Writing Content for Your Email Newsletter
To create content for your email newsletter, you have a three options:
- write it yourself
- pay a writer to create your content, or
- re-print (with permission) content written by others
No matter your content strategy, you will need a content development plan.
Here are some tips for content development:
- Determine your key sections, which could include:
* what's new in your industry
* professional how-to tips
* summaries of relevant news article
* current research summaries
* a list of upcoming industry events
- Create a consistent structure and format (number of subjects, length of article, style, etc.)
- Avoid using a PDF format that requires attachments
(For more information on options on format, see our sending email newsletters section)
- Develop an editorial calendar to plan out topics for each section two to three issues in advance
- Make your articles informational and do not make it a sales pitch or you will lose subscribers
- Keep a newsletter ideas list as you read information in your industry
- Subscribe to email newsletters published by others to monitor hot topics
- Ask your subscribers for suggestions (a great way to build connection with your readers)
- Listen to key questions your customers and prospects ask you
If you plan on writing your email newsletter in-house,
be prepared to commit time to this effort. Some experts report that they spend as much as 16-20 hours writing content PER newsletter.
If you are creating original content, you could spend 1 to 2 hours of research on each topic and 1-4 hours writing and editing each article.
To make this less of a chore, you can commit to writing one article a week and at the end of the month, you'll have four articles.
If you want to pay others to write your email newsletter articles, the world abounds with good writers. You can find local writers on craigslist and national writers on elance.com.
Or, you can seek out articles for your specific industry through some of the writing forums such as constant content or associated content.
If your email newsletter develops a strong readership, you might find people willing to furnish articles for free in exchange for the exposure your epub offers.
If you want to reprint articles written by others (with full attribution and permission of course)
You can find articles written by others by
- Subscribing to industry pubs and providing summaries of the top articles, searching the top online news sites for your industry
- Creating a Google alerts for the key topics of interest to you to get up-to-date information.
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