In the past three issues I discussed many of the problems and
benefits associated with publishing an E-Zine or electronic
newsletter. You can view these articles at: issue27 issue28 issue29
I will wrap up this series with some ideas on how to promote
your newsletter and a list of places you can go to get more
information and help.
The good news is that you can use many of the same
techniques and resources you use to promote your web site to
promote your newsletter. The bad news is that if you are not
having any success promoting your web site you probably will
not have any better luck promoting a newsletter. Even so, a
successful Web Site will help to promote your newsletter
while a successful newsletter will promote your Web Site.
To start, you should create a dedicated Web Site for your
newsletter with its own URL. You should do this even if you
already have a Web Site. You can then submit this web site to
the search engines and promote it in the same way you
promote your regular web site. Be sure to add the appropriate
Meta Tags and a Subscription Form. In addition to helping
attract subscribers through the search engines, it will increase
your newsletter’s credibility.
Your newsletter’s web site should also contain back issues of
your newsletter if at all possible. Setting the Meta Tags for
each article will also help to attract visitors that are interested
in the specific topic of an article you have posted. Back issues
will also encourage your subscribers to return to your
newsletter’s web site in order to review past topics of interest.
In addition to the major search engines, there are many sites
dedicated specifically to promoting and listing newsletters.
This is short list of the ones I can find. There are more:
Probably the most effective means you can use to attract
subscribers to your newsletter is to actively advertise it.
Traditional advertising costs money that many of you may not
wish to spend. When your list gets larger, paid advertising to
promote it may be an option you should consider. Fortunately
for smaller newsletters there are at least two very effective
forms of advertising that cost nothing.
The first and most effective form of free advertising is to write
articles for other newsletters. Not all newsletters accept
outside articles but some do. You should already be
subscribed to several existing newsletters within your
industry. Check to see if any of these accept outside articles
and browse through the lists at the above sites to find more. A
well-written article in a popular newsletter related to your
business can generate many new subscribers for you.
The other free advertising option is to exchange adds with
other relevant newsletters. Simply e-mail the publisher of an
appropriate newsletter and suggest a swap. Even if your
newsletters has a smaller number of subscribes than the one
you wish to exchange an add with you can often still barter an
exchange. Offer to run 2 or more adds for 1depending upon
the relevant subscriber size. There is even an Add Exchange
newsletter dedicated to newsletters that wish to swap adds.
You can join it by visiting http://Ezine-Swap.com/
The final suggestion I have is to subscribe to newsletters and
join newsgroups devoted to publishing a newsletter. Two that
I can highly recommend are Ezine-Tips and Zine-Talk. Ezine-
Tips is a daily newsletters written by Brian Alt at www.infojump.com
Newsletters distributed over the Internet have gain significant
popularity lately for many reasons I have touched upon in this
series of articles. Writing a newsletter could be a great
marketing addition to your online business. It is not for
everyone however. The demands on your time and resources
can be significant. There is also no magical solution to getting
subscribers. It will require time, effort, skill, resources and
most importantly, a useful and well-written newsletter.
"IMS Web Tips" is a weekly news letter for all web site managers regardless of experience who are looking for detailed information on creating, maintaining and promoting their web sites.
