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Monday, December 06, 2004

An Internet Newsletter Publisher's Main Task: Packaging Valuable Content

by  Alwyn  J  Botha 

The main task of a newsletter publisher is to select and package quality content of direct, practical relevance to its specific readership. Publishing a quality newsletter is a creative process. It does not involve following three easy steps.

A quality newsletter is more than just the sum of its parts. The more the various sections in a newsletter support each other, the more benefits subscribers can get from it.

A quality newsletter makes sense out of the Internet chaos. A good newsletter editor understands the Internet big picture and is able to pick out relevant information which is packaged into one newsletter issue in a way that makes sense for its readers.

A poor quality newsletter is easily produced in less than 15 minutes of cutting and pasting text. One issue of a good quality newsletter takes hours to produce -- surprisingly, they might select from the same content.

Good content, randomly aggregated into a newsletter makes for an average newsletter. Somewhat lower quality content, expertly packaged and organized makes a high quality newsletter. Your editorial note (that introduces each newsletter issue), shows how much understanding and effort you put into this critically important step.

Quality newsletters get edited by the most senior, experienced people in an organization, not on a rotational basis by anyone with some free time on their hands.

The following are some concepts that help a good newsletter editor in his task:

• Integration:
  Combine the value content of several experts in their fields into one newsletter issue. Each of these experts can only contribute expertise on their topics. However, when these standalone expert contributions are combined into one newsletter issue, all their contributions grow in value because they are part of a larger solution. Your newsletter subscribers can possibly get all your newsletter content easily elsewhere, but come to you because of the way you package and present it to them.
   
• Position:
  By publishing a newsletter, you position yourself as the central point where people go to get quality Internet content, nicely packaged to address their exact needs.
   
• Team:
  Your newsletter will be more valuable if its content is produced by a team of people. This team of people consists of: guest article authors, contributors of tips as well as subscribers that provide questions and other commentary.
   
• Benefits:
  Your newsletter is only about providing benefits to its subscribers. The more valuable content you have, the more benefits your subscribers get from you. Value content includes feature articles, guest articles, questions and answers, links to value resources, product reviews, your editorial comments, tips, etc.

To summarize, you, as newsletter editor and publisher, use your newsletter to combine the content of your team of contributors into a logically arranged, benefit-rich newsletter for your subscribers. Your newsletter is benefit-rich when it is packed with useful, practical content that is directly relevant to the needs of your readers. A newsletter is not benefit-rich only if it contains detailed, step-by-step articles.

A newsletter that helps its readers understand the bigger picture meanings and implications of the Internet on a more philosophical level also has benefits. Such a newsletter should focus on educating its readership on how to apply their insight practically and on a daily basis to their business.

A newsletter that focuses exclusively on step-by-step articles makes its readers work harder. A newsletter that focuses exclusively on philosophical, Internet bigger-picture visions makes its readers think harder.

In my opinion, a combination of these approaches is best. Such a combination will make your readers work hard… smarter.

There are two main (opposite) approaches to packaging a quality content newsletter: You write all the content yourself, which is very time-consuming, or you select and package content created by others, which is the more practical and realistic approach.

Most editors choose a middle road where they contribute some original content and get the remainder of their content from other contributors.

If a good editor's main task is packaging value content, a good subscriber's task is to read, understand and act based on the insight they gain from this content. A good newsletter is your personalized to-do list for the week.