical reader’s mind. All you need is one ray of light and you can find your way out. Following are some great ideas that you can use to add effective content in your Ezine: Write a book or product review related to the topic of your Ezine. Don’t limit your review to only tangible books and products. Review internet-based services, websites, e-books, the choice is limitless. Set up interviews of experts and professionals in your field. Write a troubleshooting article or a ‘How to’ article. For example, in your Ezine all about food, write an article ‘How to whip up quick lunches in 10 minutes’. Write a short real life incident that happened with you which taught you a thing or two. You come across as a ‘real’ person with real mishaps and real problems in life. And how you dealt with such a real situation shows your strength of character. Your readers will be able to relate to you more and will trust your opinions. Go to news groups and discussion forums on the Internet and see what people are talking about nowadays. Most of these groups have archives that go way back. That way you also learn how people and their thought process evolved and guess their next step. One thing that you must understand and firmly believe that your Ezine is all about a topic you love and know a lot about. Your first idea will shoot from your knowledge bank. Run through your head and you will be able to write quite a few articles. Finally, research for new topics. You will be amazed at how many new topics you will find! Earlier, when you needed to do some research on any topic, you needed to hit the local library. Go through big books with tiny letters and dig up old newspapers to find out the content relevant to your article. That would take hours, even days and it used to be a demanding task and only those who are persistent and patient would make it through. Thankfully, with the advent of Internet, you can get as much information you need through the click of a button. One link leads to another, one website takes you to another website, one page is connected to another and that way you have unlimited information at your disposal that can be used the way you want. Whenever you are on the internet, browsing, researching or just plain surfing, make sure that whenever you find any web page or any link relevant to the article you are contemplating to write or that can be useful for your Ezine, save it on your hard disk. That way you can look up the information at some other time. Even if you find some information on an article you have already written and published or about some article you are considering writing in future, do save it anyway. That way in case you need to update your existing article you can do that easily. Also, saved information can be used at any time, so even in future if you are planning on writing about a particular topic, you can do so immediately without having to go through the bothering task of searching on it all over again. Even if the topics you have researched are constantly updated, the basic premise remains the same and you can use that as the platform of your article. For example, technical articles change as per the innovations that take place in the industry, but old information can be used to reflect on how the product has evolved. Also, historical information don’t change, the harrowing stories of World War II stays the same. So, when your Ezine has such articles, it always helps when you save all the information that you have, so that you can sprinkle it tastefully in your articles. These are some of the mistakes that most publishers make while starting out their campaign. Be tactful and you will be able to avoid them. Don’t start an Ezine about a topic you are not very familiar with. Make yourself an ‘expert’ in that field before you think of publishing an Ezine. Being an expert does not suggest knowing ‘everything’. In this sense, it merely means someone who knows a lot about a particular topic, and in fact more about it than most people. Don’t even think of starting an Ezine if you don’t plan it before hand. Good and sound planning is a must and you must set your goals right from the onset and then you can focus on how to achieve your goals. Don’t dive right it while hoping to make it through midway, it doesn’t work that way. You have to carefully study your market, competition, resources and what you want to achieve out of your Ezine (brand/product awareness, advertising revenue, exchanging information, etc.) Don’t be inconsistent in publishing your Ezine. If you have started a fortnightly edition, stick to it. Don’t get over-enthusiast and start a weekly Ezine and then cut down drastically to monthly or even bi-monthly issues. Make a reasonable estimate of the time and effort you want to put in your Ezine. Assess your capabilities and don’t be over confident. If you think you can publish weekly, start with fortnightly or monthly first and then see how it goes. Don’t change the format of your Ezine constantly, it shows that you are not steady and coherent. Decide before hand if you want ads published in your Ezine. Don’t throw in surprises at your readers. Don’t write lengthy, stretchy and repetitive articles in your Ezine. Don’t pile up your Ezine with too much information. Even if you have a lot of information to share, be patient and share it in bits and pieces, so that you don’t bombard your readers. Follow the tone of your Ezine. Be politically correct and reasonable. For example, don’t throw in a ‘joke of the day’ in your Ezine about AIDS awareness. Maintain the quality of your Ezine. Give quality information, otherwise your readership will dwindle. Give proper credit to contributing and guest authors. You can also provide a service of giving a link to their website from your Ezine. Send out your Ezine in plain text format only. Your program can also offer options to your readers like plain text, html, rich text, graphics on or off, etc. And please don’t publish only in HTML-only format. If you would like to publish an HTML Ezine, do publish a text-only Ezine along with it. Give your readers an option to choose between the two types. Avoid using animated graphics, flashing or blinking text, frames, advanced scripts like JavaScript, etc. Do take advantage of the technology and automate the services of your Ezine if and when possible. Like using auto-responder for sending automated messages and so on. Ask your readers twice if you must if they really do want to subscribe for your Ezine so as to make sure that you are not spamming them. Insist on this process commonly known as ‘double opt-in’, which is ethically followed by most Ezine publishers. In this procedure, when you get a request to add an email address for your Ezine issues, you can send an automatic email to that particular address. Following a link provided in that