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cheers!
Why not something more along the lines of write your normal pace, but just schedule the headlines of those items to post to your site once a week (or twice a week of you are writing a lot of smaller pieces in between).
Then, instead of an email newsletter, leave the onus on your users to use RSS-to-email services, or to subscribe to the major update via SMS/RSS/Twitter/whatever.
Seems like you are taking a step back where the technology has already been there to give you a step-up on how you manage the output of your postings.
Nevertheless, do keep up the good work; and I do hope that you feel more refreshed with the newer schedule.
I'm all for posting at regular schedules, but really, life gets in the way. I would think that even with the readership here that people wouldn't just understand that, but also to be fillers where needed.
Ah well; I'll have to try that subscription, but I'm in the mode of ditching email; wish there was another way content could then be read.
Your comments about email are well made. I'm going to give that some thought.
I'll miss the immediacy and specificity of your pieces, tbh. I find I often don't tend to read the entirety of weekly-review-style pieces, I prefer to see each element as it happens. Perhaps there's a better balance between a one-off piece and long daily articles? A large portion of the interest and value comes from the discussions in the comments, so maybe some sort of "this is what Ewan's finding interesting" feed that could be as little as you flagging up news as it occurs, with a paragraph of your opinion and then open up the main picking-over of the news to the back-and-forth in the comments. That way you'd also get some early feedback which you could tie into your weekly summary article.
Anyway, I've subscribed to the newsletter so I suppose we'll see how it works out next Friday!
I'd like to fatten-out your 'large value comes from the discussions in the comments' point. The MIR audience isn't a commenting audience. I actually took a look back at the posts vs comments ratio and it's very low. In the anecdotal evidence I've been compiling through chats with readers, this explained by:
a) Insufficient time to digest what I've posted
b) Insufficient time to post a comment
c) Too many posts leading to judging the content by it's headlines (in an RSS feed) and skipping everything but the most entirely pertinent
d) Concern about commenting (from an corporate policy perspective). A good example is Reda posting on behalf (or not, as it turns out) of Nokia Siemens Networks.
e) "I've never commented"
I like your idea of 'this is what Ewan's finding interesting' feed. Perhaps I could use Facebook or FriendFeed for that kind of 'immediacy' perspective. That would also allow easy commenting. What do you think?
One final point: I've got quite a lot of email from readers already. One of them comments, "great how you are keeping an open communication with your community." In theory, email is actually 'closed'. But I wonder if readers will feel more 'connected' to me by email as apposed to on the web?
On the 'thanks for subscribing' email reply I say 'tell me what's on your mind' -- and folk are replying to that right-away. Which is simply fantastic. When I do this on the web, it's rare -- ultra rare -- to get any feedback at all.
Perhaps what you need is a way of tying in emails to articles on the site: if people hit reply to your newsletter, then - after some moderation, perhaps - their email gets excerpted as a comment on the site. Then everyone else can read those opinions, and maybe they'll then have comments of their own.
On Facebook/FriendFeed, I'm only speaking for myself here but the former I always prefer to keep more to my personal life (rather than consuming editorial/news/article stuff there) and the latter I don't use at all (so am not the best person to comment on it). Overall, though, I think it adds another level between you and people engaging: it's much easier just to hit reply to an email newsletter, or type in the site url.
How much of what will be in the newsletter will also be on the site?
'I'm sorry that you and the sender are the only people getting to read it'
It's a frustration I share. I often ask if I can quote parts of the feedback on a post -- and most readers are usually happy for this to happen, sometimes on an anonymous basis. But then I run out of time and I'm back to having to deliver the next day's update. I think the real challenge is that the MIR audience doesn't generally like public discourse. When we get a load of readers together at our events, the conversation is fantastic. But it doesn't replicate on to the web, mostly I think, because people are concerned about or unwilling to make their comments 'in public'.
I was originally going to avoid putting any newsletter content on to the site. I was going to make the site frontpage a subscribe form (but ensuring that old content can still be accessed as before).
I'm semi-aghast at the thought of it all being in the newsletter and not on the site. Won't you then lose out on people searching for keywords that you might have written a kick-ass editorial on?
