Newsletter Ideas ~Where and How to Find Content

Once you’ve got your autoresponder up and running and have decided on the type of content you’ll provide you’ll have to start coming up with some content. Isn’t that how it always goes around here? content content content.

No worries ~ there’s plenty of places you can find content for your newsletter, and it doesn’t all have to be written by you!

Article Directories

There are so many article directories out there now. You may even find there’s an entire directory related to your niche.  Articles posted to article directories are there to be used by others ~ go take a look at what you can find. If you don’t find anything you’d send to your subscribers you can at least get some good ideas. Make sure you keep the resource box intact if you use an article from a directory.

PLR

Another fantastic way to create content for your newsletter is with PLR. You can get a whole pack of articles for really cheap. Then use each article as your featured article in a newsletter. You can even break them down if it seems too long.

My best recommend for PLR is Easy PLR by Nicole Dean. She rocks it with 2 writers and editors ~ always quality stuff. If you don’t see your niche send her a request. She’s likely to have something written on the topic.

Other newsletters

Sign up for industry newsletters. For example, in the gardening niche there are some FANTASTIC newsletters that come out from the bigger nurseries. They give me so many ideas, tips, hints not only for my newsletter, but blog posts too. You could even write and ask if you could use their articles in your newsletter. Contact your affiliate manager to ask.

Old blog posts

If  you’ve been blogging for a while you can always repurpose older blog posts and use them as featured articles in your newsletter.

Article swaps

Find someone else in your niche and ask them to do an article swap with you. This means they write an article (including a resource box) for your newsletter and you write one for them. You both get good content and more traffic. Win/win.

Other blogs

You are regularly reading other blogs in your niche. Use their blog posts to give you ideas for your newsletter. Did someone do a post you totally agreed with ~ write about it. Did they write a post you absolutely disagreed with? Write about that.

Magazine articles

Magazines are great ways to come up with ideas for newsletter articles. As you’re browsing though an article on your niche you may see something that makes you want to give your opinion or how you see it ~ great newsletter article (and/or blog post as well!)

Just remember to keep your topics evergreen so no matter when your reader gets the messages they will still make sense.

Easy ways to get organized

One of the toughest things to do is get organized enough that you can stay on top of all this stuff. Writing blog posts, promoting, newsletter creation. It can seem really overwhelming.  One of the easiest ways I’ve found is to create an editorial calendar. I know we’ve talked about this before, but here’s a little bit different spin.

When you create your editorial calendar decide on a “topic of the week”. Then come up with 3 ideas for blog posts for that topic, and then you can find/write  a related article for your newsletter.

This pulls things together beautifully because you can at the bottom of your newsletter move people to  your blog with something like “more articles on ___fill in the blank”. If they have read your featured article it’s likely they will enjoy even more articles on the topic. You will get more traffic to your blog and you’ll find it is pretty easy to come up with content when you’re writing on different aspects of the same topic during the week. It really helps me get in a flow and stay there throughout the week.

It also helps me not have to waste so much time with wondering/contemplating/getting really aggravated over what to write about.

The easiest way to stay on top of all this is to get as organized as YOU possibly can. Your organizational style will not be mine and that’s ok. Getting organized will allow you to get into a rhythm and allow you to use the time you have available to its fullest potential.

Hope this helps you come up with some newsletter ideas, if you have questions or want to brainstorm feel free to ask in the comment section. I’m here for you if you’d like to do a blog brainstorm about your site or your newsletter.