The quality and value of your content will determine how your subscribers feel about you and your business. When we talk about starting a blog or an ezine, our clients will often express anxiety about generating quality content on a regular basis.

When I started my first ezine – long, long ago! – I was a little worried, too. But I soon realized it wasn’t that hard if I kept in mind the various formats I could use.

Your content can include one or more of the following formats:

Editorials

You will become seen as an expert in your field. Use editorials to express an opinion and share your viewpoint on a topic. You can also write a chatty, personal piece to establish a rapport with your readers.

Feature articles

These can be by you or other people. The best length is 300-700 words – long enough to have valuable information and short enough to get read. The topic should be related to your business.

News clips or stories

This can be timely news in the area your business covers that would be of interest to your subscribers.

Aggregating other content

As an expert on your topic, you can research and gather information from books and/or websites and present it. This can save your subscribers a great deal of time and be seen as quite valuable.

Reviews

Beyond listing sources of information in your area, you can do in-depth reviews of books, websites, software, etc. This can be a great tie to affiliate programs to which you belong. Tell your readers specifically what is good and bad about the thing you review, making sure to be balanced. But do offer a recommendation about it. Should your reader check it out, or is it a waste of time?

Announcements

These can be about your company, website updates, or new products or services you’re offering.

Website updates

I’ve separated this out to mention it again because it’s key. You want to get people to keep coming back to your website. The more they visit, the more likely it is that they will buy something. So, mention new articles, new topics you’re covering within your theme, a contest, a free giveaway, a special discount, or a seasonal offer. Anything to get them to come back!

Interviews

Publishing an interview with an expert is valuable content and not hard to create. You’ll just need to plan ahead a bit. Pick an expert and get to know a bit about him or her so you can be a knowledgeable interviewer. Decide on a topic for the interview and prepare a list of questions. Ask your expert to do the interview. Usually, they’ll be willing in order to get the visibility as an expert in your blog or ezine. Email a copy of the questions to your expert and review the reply. Prepare the article with the responses and get final approval from your expert.

Q & A

You can have a regular or occasional article where you respond to questions your subscribers or clients ask. You can also make up your own questions and answer them!

Entertainment

It can be fun to occasionally offer a joke or story. On my blog, I’ll sometimes post a funny story, jokes, or a thoughtful story or article that reflects my own philosophy. You can do this instead of a business-related piece, or in addition to one. You just want to make sure you have the right proportion of business content to entertainment content over time.

Quotes

Many publishers include quotes that are relevant to the topic(s) covered in the current ezine or blog post.

If you keep a list of these styles of presenting information to your subscribers handy, you’ll have an easier time creating content for your next ezine issue or blog post.

If you have any other formats you’ve seen or used, post a comment and share!

I’m so thrilled to be finally posting my first “real” blog entry. As some of you know, I sent out an ezine for years, but it’s been years now since I sent the last one. Yikes! Perhaps now is a good time to reinforce the importance of staying in touch with your list. I obviously need reminding and maybe you do, too.

As I’ve been telling my clients for years, the most important goal for your web site is to add visitors to your list. It’s rare that first time visitors will buy something, and once they’re gone, they may never come back. But if they subscribe to your list, they’re giving you permission to invite them back over and over again.

Now your job is to make sure you keep inviting them!

Of course, you will want to offer value to your subscribers as well as marketing to them. After all, that’s the deal they signed up for. My rule of thumb is to have about 70% pure content to 30% marketing content, not necessarily in the same message. You may send several articles or Top 10 lists or tips and then have one message that’s all about your new teleclass program.

There are a number of methods for talking to your list. It really doesn’t matter how you communicate with subscribers as long as you do it on a regular basis.

Make it a point to do at least one task each week to connect with your list:

• send an ezine issue,
• add an autoresponder message to your sequence,
• broadcast an email message, or
• post a blog entry that’s emailed to subscribers.

You may also provide an RSS feed, particularly if you have a blog. While this is a very effective way of connecting with those who read RSS feeds, unfortunately they are still a small minority of users, so you will probably need to send some type of email messages as well.

If you make communicating with your list a regular habit and be sure your subscribers are receiving valuable content, you’ll build relationships with them.

By offering good value, both with your free information and with the products and services you sell, you can be assured of attracting new subscribers, retaining the ones you have, and converting some to paying customers.

So let’s all commit to staying in touch with our subscribers -and I’ll be the first to sign up!

If you have any tips for how you stay in touch with your list, please post them in a comment so we can all benefit. And if you need any help with the mechanics of how to communicate with your list, we can help! Send us an email and we’ll talk.