A fuller version of this post appears on a page of its own: From email to blog to article — multipurpose writing increases your mileage

Here’s a quick way to produce a set of writings for your email list, blog, and article directories.

First, get an idea for the topic related to you niche. It might be a new skill you’ve picked up or something from the news.

Draft a note to your email readers about the news item. It will be very short, just 150-200 words at max. Get just the highlights and leave the details for your blog post. Sign off, but don’t send it yet.

Take the same news item email and write your blog post. It will be longer and will make all the connections you skipped over in your email. Your style is very personal, and you emphasize the timeliness of the event.

You’ll give step-by-step instructions on some aspect of the information you have to give. You can include your affiliate link, if you have one, in your concluding paragraph. Illustrate the post with an eye-catching photo.

Take the permalink to this post and add it to the email.

Now you have the basis for your article. Instead of a timely news item, though, now you’re talking about an evergreen problem. People will be reading and clicking your article years from now. You don’t want to call attention to the fact that the starting news item is out of date.

In your resource box, include a link to your blog post, noting that the reader can find step-by-step instructions to train the dog to use the “leave it” command in the blog post.

You take basically the same topic and optimize it for each genre. You keep it brief and breezy for the email, more formal and informational for the article, and more conversational and in-depth for the blog. Directories — and Google — like links going to solid information. Readers like to get an overview of what they’re going to read and if they’re interested, they can click through for more information.

I’ve gone from email to blog to article, but of course, you can do the process in any order that works for you for this topic for this niche. Expand, condense, rewrite.

In a few short paragraphs, you’ve communicated with your readers in three different directions, providing solid value in a short space of time.

A longer version of this post appears on a page by itself.

This entry was posted on February 24, 2010 at 1:37 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Article Marketing Blogging Email marketing by Jan Bear No Comments Yet