The big problem with writing for a wider audience is that you invariably are forced to change. For example I published the N900 videos for the core MIR audience and then -- with so many others piling in to watch -- felt I needed to produce even more. Ridiculous. The core audience want to have a look, want to read a bit of perspective, want to see the odd video. But they don't want 15 videos on the N900. Whereas if I was properly responding to the audience feedback (and the bucketloads of Youtube comments) I'd have published an N900 vid every 10 minutes for a week.
Perhaps there's a third way? Maybe I could archive the newsletters here on the site, on a delayed basis?
My concern (if I were you, which of course I'm not, because then I'd be talking to myself and that would be bizarre) is that your core group "exclusively" consuming the newsletter is always going to diminish: people will unsubscribe, or not actually read them, or email addresses will lapse and expire. Will you have enough fresh blood to counter that? Perhaps you're confident that your audience is sufficient for that to not be an issue (only you know that, really) but from my experience many people soon forget what isn't put in front of their faces regularly. Without those occasional appearances in Google News or search listings, where will the fresh-to-MIR people come from?
What I'd rather have is fewer people, thinking better. I'd rather have 2,000 of the world's most influential mobile executives and fanatics reading the newsletter, than a nominal 300 or 400,000 readers who:
a) can't dedicate the time to read most of what we're producing
b) aren't in our target demographic of executives or fanatics
c) are transitory
Last year we connected about £3 million quid's worth of venture funding. In the last month alone I reckon we've connected about £150k's worth of business (readers doing business with other readers via MIR).
I'm concerned that in it's current guise, the MIR service is continually diluted. You can't help but think 'wow, isn't it brilliant that all those folk watched our N900 videos' and then unconsciously start chasing views. I don't think it should be about that.
This will be put in front of the right faces -- by email.
I think we'll need to RSS. Gahhhhh. I think we need to give the email a shot and see what folk think. Quite a few people I've spoken to have said words to the effect of 'I don't read long emails any more' -- indeed @moof commented this on Twitter just a few moments ago. I think that's a minority opinion for those hyper-connected with social media. A lot of the executives reading rely on email.
You're right that the opinions of the Twittering sort are perhaps at odds with those of the mainstream folk. Ironically, that could be used as an argument to have as broad a spread of offerings - email, site, RSS, etc - as possible, but maybe your own need for a focussed way of delivering MIR counters that somewhat. In the end, of course, it's the content that's important: if doing things by email newsletter mean you feel comfortable to put out three kick-ass editorials that really add something of value to the industry, then that's got to be worth more than a daily output of par-for-the-course content (I'm not saying that's what you're putting out now, just talking in general). Hence my subscribing :)
The forum concept is an interesting one; it would certainly change the dynamic of the site as a whole. My concern (again) is that it might add a level or two of "burying" to each article, though I suppose it would be clearly linked from the newsletter itself. Casual browsers may find it a little confusing, though; people are used to being able to start their own forum topics, which I'm assuming in this case they wouldn't be able to do?
Of course, people could comment via Twitter - but chances are that you would miss comments from people that are not on ones follow list.
Plus being able to sift through comments at leisure is much easier via web - and less likely to repeat in near identical feedback.
That said, the ratio between readers and those posting comments is crazily, crazily low. Just as an indication -- we had about 14,000 readers on the site yesterday and (I'm estimating) no more than, what, 20 comments?
What do you think of the likes of FriendFeed?
As for FriendFeed (or even our own stuff) I think it could still suffer the same sort of problem since them comments are not coming from friends of mine but are from friends of yours.
Facebook can notify of other people's comments to a staus that one comments on - so there are ways of doing this.
However, I see you point re low level of feedback compared to audience size.
Because with the amount of people whose employers have banned "not-working" sites (ie: facebook and twitter) while in the office, it seems only fair using good old email as delivery method. Also, through disqus, you can also respond to comments by replying to the email messages.
A newsletter in a format ok with mobile phones will also be a good thing.
A lot of big companies like to use your site to push their products - without ever stopping to wonder how it's funded. A man's gotta eat though and if blogs today don't cut it for cash, go where the cash is...(so long as your readers still stay tuned that is.)
It's a great idea and this way you'll also know exactly who you're hitting up with your thoughts. It is web 1.0 but it's effective and emails are still bringing in the money.
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