I’ve been having a content problem.
I write articles online, I write blog posts, and I write articles for my weekly e-zine. While there isn’t a shortage of content, I was becoming overwhelmed trying to write content for all 3 areas.
I want to provide premium content to those subscribed to my e-zine. I wanted to 
reward those who took the time to give me their email address with content they couldn’t find anywhere else. However, coming up with original content for my e-zine each week was becoming a huge burden given that I was already writing high quality content for my blog and for articles I submit online.
So here’s a strategy that I started to employ that helps me generate content for online article banks, my blog and my weekly e-zine without becoming overwhelmed.
Publish all your content on your blog. Everything. Focus all your writing energy on your blog. If you’re blogging more, you increase traffic to your blogsite and you start to raise your visibility. Try to update your blog with new content once every 2 or 3 days.
Then, for your e-zine, take one of your blog posts and make it the feature article in your e-zine. However, do not publish the entire article in your e-zine. Instead, give an excerpt, say the first 3 or 4 paragraphs, then provide a link near the end that states:
“Click here to read the rest of this article and to provide your comments.”
All your blog posts will need to include your resource box, 2 or 3 lines that tell people who you are, what you do and a freebie that you’d like them to download.
Two people who do this really well are Kendall Summerhawk and Melanie Benson Strick. If you subscribe to their e-zines, you’ll notice that both of these ladies follow this format. They provide a small excerpt of the article in the body of their ezine, then they invite their readers to go to their respective blogs to read the full article.
I really like this strategy as it enables your readers to comment on the article and they get to meet other people who are subscribed to your ezine. It’s like you are building a small community on your blog and allowing your readers to finally get a chance to meet each other.
So if you are publishing a blog, publishing articles online, and publishing a weekly e-zine, you can cut down on the amount of time it takes you to prepare content for these three areas by following this format:
- Publish all content to your blog.
- Choose one article from your blog to publish in your weekly e-zine.
- Provide an excerpt of the article from your blog in your e-zine, preferably the first 3 to 4 paragraphs.
- Then, direct the readers of your e-zine to your blog to read the rest of the article and to leave their comments.
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Very good tips! I appreciate it because all the issues you mentioned are things I am struggling with, too.
Hi Leesa, great ideas. Where do you put the author info on each blog post and why would you do that? Thanks!
OMG, Leesa! This post was absolute gold for me. I was having the exact same problem. Now I know how to rectify it! Whenever we do finally meet in person, I’m going to have to give you a big hug!
DeAnna Troupe,
Multimedia Speciailist
Thanks for mentioning me in your article! Following this strategy has significantly increased blog traffic and comments on my blog. Plus, I find that energetically, writing a blog post flows faster than an ezine article. Not sure why but happy that it does! ((-:
Since we’re all under the time crunch, it helps to know there are ways to combine efforts to make every minute count in publishing great content!
Great tip Leesa. I struggle with that as well and have not started my E-zine because I was afraid that would be the case. Now I feel much better about about starting it because I have a plan that I can work with. Not only that I will be driving more traffic to my blog. Thanks!
Does this really have people go to your blog and read the rest of your article or do people not bother (reading the rest of the article)? What percentage of your list do this (hit te link to your blog and read the rest of your article)?
This was a really great tip. I do fight this battle and my ezine has taken the hit as there isn’t enough time in the day when you factor in family, friends, events, personal chores and the like.
I think to take it one step further I will try and take a blog post expand on it making that content a little richer on the subject and publish it as an article with a paragraph at the very end that forms a content web (like the spider)by directing the reader to related post on my blog and to a landing page with subscription to my ezine.
This has really sparked a lot of ideas Leesa. Thanks!
PS I got here via the ezine so it works beautifully!