Tapping the content marketing power of the email newsletter

Greetings! Today’s SEO copywriting video how-to is the first in a series devoted to an oft-neglected, powerful marketing tool: Email newsletters.

E-newsletters may already be a part of your overall content marketing strategy, but if not, then Heather is going to show you why they should be!

Tune in to find out how adding an email newsletter to your content marketing mix is a smart move for increased content sharing & exposure, lead generation, and product/service marketing…

Email newsletters can be a marketing game-changer

Think “I don’t have a newsletter because we offer an RSS feed”? Think again!

Why are e-newletters important, over and above RSS feeds?

A lot of site-owners will have a little RSS chicklet on their site and figure: “Well, people can access my blog posts and content there, so I don’t need to have a newsletter.” If that’s been your attitude, you may want to reconsider – because the reality is that a lot of folks have no idea what an RSS feed is! Or, if they do know, they may well prefer to get their information in a slightly different way (i.e., email).

So if you’ve been relying solely on your RSS feed, I would encourage you to augment it with a newsletter, because that gives you the best of both worlds!

If people want to sign up for your RSS feed, great! But the majority of folks would be more inclined to sign up for your newsletter – because they understand what it is – and that, in turn, holds huge, game-changing advantages for you:

Email newsletters have some huge advantages

The first one being:

1.  Newsletters allow you to keep in better touch with your readers.

Most likely, your readers are not visiting your blog every single day – without some prompting.

A weekly newsletter allows you to touch base with your readers on a regular (weekly) basis, and if it incorporates links to the previous weeks’ blog posts/articles, then readers will be prompted go back and visit your blog (at least once a week) to check out your latest content.

2.  Your current blog posts/articles get increased exposure.

Because you can feature them in your newsletter, your blog posts and articles will get more exposure.

So with anything that you posted the previous week, when highlighted in a weekly newsletter, you’ll see an uptick in the number of views of that content once your newsletter “hits the streets”. And that is simply because the newsletter is reaching an audience that may not have seen your blog posts or articles when they were first published.

3.  It’s easier to promote older, still relevant content.

If you have been blogging for awhile, chances are that you have some quality “evergreen” posts that, while not your latest and greatest, still hold relevance.

With a newsletter, you can reserrect those past gems and still get traffic and social shares – and that’s always cool!

4.  You can promote a product or service.

And finally, a really great benefit of publishing a newsletter is that it allows you an opportunity to soft-sell a product or service. You can’t necessarily do this with your blog – and definitely not with your RSS feed!

You can add a little bit of marketing messaging in your newsletter. Not too heavy-handed, but certainly enough to whet your readers’ appetite. And by doing so, you can start gaining some leads off your newsletter, too!

Thanks for joining us! Again, as this was part 1 of a series, you can look forward to learning more about newsletters as a powerful content marketing tool with next Monday’s SEO copywriting video.

In the meantime, if you would like to learn more about SEO copywriting, you can sign up for my free newsletter, the SEO Copywriting Buzz, and as a thank you, I’ll send you my free “How to write for Google” whitepaper for Panda & Penguin –safe Web writing!

And as always, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for a video post topic, please contact me via heather@seocopywriting.com, or via Twitter @heatherlloyd.

You’re invited! Have a burning SEO copywriting question? Ask Heather Lloyd! Sign up for an open, free Q & A call with Heather Lloyd: Wednesday, July 25^th, at noon pacific / 3 eastern. Just email our wonderful Heather G. & she’ll make it so: VIP@seocopywriting.com

photo thanks to mollypop