Sebbie on the Webbie

If you are running an active community online, you might have considered writing a regular newsletter, then debunked the idea thinking “Everyone is here already, what possible reason would I have for a newsletter?” Check out your statistics. How many of your members have logged in since they first found your site? Quite a chunk, I would imagine. Life happens, sites are found and sites are forgotten. A newsletter is a great way to remind your non-readers that you and your community exist.

I started writing a newsletter for my community site theBdoll.com at the beginning this year. First I thought I would just write a normal email and be done with it, but a silly thing happened – I run a bilingual site, so I would need to write in two languages and the other would have to scroll down to read the email in their language. That is when I decided to make two pdf’s, one in each language. And while I was doing the pdf, I thought why not put a couple more pages into it, and ended up writing a full blown e-newsletter, as in a little magazine. My members LOVED IT. They went absolutely ballistic over it, and I was blown away by the reactions. I got email from people who hadn’t visited the site for a while saying what a great idea that was and a lot of people raised their hands saying they’d like to help me with the newsletter in the future.

The whole project has brought the community closer together and as close knit as we were, the newsletter has made us even closer – I feel.

In each of the issues I introduce two of my members. Hopefully that will make all of us look more approachable as well as interesting to the non-returners – there is a lot of different types to go around, and I’m sure eventually everyone will find someone they’ll relate to and feel safe with if they’re more quiet type. In addition to that, the newsletter, or ezine rather, contains news, the latest hot stuff and a humorous gossip column of or members dolls – we’re Barbie collectors.

Of course, not all sites have topics that allow quite that elaborate ezines, and on the other hand, your topic might be even more open to ideas, I know that each issue I’ve made has brought in another idea. Have a look at our newsletter to get ideas for yours! http://www.thebdoll.com