10) Organize your ezine
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Some people have wondered and a few have asked how I send out a weekly email with the following categories of content each week without spending a decade doing it.
Each week I include in Simplified Solutions, LLC Weekly Email Newsletter these topics:
- Event of the Week- this is often a holiday or something like National Writers Week or Get Organized Month.
- Inspirational Movie of the Week- I’ve picked my favorite motivational movies and selected appropriate times for each movie- .i.e. It’s a Wonderful Life in December and Rudy at the start of Football season.
- Fun for the Week- these are often bowling, have a picnic in the park or visit a museum kind of activities.
- Quote of the Week- the quotes are many of my favorites and are hopefully timely- Martin Luther King, Jr was who I quoted this week.
- Book of the Week- this was a list of my favorite books I had already read or reviewed.
- Humor for the Week- often a quote from Pat Williams or Will Rogers- maybe Yogi Berra or Mark Twain.
- Bible Verse of the Week- again this list had many of my favorites.
The neat thing about all the above information is that it took about two days back in January of 2008 to compile this list in a spreadsheet. Across the top the columns were labeled with the weeks 1 through 52. In the rows from top to bottom were the categories above. In the spreadsheet cells was the content. Pretty straightforward. I did my research to match quotes, movies, events and humor with the time of the year.
At this point I thought all was done. I created a template in my express email (I’m considering jumping to Constant Contact as we speak). I would now simply log in each week edit the template and click send. This would have worked but it was a bit too boring to keep me excited about sending the ezine each week. Yes it might engage readers (we have about 40% readership weekly) but would it engage me to consistently send it each week (I only send one per week, no questions asked). Knowing myself and my struggle with focus, I left the door open for creativity each week to go along with the prepackaged content.
I decided that I would include a link and description of a very cool website I had stumbled across that would add value to my readers. Many are small business owners or non profits. Second, I would include a link to a cool product. At first I always tried to share products via my affiliate links but that quickly became old and not much fun. It was probably a little too selfish as well. Third, I featured a small business or non profit each week. I used businesses I knew, customers of mine and I took some submissions. I also included my recent blog posts which turned out to be my most popular links each week.
This whole process takes me 30-45 minutes or an hour max if I’m not feeling very inspired. The information in the spreadsheet is easy. I type it, read it, edit it, done. The last few entries require a few clicks, a couple control c’s, hyperlinks, target blank- open in new window, a couple control v’s and a perusing of my latest delicious bookmarks.
I hope you found this helpful. If you want to register for my weekly email click here. I hate spam so I’ve chosen the slow method of growing my list. Speaking could help when I get the time. The readership of 40% is good (so I’ve been told) and sometimes I think it may be better. Many times (just this morning actually), I bump into someone whose address never shows an open, but who says I love getting and reading your emails. Go figure. Needless to say the newsletter is not idea virus worthy yet, given that people are not sharing it and it’s not spreading the way I would like. I guess I’ll take all the positive feedback and the loyal readers and be content with that for now.