email, your reader can click on it and that click will be registered by you so that you can add that email address in your mailing list. That way you can ensure that your readers are not unnecessarily spammed and unauthorized programs or persons are not signing up for your Ezine on their behalf. Be courteous and polite to your readers, even if they are not. And please do honor their request to unsubscribe if they want to discontinue their membership. Don’t forget that unsolicited mails are considered spam. Don’t push or force your readers to continue their subscription. Do plan ahead for growth and development of your Ezine. That way you will not be caught napping if your subscribers’ ratio suddenly rises. There are a lot of dynamics involved when your Ezine gains popularity and you have plenty of subscribers like planning for advanced advertising, collaboration with other services, getting more web-space and so on. Lastly, don’t get stuck in the grid and do take advantage of new ideas and profitable options. Expand and develop your Ezine and make changes as per the new trends and demands of your readers. We have looked at most of the issues that you need to take care of while starting out as an ezine publisher. In the next chapters, we look at how each of the objectives behind starting an ezine can be achieved. The next chapter talks in detail about various strategies to build a subscription base for your ezine. 2. eZine Creation Tactics Most Email programs allow all kinds of different formats these days. Email programs in the old days displayed only plain text messages. However, this has changed greatly and users can now send and receive mails in their full glory that includes special font, colors, messages, pictures, sounds, and animation. An ezine written in HTML should be compatible with most email clients. The good news is that these clients do not have any special formatting requirements. A newsletter would be displayed as is in your subscriber’s email program. However, it is always a good idea to have every newsletter in two formats – one HTML and the other Plain Text, incase some subscribers have problems opening HTML mails. You may want to keep the level of graphics down as it may take much longer for subscribers to open your ezine with a load of graphics. Prior to sending your ezine to subscribers ensure that you test your formatting for compatibility with all kinds of Email clients, especially Outlook Express, Microsoft Outlook, Eudora, and a few web clients such as hotmail and yahoo. One of the main dilemmas of ezine publishers is how often should they publish and send out their ezines. When you plan your ezine, especially initially, it is very much possible that you may get so excited that you would want to publish your ezine as frequently as possible. Although, this is a good sign it would not work well with your subscribers. The best thing to do is to start off with a monthly ezine and then increase the frequency with time. During the first few publications you would also get an idea of how well are you able to manage your ezine and your subscribers. This may be harder than you think. If you feel comfortable with the process you can then think of an ezine published every fortnight. Please note that it is not necessary for you to increase the frequency of your ezine to more than one per month. You should only do that if you feel comfortable. I have seen many cases of publishers hurrying up into publishing ezines every two weeks only to revert back to the monthly cycle. Do not publish your ezine less than once a month unless your ezine is such that it can only be published once in two or three months. This would greatly increase the risk of your subscribers forgetting who you are. Conversely, do not go overboard by publishing every two to three days. Even if your content is timely or fabulous enough to warrant a daily publication, it is very likely that your subscribers may not be able to keep up with them and eventually unsubscribe out of frustration. The maximum frequency should be once a week. Determine how much information you have which you can share with your readers. Daily Ezine like I said earlier, is not advisable unless you have timely updated information like news or stock market. Let’s say you are hoping to start a great Ezine that gives valuable tips on how to effectively use the MS Office products. You think that you have too much information to share and you start a daily Ezine that gives lengthy information on the subject matter. Your reader enjoys the first couple of Ezines, and then he gets overwhelmed by all that information, and probably prints out the copies of your Ezine so that he can read it later when he has time. Eventually the copies pile up on his desk and his secretary is tired of cleaning up the clutter. He gets frustrated and even though he finds the Ezine highly informative, he has no option but to unsubscribe it. Whose loss is it? More than his, it is your loss. Weekly, bi-weekly or monthly Ezine is your best bet as the beginner. Now if you publish your Ezine not very often, then your readers might just forget you! They might forget ever having subscribed to your Ezine. Or they will disregard your Ezine as one of the many spam messages that they receive and put you in their junk mail folder. Unless you have a super-special Ezine like an Ezine detailing some musical concert that happens only 4 times a year or about some festival that comes only once a year, then you can publish infrequent Ezines. However, it is not the very best strategy. Do start with a balanced frequency, not too often and not too sporadic. The key is to work out a schedule and stick to it. Publishing on a regular basis would establish your credibility and suggest to your readers that you are organized and can meet deadlines. Finally, although you may avoid sending out your ezine during holidays or just before them, you should not worry about the day of the week to send it out. Although, some experts would suggest that the best days to send out ezines are Tuesday and Wednesday this might not make a difference. Just pick the day that feels right to you and stick to it. Ezines are aimed at developing a customer base for your other products. One of the first things you need to work out once you have a completed ezine is to devise strategies to increase your customer base as much as possible and as quickly as possible.
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Browse Site3. Invite Guest Writers to Write in Your Ezine 5. Free Resources on Writing Skills 6. Write Attractive Descriptions 8. Free Hosts – a Definite No No 10. Suggest the Change Subtly to Your Readers 11. Creating a Comprehensive Online Media Kit 13. Always Look for Opt in Ezines 14. Auto Responder Improvements |
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