Newsletters are great because they offer you the opportunity to send out your words to a huge number of people. They establish you as one of the lead players in your field. But there is also another side to electronic newsletters, and that is the fact that it helps you to establish yourself as having a 'Web presence.' Now some of you may think that having a Web presence is not a big deal, but that is where you are wrong. A Web presence can really help turn your business around!

Importance of a Web Presence:

A presence on the World Wide Web will get you noticed. It is a strange fact of Internet life that, if you have a number of articles, newsletters, and informative pieces out there, then search engine spiders will start to pick up on you and your business.

If you have a one-page website, with little genuine content on it, few links to other websites, and no other information in cyberspace, then your business will not grow in terms of Internet markets. Unless you have an extreme niche market, you will simply be ignored by the big search engines; in fact, you will not be ignored, but you will be under their radar, so they will not pick up on you. So what you need to do is to establish yourself on their radar so that when the little search engine spiders crawl through the World Wide Web, they will pick up on you and your business.

So an electronic newsletter is not just about ensuring that you establish a good relationship with your customers; it is also about a little bit of self-promotion through hidden means!

Although the newsletter itself should not be written in a style that is about how great you are and how many big words or jargon terms you know, the hidden function of ensuring that you get maximum exposure on the Web should not be overlooked, since this will help to get your message across and help people to know who you are and what service you provide.

Search Engine Optimization:

When writing your newsletters, be conscious of search engine optimization techniques, but do not let them dominate the content of the newsletter.

For best results, it is better to have a few keywords that you insert naturally into your content. But use keywords appropriately. If, for example, your keyword is 'lock' or 'locks,' then fit these in when you can. But if you inject them into every sentence, then you will lose the flow of your writing, and the whole newsletter will lose focus and simply seem like it is a vehicle for you to circulate items containing your keywords. So use keywords sparingly, especially if they are obscure or difficult to insert with ease.

You also need to be specific about keywords. Do not start off a page with a certain set of keywords, then change them halfway through. Devote a good 10 or 15 minutes thinking about what your keywords should be and write them down so that you can prompt yourself when writing. But beware of overuse and do not let them dominate the text!

Forward to friends: 

Any good newsletter will make it really easy to forward it onto friends or colleagues that will increase your Web presence even more. Make sure that you make this link really easy so that people who don't have much time will be able to forward it onward without too much difficulty; in that way, you will be able to get more people to read it and receive more Web presence!

Sign up for newsletter section: 

Make sure that on any routine correspondence you send out electronically that you have a link that allows people to sign up to your newsletter. It is also advisable to tell them how often you send out a newsletter. For example, if it is a quarterly publication, then you will probably get more people signed up than if they assume that it is once a month!

Make sure that the link encourages people to sign up. It is not enough to say 'Sign up for our quarterly newsletter.' You need to say something like 'Sign up for our exciting quarterly newsletter that will tell you of the latest developments and trends in the world of (insert your business area here) and will also keep you posted about any special offers,' or some such wording. Remember that you have to persuade them to join up!

Encourage backlinks: 

Encourage anyone who has read your newsletter and who likes it to create a link back to it so that your Web presence becomes more widespread.

The more backlinks you can have, the more you will start to get recognized by the search engine spiders and the closer you will come to the top of the search engine ratings.

Remember that the newsletter is forever: 

Ensure that you have the capacity and the resources to devote to a newsletter before you start. If you publish a few newsletters then grow tired of it, you will undoubtedly lose the trust of many of your customers, so plan ahead and avoid failing through lack of planning!