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3 Reasons To Publish An E-Newsletter AND A Blog

With spam filters on high alert, delivering a newsletter by email is not as easy as it was even one year ago. Should it reach your subscriber's inbox (without getting siphoned into a junk folder), it still has to vie for attention amongst dozens - or even hundreds - of new messages.

1. A blog is not "email"

A Weblog or blog, on the other hand, is a page on your site that can be updated several times a week with fresh content. If a reader has "subscribed" to your blog, he or she gets an alert (consisting of the headline and brief summary) every time you post new information.

I.e., much the same way you can include a teaser paragraph in your e-newsletter with a link back to the full article on your site.

If you're thinking that subscribers have to proactively "visit" your blog (a "pull" tactic) vs. having an ezine or e-newsletter delivered to them (a "push" approach) there's good news.

You can subscribe to a blog using downloadable software called a newsreader. NewsGator www.newsgator.com is a popular one as it integrates seamlessly with Outlook. There are lots of newsreaders to choose from, many of them free. Once installed on your desktop, the newsreader (also called a news aggregator) grabs the latest updates to your blog via an RSS feed.

No need to worry what RSS is (it stands for Really Simple Syndication). Just have faith that RSS is a new way to publish and distribute content on the Web without using email. And that's the point. No email. So, no worries about spam filters or delivery problems.

2. A blog is an instant publishing tool

A blog is an easy-to-use content management tool. When you "blog," you are instantly adding new content to your site via a Web interface. No technical or programming skills are necessary. Anyone can update the copy and content on your site. In fact, think of a blog as just another page on your Web site.

Key point: a blog doesn't have to be "cool." A steady stream of short tips with links to other sites or articles can be extremely useful. (See my article 5 tips for a useful resource blog.) In fact, this is the same kind of useful information you may be cramming into each issue of your newsletter. With a blog, you can parcel it out in digestible bits - with more impact.

3. A blog makes your site search engine friendly

Search engines love blogs and will index individual entries (no matter how short) if you've got your blogging software configured to create a separate page for each new post. In other words, think of each blog post or entry as a Web page with its own title.

By incorporating a blog into your site you are creating multiple new mini pages. Search engines crawl sites which are updated regularly with fresh content. So "blogging" raises your site's rankings in search results.

OK, but are blogs a fad or a trend?

I love this question. Here's my answer:

Newsletters or ezines are still the e-vehicle of choice for most marketers. Two things are slowing the adoption of blogs as a channel for business communication:

1. The term blogging is associated with online journals; personal, unedited writing; and, er, needless bloviating.

2. Most folks don't know what a news reader is and why you need one to subscribe to a blog or any other RSS feed. (Again, don't fret over RSS. Visit www.newsgator.com for a good explanation and to see how easy it is to download a newsreader.)

Use a blog to extend the reach of your e-newsletter

My advice for now is to continue publishing an e-newsletter. If you're sending it in HTML, trim your design down to the bare minimum and make the file size as small as possible. This will give you a better chance of getting past the spam filters and other blocking tools being used by major ISPs like AOL.

Of course, don't forget to link back to your blog through each issue of your e-newsletter. You'll probably need to explain to your newsletter readers what your blog is, where to find it and how to subscribe to it.

If you think your email subscribers are not ready to embrace "newsreaders," then don't mention this downloadable software - or RSS for that matter. Simply include a prominent link to your blog in the layout of your newsletter and remind readers to "visit" often for updates between issues.

Bottom line, consider adding a blog to your site for two reasons: as an instant publishing tool and as an adjunct to your email marketing efforts. You may find you can use a blog to trim down the extraneous information that's clogging the regular issues of your newsletter and making it less effective.

Useful Resources

Good explanation of RSS

Using RSS Feeds to Promote Your Website by Ralph Wilson

Quick explanation of RSS (from my article "5 key questions about business blogs")

Popular Blogging Tools

Blogger (free tool; now owned by Google)

Movable Type (software you install; it powers many professional-looking blogs)

TypePad (hosted version of Movable Type; easier to set up)

Debbie Weil is the publisher of award-winning WordBiz Report, read by close to 15,000 subscribers in over 80 countries. She is also an Internet marketing & communications consultant. She sells special reports & award-winning starter kits, and produces audio conferences on topics related to marketing with e-newsletters or ezines... as well as blogs. Download your free copy of her mini guide to online copywriting (value $10) instantly when you subscribe to WordBiz Report.

