About Publishing an Ezine - What to Write?
Sometimes people ask me about what they should write with in their ezine. Well, I may not have all the answers, but here’s what have been successful for me.
The first thing is, your ezine should have a specific topic. That’s how you target specific market groups. You can’t publish an ezine about everything and trying to get everyone to sign-up to it.
Just think about it, if your ezine is about everything under the sun, it will take a heck of a job to gather subscribers. Why? Because it’s everybody. Where will you start? How much will you spend?
But if your ezine is about something specific, like couture shoes, it’ll be easier to market. You can start to pinpoint where potential subscribers are.
Now, when choosing a topic, you should start with something that is more related to your business. If you are running restuarant, start an ezine about good cooking, recipes. If you run DVD store, start an ezine on movie reviews.
The reason is simple, because by the end of the day, you want to sell your own products and services.
Back to the main question - what to write?
When you have a topic, it’s easier to know what to write. You write something that is within your topic. Share tips and tricks. Give advice and opinion. And of course, you do run out of ideas every once in a while. I do too. What you can do is sit back, relax … and start analyzing the things that happened recently, to you, your life and your business.
The cool thing about ezine is that it doesn’t have to be formal.
And from my point of view, I think it shouldn’t be formal at all. Why? Well, with an ezine, you want to bond with your subscribers. Build relationship and relate to them. When things are informal, your personality will show. This will be the unique thing about your ezine that no one can duplicate. And it’s easier for your subscribers to relate to you.
Yes, you should stick to your ezine topic but you should also let some colors fly into it as well. By colors, I mean share a thing or two about your life. Share photos of your recent outing. Tell them what happened recently at your store. Share your thoughts on current issues.
I do this. I’ve told my subscribers about my trip to the beach while letting my online promo run on autopilot. I’ve shared photos of Iman (my 7-month old daughter). I’ve talked to my subscribers about the fasting month that I am going through right now. And a lot more …
And many successful ezine publishers do this as well. And the ones that do are the ones that I stick with. While the boring ones - I just click the unsubscribe button.
Why do I stick with these few ezine publishers? Because I like reading stories, personal experience from these publishers. It shows a lot of what they are. And it stirs up emotions … and you should be doing that too.
Let me give you some examples
- Craig Perrine - one time shared stories about his son going through an operation
http://www.maverickmarketer.com/
- Alexandria - always shared photos of her outing
http://www.ezinequeen.com
- Craig Garber - told stories about his trip to the UK
http://www.kingofcopy.com
- Pat O’Bryan - always has interesting things to share about his recent gig (Pat’s a musician) while running his Internet empire
http://www.patobryan.com
- Michel Fortin - told subscribers about how his proposed to his fiance
http://michelfortin.com
(hmm … I have a King, a Queen and a maverick in here)
Now, let’s imagine that you run an ezine about cooking. And all that you do, week by week is publish a new recipe. All that I will ever get from you are - RECIPES! This week - recipe. Next week - recipe. The week after that - recipe.
After a while, it’s going to be - BORING! And I would even start to think you are just reprinting those recipes from some books or magazines. Now, where’s YOUR own value. Where’s your own recipes?
Instead, why not write how that recipe came about. Write about what the ingredients do to the cooking. You can even write stories how you like serving that meal to friends and families. How you like seeing the faces light up when they take a bite of your cooking. And also put in some cooking tips. You can even shared some mistakes that you did while cooking.
This reminds me of the Bicentennial Man played by Robin Williams. He’s a robot but he wanted a human face. The guy that made him the face said, “The perfection in humans are the imperfections”
Just one thing though - don’t overdue it. Don’t flood your ezine with the colors. Keep in mind that your ezine has a topic. And stick to that topic.
Anyway, here’s a tip. If you’ve never done this before, trying sharing a photo or two with your subscribers and see how they would react.
Here’s some suggestions. They say these three are a killer - babies, women and pets. Other than that, events like birthdays, weddings, proposal (like Michel Fortin), death, new birth, etc …
I hope now you know what to write - let the colors fly.
