A client asked today which posts should be in his email newsletter and which should be in his blog. Most of our clients use our blog posts for their newsletters, and so do we. We like to have something new in the newsletters we send, though, so regular readers won’t feel they don’t need to click through. We also like to mix things up a bit. But when it comes to a particular topic and you can’t decide whether it should be in your newsletter, your blog, or both, there are some questions you can ask to help with the decision.
First, is it important or useful from the point of view of search? Ideally, you want to have pages for all the questions your customers, patients, and clients might be typing into the search engine query box. If you have something to share that wouldn’t matter much for search, that’s a good candidate for newsletter-only content.
Second, is it valuable for everyone, or just for a subset of your potential visitors? If you want to share details about a planned update, time when you’ll be closing the shop for a holiday or vacation, or a special offer only for subscribers, that’s good for newsletter-only info. If you want as many people as possible to know, then you had better put it on your website where it’ll be public.
With these basic questions settled, you may already have decided where that article needs to be. However, it doesn’t hurt to think about the purpose of your newsletter and of your blog, in terms of conversion. Perhaps your blog is at the top of the funnel, bringing lots of visitors and spreading awareness of your company, while your newsletter exists primarily to drive sales. Or it may be that your newsletter’s job is to bring people to your blog, where you build deeper relationships and have plenty of calls to action.
Which of those scenarios is most true for your company affects whether you will be more likely to build strong sales pitches for your newsletter, or for your blog.
With a clear idea of the goal of your newsletter and of your blog, you can tell which articles belong in your blog, which are for your newsletter, and which should be used for both.
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