| What Terri says... |
What Garnet says... |
| 1. ALWAYS, ALWAYS have your email, along with your name and url right at the top of your ezine. Unbelievably, I have read ezines where I could NOT find the email or even the name of the publisher!!! Also at the end of your ezine have name, address, phone number, and email and url again for easy access. Nothing is worse than trying to find contact info that for some reason is invisible! |
And this advice goes for every other piece of paper that your business generates! Make sure your URL is on every business card, invoice, advertising piece, that your business sends out. |
| 2. Make sure you also always provide your subscribe and unsubscribe info as well. I would suggest putting this info at the bottom of the ezine. If you post your unsubscribe url right at the top of your ezine it is like you are inviting your subscribers to unsubscribe. |
Since Terri wrote this article, there are new regulations regarding sending out business email. Some things to be aware of:
- Federal "CanSpam" Act
- Various registries concerning scrubbing email lists of email addresses of minors (Michigan and Utah)
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| 3. Provide a forum for your readers to interact with you and your other readers. A section entitled, Reader's Corner or Reader's Comments, where they can send in their comments, questions, feedback or whatever. This gives them a chance to become a part of the ezine. This also helps build the reader-publisher relationship that is very important! |
You might also consider hosting an online forum. There are many good online forum software packages that are available for free and are easy to install, or low cost to have a consultant install. Some hosting packages even provide these programs for free. |
| 4. Keep your ezine clean and sharp looking. Don't add too many of the squiggles and decorations. They may look cute but they sometimes make it hard to read your ezine, thus prompting the ole' delete finger to become activated! |
Some spam filters might even consider those squiggles mean your message could be spam! |
| 5. ALWAYS provide some original content. Writing articles is a great way of doing this. If you are not yet comfortable writing articles, (Yes, you can), write an editorial in each issue. Talk a bit about yourself, the latest happenings in the business, what is going on around the net, etc., things of that nature. This is a chance to bring out your personality, the main thing that makes your ezine unique!! |
You can also have a ghost writer write the articles. There are also services that you can subscribe to that will give you new articles every month. These are called "Private Label Reseller". But be aware that many other people subscribe to the same service, and may be using the same content in their e-zines, so you'll want to spend the effort to personalize the articles, and include additional worthwhile content (like these comments I'm making here as I am reading Terri's tips!) |
| 6. Having too many ads in each issue is a great way of bringing down the value of your ezine. I would suggest no more than 4 or 5 per issue. Reading an ezine that has 20 or 30 ads (oh yeah, I've seen them) is not very interesting or realistic. Most people would not even go through the whole thing. Here comes that delete finger again!! You want your advertisers to get more value for their money and having a limited number of ads is one of the best ways of doing this. |
There are still a lot of people who think the content on the internet should be free. There is also a phenomenon of people becoming "blind" to ads, and getting used to tuning them out. The best advertising for your ezine will be advertising that is on-topic for the topic of each article. |
| 7. I think adding a small section for this 'n that is a good idea also. Some humor, a little fun, interesting tidbits, jokes, stories, etc. We are business men and women, but we don't have to be 100% business, 100% of the time!! |
Remember, if you use a service for this information, try to customize the jokes and tidbits. |
| 8. Privacy Policy - Put a privacy policy towards the top of the ezine. Let your readers know their privacy is safe with you and your ezine. |
Also, be wary of buying someone elses list just to send your ezine to it. Those people opted into someone else's list, not yours! |
| 9. Proofread - Always proofread and double-check your text. You do not want your ezine to look like it was written by a 10 year old. Correct all spelling and grammatical errors. |
You can possibly get proofreading help from ghost writers. Ghost writers are inexpensive enough that you might run your article by two or three of them. |
10. Give your ezine an interesting and pulling name. I have subscribed to most ezines just by the name alone. If the name gets my attention, I subscribe.
Names like:
- Power Promotion Ezine
- Marketing Mania Ezine
- Web Success Ezine
These are short and to the point. They also make me want to read more.<br>
Names like:
- Internet Marketing News
- John Doe's Ezine
- Home Business News
These are more generic and do not get my attention! They lack the "oomf" that make me want to subscribe.
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Get a good course on how to write headlines! It might give you good ideas of how to name your ezine. |
Good luck and success to you all!!
More Proofreading Practice, Please! 
