Do I Really Need a Newsletter?

Brandilyn Collins.

Deb Raney.

DiAnn Mills.

What do all these people have in common? You guessed it. Newsletters. And not just any newsletters. Fabulous newsletters. Newsletters with layouts the editors at Cosmopolitan would be envious of. In depth articles. Current news and facts. Writer’s helps. Sound like a lot of work? I thought so, too. So why do they do it?

Author and speaker, Randy Ingermanson said it best in a workshop he taught at the 2007 ACFW conference. Marketing.

What did he mean by that? Well, we all want to draw people to our websites, right? We all want to increase our readership and expand our fan base. Randy suggests giving people something for free to help draw them back again and again. The best way to do that is through a quality newsletter packed with outstanding content.

So I started researching. How exactly do I go about putting together a quality newsletter? I’m not a newspaper editor after all. How do I know what’s outstanding content and what’s not? Believe it or not, that part SHOULD be easy. I may not work for Cosmopolitan, but I know what I like, what helps me improve and grow as a writer, what appeals to my eyes and what doesn’t. Creating a great newsletter means fulfilling all of those things, and being satisfied with the look and feel of the overall product.

There are various views on how often to post a newsletter. Some authors insist it should be done monthly. Otherwise disagree and say it should be quarterly. Still others—twice a year. I must admit, my personal preference is a larger newsletter sent out a little less frequently. After all, who wants all those newsletters cluttering up their inboxes every month? (My apologies in advance if you are one of those authors who submits monthly.) Give me a quarterly newsletter with a little deeper content and news that’s fresh. That’s what I like to see, and therefore, what I’ll probably submit, once I get the process of putting it all together figured out anyway. So keep an eye out. The Cozy Corner newsletter should be coming your way soon.