My Secret to Being Consistent with My Ezine

Blogging has transformed my newsletter angst and inconsistent keep-in-touch efforts to attracting a steady flow of clients from my regular ezine issues.

Here's what I did to remedy this.

First, I started blogging.

Before blogging, I would have to set aside time to come up with a great article for each issue. Somehow the pressure to write something fantastic would freeze up my creativity and that pressure would create writer's block. Unfortunately, this also caused me to only write to my list once a month, on good months, and most often, every so often. That's no way to show people you're interested in helping them.

Now that I have a blog integrated in my website, I write a blog post with a tip, resource or full-fledge article one to three times per week, whenever the inspiration hits me. Usually first thing in the morning , right after lunch or at the end of the day.

When it comes time to write my newsletter, I choose one of my favorite recent blog posts, perhaps edit it a bit, and post a link to it in my newsletter and ta-da! I have a feature article. What used to take me hours, now takes me minutes… occasionally 30-60 minutes if I'm doing something special, but that's rare.

This is especially helpful during my busy times. I've been blogging since 2007 and so there are lots of blog posts for me to choose from. I'm basically re-purposing my blog posts and using them in multiple ways.

Another thing I did to become more consistent with my ezine is to give up the pretty formatting with all the pictures and images. Now I send a simple text-only edition and include links back to my website for the feature article and see pictures of what I'm up to. This saves me TONS of time. I was hesitant to do this at first, but the results speak for themselves. (If I go back to pretty HTML versions of my ezine - thats the kind of ezine with images in it - I will hire a virtual assistant to handle fitting my copy into the formatting.)

This approach is a bit contrarian for a "marketing materials maven" but I prefer effectiveness and the elegance of simplicity over fancy-pants design. It's far more important to be in touch with your list on a regular basis sharing great information than spending time trying to fidget with your Constant Contact template. I also think that people are generally over-stimulated and my text-only ezines are easy-on-the-eye and refreshingly simple to understand.

So steal my secret! Start blogging and re-purpose those blog posts for your ezine.

To your continued success,

Karin

P.S. What's blogging all about? Here's what I did to get started.

Like what you read? Learn more about revamping your marketing materials and presenting yourself as an expert in your field by signing up for my newsletter. Get the details here.