How To Write Your Ezine With Personality



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How To Write Your Ezine With Personality - Being Authentic
By Christopher Knight

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Every print magazine that you pick up has a personality to it. You instinctively know the 'feeling' it delivers and it's usually lead by the opening letter from the editor. Your email newsletter is no different. Stronger relationships with your audience can only be had when an emotional bond begins and strengthens (think about Oprah for a moment).

Strategies To Help Increase Your "Personality Bond" With Your Ezine Readership:

1) Designate a voice that will come from your organization. This should typically be you, your top executive or someone designated to be your companies "voice" with the public. Your ezine will reflect the unique voice that this person has. This person has a name, so be sure to include it in each ezine post.

Ezine Pet Peeve: Email newsletter publishers that hide from their members and never reveal who they are or what their names are. Do they seriously think they can build a following, referrals, traffic or sales without uncloaking? Put your name in your ezine issues and if not at the top, at least sign them at the bottom. There's a back-end benefit you get for doing this: spam filters give negative points to emails that don't have a SIG line at the bottom.

2) Include recent photo's or tie in something that is going on with your personal or business life that relates to the theme of your ezine issue.

Example: Let's say you are giving an ezine special edition on team building. Your company just had a picnic and played some kind of team building exercise. Showing photo's of this and wrap it together with how it relates to the point of your article will add insight for your audience and build a stronger rapport.

3) Take a position. Right or wrong, as least you'll have one and make it clear. Know everyone won't agree with you and that's ok. Many respect writers that at least take a clear position rather than always being politically correct.

4) Work your location into your editorial intros. When I think of a few of my ezine friends/peers: Ali Brown, I think of Los Angeles; Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero, I think of Texas (even though she's in Van Nuys, CA now); Michael Katz, I think of Boston (he's in Hopkinton, Mass.). These ezine publishers have worked their location into my mind and it helps build my mental profile of who they are. It's not that they are defined by their location, but that they built a connection in my mind with them and their location. Further proof: Know where Oprah is located? The world knows she is in Chicago. See?

5) Think about how you would write an ezine if you prepared it especially for a close friend.

IMPORTANT: Every member of your ezine reads your email, one person at a time! You are not speaking to a group. You are speaking directly to each person on your list, one at a time. After you've written your next ezine issue, think about a close friend that is on your list and reflect how that person would react to your writing. Are you connecting with them 1:on:1 or are you talking over their head as you attempt to falsely speak to the masses?

6) Be Unique. There must be something that you do, say, have passion for, or some way to differentiate your personality from the noise of the ezine marketplace. Find your voice, find your uniqueness and deliver it with an over-exaggeration by 10%. They say that TV adds 10 lbs to your looks and so I recommend turning up the saturation of your positive personality by 10% also.

7) Use vivid descriptions within your ezine articles, stories and posts. Be specific. Paint colorful pictures with rich hues with your words. Help your audience to relate to your uniqueness. Use metaphors that are accepted by your niche.

Use the above strategies to develop your personality with your readership and they will thank you by opening your emails, telling their friends about you, buying your products or services, lowering their likeliness of unsubscribing, and I guarantee your business and email newsletter membership size will grow.

Ezine-Tips Reader Feedback:

Chris -- here's the counterpoint to creating a strong ezine personality.

We did that at RoadBikeRider.com in our weekly e-newsletter, now going to 39,000+ subscribers. It was full of Ed (me) and Fred (my partner). We're both well known in road cycling thanks to 30-year careers in cycling journalism.

When Fred retired last spring and I looked into selling the biz instead of running it alone, the chief stumbling block for the two prospective buyers was the same: "What would RoadBikeRider.com be without Ed and Fred?" The newsletter and website was so full of our personalities that it made the buyers shy away. I finally agreed to stay involved for one of the guys if he followed through with the purchase. I eventually decided against selling and am now running RBR solo, but that's another story. What I've done, though, is taken "Ed" out of newsletter for the most part. It's now the ambiguous "we" even though "we" is always me. There's still personality, but it's sort of corporate personality, not personal personality. It don't want personality to be a negative if the company ever goes up for sale again.

Ed Pavelka
RBR Publishing Company
www.RoadBikeRider.com

Excellent & very valid counter-points Ed! -Chris

This Ezine-Tip was submitted By Christopher Knight -- Email List Marketing Expert, author and entrepreneur. Get your weekly dose of Email newsletter publishing, marketing, promotion, management, email-etiquette, email usability and deliverability tips by joining the free Ezine-Tips newsletter: http://www.emailuniverse.com/subscribe/.

Ezine-Tips for August 26, 2005

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How To Write Your Ezine With Personality - Being AuthenticBy Christopher Knight

How To Write Your Ezine With Personality - Being Authentic
By Christopher Knight