An Internet marketer recently announced (in the typical hypey fashion of Internet marketers) that she “shockingly” wasn’t going to do an ezine anymore.
My first thought was big deal. What’s so all-fired earth-shattering about that? If something isn’t working for ya, by all means, stop wasting the time and energy. And if you want to start charging for something that you previously gave away for free, just do it. No need to contrive any artifice as an excuse.
Of course, there’s always the possibility that maybe a thing that isn’t working could work if it were just done a different way.
Here’s what I know:
Ezines can be done well and they can be done not so well. They can be done simply or they can be done in way that makes them difficult, complicated, burdensome and unsustainable.
Having put out an ezine every Monday for, what, four years or so now, I can tell you that if done right, they can absolutely be a fantastic pipeline and additional marketing channel for your business.
I would also tell you (and the Internet marketer) that just because the feedback or participation isn’t readily apparent, that doesn’t mean it’s not working for you. I sometimes get frustrated with people’s timidity in our industry. But I have to remind myself that sometimes new thinking and ideas put forth are so completely different from the status quo, people don’t know what to make of it at first. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t paying attention. Because I can see very clearly, not just from my Aweber stats and reports, but also through all the times I hear that someone found me or connected with me via the ezine (or my blog, for that matter), that they are opening and reading and saving and forwarding it.
I wouldn’t abandon the idea of doing an ezine just because some Internet marketer dropped hers and now declares them dead for everyone. The key here is to really know your stuff as well as your target market. Because if you don’t, you’re not going to have much to say that is going to be of interest and value to them.
Ezines can be a great tool for growing the know-like-trust factor and nurturing relationships along. But for an ezine to be successful, there has to be some commitment on your part. You have to write about things your audience will find useful and interesting and you need to have a regular and consistent publishing schedule.
Another thing I think is really important is authenticity. So many ezines are following the most obvious 1-2-3 steps… they get so caught up in following the Internet marketer stock-in-trade formula (talk about your kids/pets, launch into self-promotion, feature article, resource) they end up losing their own voice. Hey, I’m sure your kids are great (just as I think mine is), but I’m really not interested in hearing about them week after freaking week. It’s just so obviously disingenuous and manipulative. Then again, maybe I’ve just got more of a nose for the bullshit factor than most people, LOL. (Anyone else feel me on this?).
Anyway, you want to keep it short and sweet so that a) it doesn’t become a drag, and b) you’re an easy read. There’s no point in doing an ezine (or anything for that matter) if you eventually hate doing it or it’s so long that it’s too much work for your audience to pay attention to. If you can remember who your audience is (that is, for God’s sake, stop writing for colleagues and focus on your clients and what they’re interested in instead) and keep it real so they can really connect with you as a person (and not simply as some Internet marketer trying to capture the money of the masses), an ezine can be a wickedly wonderful way to grow your list and nurture relationships. Of course, as with anything, an ezine isn’t the only way to do that.
You don’t have to do an ezine at all. Your business isn’t going take a nosedive just because you decide not to do an ezine. In fact, I would advise against it if you aren’t up the challenges outlined above. But then again, you never know unless you try it out. 
Bottom-line, there are good reasons for not doing an ezine. Ditching the idea just because it didn’t work for someone else isn’t one of them.
Thanks for commenting. Yeah, the virtual assistant term is really completely idiotic to...
5 Comments
Danielle,
Once more you talk about exactly what I have in mind. Believe me, the topics you propose thru your ezine and/or blog, are very interesting to me. I ALWAYS read them, eventhough I do not comment all of them.
In this opportunity, this post is just about what I am dealing with these days. I am in the process of launching my blog. But I have serious doubts whether it’s worth or not. I do not want to write for my colleagues. I think there are a lot of good blogs, like yours, so I don’t want to have one more blog for VAs. I would like to write for potencial clients. But here I have an enormous doubt: will I be able to produce interesting articles, on a regular basis, and with the right content that will catch the attention of my target audience (solopreneurs, small business owners, independent professionals, etc.)????? I have no answers to this big, big question… Thanks for your post!
Hi Mirna! I always enjoy hearing from you.
What I think will be a HUGE help for you here is getting to know your target market. Actually getting out there and talking to business owners, the type you would be working with as clients.
A little trick I have always found helpful, that’s helped me get out of my own head and come at things from a different perspective, is to pretend you’re an investigative reporter or a college student doing a paper. The subject could be “The Trials and Tribulations of Running a [Solopreneur] [Home-Based] Business in the [X] Industry.”
And then go about talking with folks running those businesses in those fields (whatever your “X” is), interviewing them, having them walk you through a day or week in their business, asking what their greatest challenges are, what would they never do themselves again if they didn’t have to, what do they think would help their businesses run more smoothly, easily, profitably, efficiently, what kinds of articles, books and such do they tend to gravitate towards when they do their business reading (take note of any themes and patterns)…
Once you know a bit more about your target market, you have a much better sense and direction about what kind of ezine content you’d want to provide that will be most helpful, interesting and enticing to them. This kind of field research will also give you all kinds of insight and ideas on reports you could do for them and even info products geared especially to addressing the issues and challenges or learning they’re most interested in.
Hope that helps!
Thanks for the piece of advice Danielle. Yours are words of wisdom to me. Will keep you posted on my progress. I have to work hard, and as soon as the blog is ready to come to light, it will be brought to your notice first thing.
Thank you!
“(talk about your kids/pets, launch into self-promotion, feature article, resource)”.
You made me laugh out loud with that one Danielle! I often have a visceral negative reaction towards some people’s ezines but I don’t always quite know why! The “format” you mention is definitely part of it though. The ezines come across as “salesy”, perfunctory and fake. I’m still trying to find my voice so currently don’t do an ezine – just an occasional blog post.
I appreciate the advice to Mirna too. It has hit hard recently that I need to be more focused on my target clients and really research them to understand what they need and what I can do for them. I thought I could be lots of things, to lots of people but find that’s pretty hard to market, and near impossible to live up to! LOL
I totally hear ya, Sheila! That’s my gut reaction, too. I mean, I get that there should be some kind of format and even a “system” to an extent, but not to the point that you forget about being real. And therein lies one of the reasons I think I detest Internet marketers so much… it’s all about the money and it’s all so calculating and phony. They aren’t talking about their kids and dogs and cats because it’s coming up naturally. They’re doing it because they’ve been told that “hey, people respond to this and will dig in their wallet a little deeper if you do this.”
I resist the notion that you can’t be a real human being in business and that the only way to connect with people and develop rapport is through following a calculated formula of falsely manipulating people’s emotional buttons. And it’s almost laughable sometimes, if you’ve watched them for any period of time, you see their little trends happening.
I remember a few year’s ago the trend was to pretend they had sent an email to their list with something wrong in it. This gave them an excuse to send out another, but “corrected” version of the same email. It would be one thing if it was one or two people who did this. But that whole entire industry was all doing it around the same period of time. So freaking obvious!
Now, with people getting fed up with the hypey, used-car-salesman tactics and not responding to those so readily, now the buzzword is being “authentic.” Which I’m all for. But with them, it’s not authentic at all. It’s all manufactured bullshit. If someone told them that crying at the drop of a hat would be the way to get into people’s pockets, I guarantee ya they’d all be doing that tomorrow, LOL. They’re just like those fake Christian televangelists always pulling on people’s heartstrings to get donations. Shysters. And it’s because they are chasing after money. I see a real difference between someone who truly cares about what they do (people who are actually doing real work and not just selling things) and those who are just trying to sell as much as they can sell.