Blog or Newsletter? Which is best for building a list?

"Are Ezines still very relevant and a popular popular way to establish a list vs. a blog?" Amanda from Ft. Lauderdale asks. This is a 2-part question really, about which is best to do, and then about the best way to build a list. I'll try to sort out the overlapping components.

An ezine, or emailed newsletter, has been a major marketing tool for online businesses since the 90s. In 2004 along came blogs; business blogging has quickly become an easy way to publish your message online and get found by the people who need your services.

The Blog vs Ezine debate isn't new, nor is it finished. I posted previously what others were saying about the ezine/blog debate on this blog.

And our answer (in most cases) is to do both. But you should get them simplified so that neither task takes up too much of your time and energy.

Building Your List...

We have far more subscribers to our weekly ezine, Savvy eBiz Tips, than we do for our blogs. Our weekly tips newsletter has several sections:

1. Useful tip(s) for online marketing
   
2. Info on any Blog Squad event or program or sale
3. Our best blog post of the week
4. How to hire us or get us to speak to your group
    

We can use both our ezine list and our blog lists of subscribers to send out information and occasional promotions. However, we're always careful to segment our emailing messages by interests. We don't want to promote a program about writing to our list of weight-watchers or brain scientists, for example.

I'm noticing a trend of combining the content of a blog with the ezine. In other words, some blog authors are sending out weekly emailed versions of their ezine that is solely a summary of the week's blog posts.

Here are some popular blog posts and articles about the ezine vs blog debate. Ultimately it's up to you to decide what is the best way for you to reach your prospective clients.

Dr. Ralph Wilson of Web Marketing Today does a fairly decent job of discussing the differences, with one exception. At the time of writing his article he apparently wasn't aware that blog readers could choose to get blog updates delivered by email and that a blog author can accumulate a list of blog subscribers.

Yvonne DiVita discusses the question here on her Business Blogging Bootcamp blog.

Arguing in favor of blogs, Why Blogs are Beating Out Ezines ... And Matter So Much to Your Platform, a post from Suzanne Falter-Barns.

Taking the contrary view, Why Ezines Still Beat Blogs, from Ezine-Tips writer Christopher Knight.

How and why I combined my e-newsletter with a blog by Debbie Weil, BlogWriteforCEOs. Debbie cites too much time to write and format an HTML newsletter and the fact that they aren't interactive as major reasons she now combines her newsletter and blog as a posted publication.

Bottom line: The Blog Squad recommends using BOTH tools.

Comments

[Debra Marrs]

Thanks for your response on this topic, Patsi. It's clear there's room for both types of content to get the word out. I believe both ezines and blogs will continue to live side by side and in company with one another for a long time. At least as long a print media is still king over the queen (audio or podcasting). Great tips (as always!) and great links to helpful articles too.