Two Easy Sources of Content for Your Newsletter
Building an email list is said to be one of the most profitable things a webmaster can do. Of course, you can’t simply ask people to give you their email addresses. You must offer something in return, and this “something” usually is a newsletter. However, many webmasters hesitate in starting their own newsletters because they already struggle to find fresh ideas for their sites; having to find content ideas for yet another venue looks like quite a challenge.
If that’s your case, fear no more. Today you’ll see there are at least two easy ways to create content for it.
1. Using your newsletter to plug your site
Even if at first you really, really can’t think of any exclusive content to fill your newsletter, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t begin collecting those email addresses now. You can always start out with update alerts and evolve as time goes by. Update alerts are great to generate repeat traffic, because subscribers will be regularly encouraged to visit your site.
Do not just put together a lame list of new items added to your site. View each site update as an important happening — and try to convey such view in your newsletter text. Use it to tease your subscribers, to make them feel that they must visit your site right away. Of course, you should never generate false expectations; if you’ve just published a new article, don’t make your newsletter’s subscribers believe they will find five new pieces.
In case you tend to update your site daily, you’d better send out weekly update alerts. Otherwise you may look pushy and even spammy.
2. Complementing your site’s content with a newsletter
This method allows you to plug a site on your newsletter and the newsletter on your site at once. But it depends on your site content’s structure. Here’s what you should do: whenever you publish a list of new items, make sure not to post all of them on your site; save some for your newsletter. Alternatively, publish only one type of media on your pages and save the other ones for the newsletter.
Say you’ve written a list entitled “50 Effective Money-Saving Tips.” What you want to do is post 30 or 40 list items on your site or blog and end the text with a paragraph like this: “The remaining tips will be published on the upcoming 20th issue of our newsletter. If you don’t want to miss them, subscribe now.” If you have shot a video to demonstrate some (or all) of the money-saving tips, you can post the whole written piece on your site and entice readers to subscribe to your newsletter in order to get the video’s link.
In both cases you must display on the newsletter some links to your site’s content. This way, subscribers who still haven’t seen the updates will feel enticed to visit your pages. Taking the examples above, they’ll want to either read the first items of your money-saving list or view its written version instead of the video one only.
Do you have a newsletter? Leave a comment to tell us how you create content for it.
