Thanks to a Christmas gift from my mom, I’ve taken up knitting again. She taught me when I was young, and I hadn’t practiced in many, many years. I’m enjoying myself, although so far, my efforts at pattern-following have been… less than successful. (If I can manage to follow a pattern, next year I’m planning to make lots of pairs of felted slippers for gifts.)

I hope your holidays were similarly soothing (or, if you haven’t celebrated anything lately, I hope your time since our last issue together has been just plain grand ).

If you’ve decided to make 2007 the year you get your newsletter out reliably, don’t skip today’s feature article about creating a stockpile for future newsletter issues.

Enjoy today’s issue,
Jessica

Creating Your Article Stockpile

Remember the ant and the grasshopper from Aesop’s Fables? The ant works hard all summer long, storing food for the winter, while the grasshopper enjoys the summer sun and loafs around. Come winter, the grasshopper starves because of his lack of foresight, while the ant enjoys his stores of supplies.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve often found myself being the grasshopper when it comes to my newsletter!

If you’ve found yourself being a grasshopper from time to time, too, let’s get to work on creating an article stockpile just for your newsletter.

• Stock up on perennial favorites
  The first key to this strategy is to generate lots of articles that aren’t time-sensitive. Articles like before and after pieces, case studies, and how-tos generally stand the test of time. Announcements, or industry news, on the other hand, may go stale before you have a place for it.
• Set an appointment
  With just a half hour each week, you can start to generate these perennial pieces. So, go through your calendar for the next month and block off just 30 minutes of time, every week. Perhaps you can arrive early for a doctor’s appointment and use that time to write a piece while you wait, or maybe you can squeeze in a half hour of writing time after that weekly staff meeting. Just 30 minutes, once a week, is all it’ll take to start building your supplies.
• Consider delegation
  The quickest way to write an article is to have someone else do the writing for you. Sure, there’s always ghostwriting which means you get professional content written by an expert writer and get to put your own byline on the article. This approach requires the budget to support it if you want top quality. Another option is to run guest articles, customer interviews, and transcribed audio content, which can all keep you from writing a single word.

So, this week, schedule yourself that half hour block of time to start building up your own article stores. With this approach, you’ll never again have to go without a newsletter issue because you’ve been too busy.