MORE RESOURCES:

Cloud Computing Will Revolutionize Customer Relationship ... - TMCnet

Cloud Computing Will Revolutionize Customer Relationship ...
TMCnet - Nov 21, 2008
Social Computing encompasses fast-growing peer-to-peer (P2P) activities like blogging, RSS, file sharing, podcasting, and user-generated content. ...

Blogging-RSS - Google News

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Blogging & RSS Information Even though I've had several personal blogs for years, I've only been officially business blogging since 2003. So in going back over expenses for the last quarter, you can imagine my shock when I realized that my overall business costs were down about 19%. What saved me so much money? Surprisingly, blogging. How can you save money with your blog? It's pretty simple, so I'll be brief. Attract search engine traffic without paying the big bucks If you want Google, Yahoo and MSN to pay attention to you, blog. It doesn't have to be a whole new site, just add a directory to your existing site and start blogging. Most blog software solutions are either cheap or free. And you can find out most basic blog information online for free (really, sometimes just typing your question into Google will do it.) by people who've actually done it. For less than $100, you can build a small library of blog tips and secrets, written by successful business bloggers. Instead of buying links, get one-way links from blog search engines and directories, as well as getting your RSS feed content displayed at other sites. Linking is a great way to get search engine attention and click traffic. Some people get links by trading; others by including their links at the end of freely distributed articles. Others pay to be listed, or to get linked. In each of these scenarios, some type of trade takes place, money, free content, or a link back. When you blog, you'll find plenty of search engines and directories that are willing to list you free of charge. For the most part you won't need to link back - you'll get a one-way link from site favored by search engines, often using text that you select yourself. If 90 or more of these free, legitimate links back to your site is worth your time, then get you blog in motion. Not only that, if you update frequently, other sites may want to display your RSS feed content on their sites. To encourage them to do so, put a link on your page with instructions on how to do so. Ever since I put one on the front of my site, various feeds from my main site have turned up in the most unexpected places. Cheaper way to study your audience. As your blog gets more popular, you may start to find that on any given day, you have a representative cross-section of prospects and clients at your site. If you have a question for them, you can just... ask. True, you can post a link to a survey in your newsletter or on your site, but these are not as interactive as the ability for your audience to comment. They will comment, and you can reply to ask them to expand, or clarify. Conversation gets going and before you know it, a bond is formed, a much stronger bond than occurs in a one-way conversation. Cheaper (and faster) way to start a resource or authority site. Measure the Influence of Blogs Measure and monitor what bloggers are saying about your business. Download Free Research Reports. www.cymfony.com Professional Blogging Services Expert blogging services for promoting business and increasing site traffic. www.bpwebdesign.com Business Blog Webinar Does your business need a blog? Free from Digitalgrit – Register now. www.digitalgrit.com Business Blogging Stop fooling with so-called CRM. Create real customer relationships. Your customers and competitors are charging ahead with business blogs; are you playing catch-up? www.cerado.com Blog Business Summit Blogs. Learn from top bloggers such as Robert Scoble how to make blogs work for your business at the Blog Business Summit. www.blogbusinesssummit.com Five years ago, if you wanted to start an authority site, your best bet was to build a portal with a specialized directory at its core. Three years ago, you were better off starting a forum with a resource section attached to it. Last year, your top bet was a feed-enabled content management system, especially as more parts of content management systems began to have content feeds related to them. (I have 12 feeds for each of my PHP-Nuke based sites, though they don't work as well with Google Tap.) Now, if you want to be the expert, you want to start a blog. If you're blogging consistently, you have a hub of information collected that will inspire return traffic. You have a collection of links to articles, sites, and tools. You can constantly write up your own opinion editorials on each of these items, as well as fact-based analysis of news and events that can help your audience make better choices. As blog software matures you can now categorize, and alphabetize your links, and with the ability to ping multiple sources as well as leave trackback links to other sites, you can send your readers through a ring of related, freshly updated information that ultimately leads back to you. 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