This is the third in a series of articles that takes you through the process of setting up an e-Marketing program.  With our newsletter, Informed Marketer News, as an example, we’re providing guidelines and how-to's that will help you produce an effective, well-read newsletter.  In past issues, we’ve discussed strategy development and team building.  In this issue, we’re covering the tough topic of how to create an editorial calendar that keeps your readers coming back issue after issue.

As you start to think about what to include in your editorial calendar, keep asking yourself these three questions: 

1. What kind of information do my readers want – and need – from my company? (Note:  the question doesn’t say – what do I want to tell my readers?  It’s critical to start from the perspective of the reader!)
2. How can I present this information in a way that keeps them engaged? 
3. How can I get them closer to a buying decision on my product or service? 

If you don’t present information that your readers want, in a format that will keep them interested, then the third part of the above – getting them to a buying decision – will be nearly impossible.  But with a little ingenuity and a lot of creative marketing, you can build a strong editorial calendar that will accomplish all of the three objectives above.  Here are some suggestions to get you started…  

1. Product information:  Are there new releases, products, fixes, etc. scheduled in the upcoming year that are meaningful to your readers?  Start plugging these into appropriate issues and then figure out how you can present these in a more interesting angle than the factual nature of a data sheet would allow.  You might, for instance, include some industry data, like we did in the last issue of Informed Marketer News, when we used data from Forrester Research to add interest to our latest reporting releases. 
   
2. Company news:  Is there any information about your company that is new and that would be helpful to your reader?  Avoid self-serving however!  For us, we knew it was important to let everyone in our subscriber list know of our name change, but opted to announce our newly elected president of the board solely through the media.   
   
3. Non-product education:  In each issue, we include articles like this one here that help our readers do their jobs better.  These articles don’t mention our products or services and that is acceptable.  Our goal – as yours should be – is to share our expertise and knowledge and, through that, become an important resource to our readers. 
   
4. Industry expertise.   It’s great to include a venue where your company experts can share their insights on your market segment with your readers.  In each issue of our newsletter, we are providing the latest news, opinions and insights on issues like spam, privacy policies, and other topics that pose challenges for the e-marketing industry in general.
   
5. Ease-of-use advice.  Every product or service has its own nuances that often become the number one topic of customer service calls.  You can maximize the efficiency of your customer service experts by having them provide tips and tricks on how to use your products and services better.  Only a small number of your subscribers may read these, but they are extremely helpful and beneficial to your active customers and they also make great archive articles. 
   
6. Customer stories.  One of the best ways to show how your product or service works in action is to have your customers put it in their own words.  Through a peer’s use and view of your products, you can show the value of your products and services in non-marketing terms your readers are familiar with. 
   
7. The Sanity Check.  One final suggestion – use this handy check list to make sure that you are always keeping yourself on your toes.

• Test.   If you thought you had a great idea, but no one read it, try something else. Don’t be afraid to test and try a new position for the topic or a new headline for the topic before discarding it completely. 
• Analyze.   Get the best analytics you can to find out what your readership trends are from issue to issue.  Even we get surprised occasionally when an article we thought was just “nice to have” ended up being the most popular among our readers. 
• Get Real.  Talk to customers…find out if what you’re giving them is real, relevant, and readable.  If not, find out what is.

Next issue:  We’ll talk about what kind of design elements to include – and to not include – in a newsletter.