Monday, January 24, 2011

Overcome writer’s block and get ideas for your newsletter writing

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If rolling out email campaigns is part of your job profile, then drafting newsletters for your online customers is indispensable part of our regular routine. Since you publish your newsletter on a regular basis, sometimes it's difficult to find innovative content for next issue of the newsletter.

The four tenet of scripting newsletters:

Pre-write your ideas briefly using phrases
Write the story from your first notes
Read your story and edit it
Re-write it


JOT DOWN YOUR IDEAS

You are sitting before the monitor and your fingers strumming on the keyboard, you try hard to think of something new for the next issue of your newsletter, but your mind is tied, ideas won’t flow. It may have happened often to you that brightest ideas don’t come to your mind when you need them the most. You happen to get the best ideas when you're doing something else. The key to this problem lies in creating an idea list. Whenever you get an innovative idea, just jot it down in your list. After sometime you will have hoard of topics to write article on. So whenever you want to write an article, you simply scroll down your list and select an issue according to your liking.

WRITE HOW TO ARTICLES

Most of the readers are interested in reading how to article that teaches them the steps to carry out a certain task, or gives them useful tips and clues. But don’t load your newsletter with how-to article solely, that will make it monotonous. Use other types of write-ups as well to bring variety yin flavor. But focus mainly on informative write-ups.

STUDY THE FORUMS

There is no end of forums these days on the Internet. Many people participate in these online forums, which will make you aware of various issues that prevail in the market. These forums will help you get professional advices right from the horse’s mouth. Participate in forums, where your target market hangs out. There you will discover many of the most common questions and problems that loom large in your target market. Consequently, you can write helpful articles about them.

FIND OUT THE KEY WORDS

Do a little research over the Internet and find out the keywords that your target audiences are searching through the search engines. Then write an article about it. This will help you in two ways. Your articles will be optimized to the needs of your subscribers and you will also get a good ranking for that article in search engines, which will bring you lots of targeted traffic for free.

ASK THE SEEKERS

Ask your readers about the information they are looking for, and then cater them accordingly. The simplest way of doing this is to add an “Ask the Editor” section in the newsletter. You will soon receive emails from your readers asking you questions on various issues. Select the most common and major questions and problems and write an article about it. In this way you will be flooded with innovative ideas to script your articles on. The edge in your write up will be that they will be tuned to your reader’s interest.

INCLUDE INTERVIEWS

People like to hear stories of “rags to riches”. So interview people who have been successful in the relevant field. You can interview over the phone or online. Your interviewee need not be someone very famous. Very famous people may not let you interview them. If you happen to get a famous personality to interview, keep them very short, as they will not like a long-winding questionnaire. But generally speaking your interviewee need not be a millionaire, aim for someone who has gained considerable success in the field. You can also include guest columns in your newsletters too.

TAKE A LOOK AT THE ARTICLE DIRECTORIES

There are numerous article directories that are available in the Internet. Browse the relevant sites and you will find torrent of issue to write articles on.

WRITE BOOK REVIEWS

You might be aware of some really helpful books, software programs, and services that will be useful to your newsletter readers. So you can write a review about one of them, so you’re your readers may buy them in case they suit their needs. This will also help you grab some business. You can join the affiliate program of the publishers and earn a commission from every sale you make via your affiliate link.

Don’t surrender yourself to a writer’s block, next time while preparing your newsletter. Keep the tips given above handy to spark some creative ideas if you’re stuck for a theme or article idea.

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