You've Got to Have Content!

By Terri Seymour
Posted Sunday, January 16, 2005

Ezine publishing is an essential element of your online business. Ezines allow you to keep in touch with your prospective customers and to build a relationship of trust and respect with your readers. Building this relationship is very important to your business and your reputation. One way to accomplish this relationship is by producing a quality ezine with quality content.

By quality content I mean resources, information and other helpful items. Do not make your ezine one big sales letter or ad for your products. You, of course, want to promote your products in your ezine, but don't overdo.

When I first started on the Internet, I was looking for links and ezines that would provide resources to help me promote and build my online business. I also needed to learn step by step what Internet marketing was about. Good ezines can be a goldmine for this kind of information. I have seen some ezines that were nothing but a list of ads and I have also seen some ezines that contained a treasure chest of useful information. You definitely want your ezine to fall into that second category. There are many ways of doing just that.

*Informative Articles: Make sure you include an article or two that provide some practical and useful information and maybe some resource links to back up that information. A good article should be like a mini tutorial. You should actually learn something from it. There are many places on the web where you can get good articles.

Websites:
(http://www.connectionteam.com/art.html) (http://www.ideamarketers.com) (http://www.the-best-list-site-in-the-world.com/lotsart.html) (http://www.marketing-seek.com/)

Email Article Lists:
mailto:article_announce-subscribe@egroups.com mailto:PublishInYours-subscribe@onelist.com mailto:Free-Content-subscribe@onelist.com mailto:articles_archives-subscribe@egroups.com mailto:Article_Depot-subscribe@topica.com

*Original Material: Along with other quality articles, you should write some of your own material. If you feel you can't write whole articles, write tips, or updates on what is happening on the Net. Write an editorial on subjects that apply to your ezine content. You want to add some of you onto your ezine. This will help strengthen the relationship between reader and publisher.

*Helpful Resource Links: Inform your readers of sites that would help them in promoting their business, web design, marketing or other avenues of building their business. You can get these links by searching the web, hearing about them from friends or associates, or reading about them in other ezines. Visit these sites to see if they are the kind of site you want to recommend. Write up a short review to go along with the link. Let your readers know how this site can help them.

*Quality Products: If you sell or know of some good products that have helped you or someone you know with their business, inform your readers. Tell them why the product would help them with their business and provide a link for them to find out more.

*Freebies: Everybody loves Freebies!! Tell your readers about Freebies of all kinds. They do not have to pertain to business. Things like Free Ebooks, Free Services, Free Contests, Free Tutorials.....the list goes on and on. Here are some places to find freebies:

(http://www.4freestuff.com/) (http://www.totallyfreestuff.com/) (http://www.freewarefiles.com/) (http://www.thefreesite.com/) (http://free-n-cool.com/) (http://www.free-ebooks.net/) (http://www.web-promotion-site.com/)

This is just a sample. There are thousands of sites that offer something for free. Do a search in your favorite search engine and see all the great links you can find.

*Interaction: You could have a Reader's Comments section so your readers can give their opinions, share their ideas and stories, ask questions, and make suggestions. This also helps strengthen the reader-publisher relationship.

For more help on ezine publishing:

(http://www.e-zinez.com) (http://www.ezineuniversity.com)

Above all else, remember that your ezine is for your readers and you want to help them by providing a quality ezine with quality content. This is what will build the reader-publisher relationship and give your business a solid foundation on which to grow and prosper!

About the Author
Terri Seymour owns and operates MyOwnEzine.com MyOwnEzine.com is a website, ezine and service which provides the resources, tools, guidance and more to help you start, publish and promote your own ezine. You can contact Terri at mailto:ter02@newnorth.net Subscribe at mailto:subscribe@myownezine.com or visit (http://www.myownezine.com) for lots more info.