{"id":69,"date":"2012-03-23T18:43:08","date_gmt":"2012-03-23T18:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/?p=69"},"modified":"2012-04-23T20:13:29","modified_gmt":"2012-04-23T19:13:29","slug":"122-newsletters-for-a-christian-site","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/122-newsletters-for-a-christian-site.html","title":{"rendered":"122-newsletters-for-a-christian-site"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Newsletters for a Christian Site<\/h1>\n

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Why will your readers want a newsletter from a Christian Site ?\u00a0 What is it that makes them want to read?\u00a0 Understand these questions and you’ll understand what to put in the newsletter and how it can help you achieve what you want from the newsletter.\u00a0 In the other articles in particular Newsletters for Christian Sites<\/a> we looked at how to understand your reader.\u00a0 This understanding is important to your success.<\/p>\n

Hopefully you’ll have thought about all the characteristics of your readers, age, kids, job, friends etc and will have a good picture of your reader in your mind.\u00a0 Now with that in mind you need to start to think about what it is they want to read and why.\u00a0 If you have a Christian site then clearly you’re expecting them to have a Christian interest.\u00a0 However that doesn’t have to be the whole purpose of the newsletter.\u00a0 Think for a minute about the people and what you’ve learnt.\u00a0 Do the magazines and papers they read solely talk about God and the type of thing you might expect on a Christian Site or do they cover other topics?<\/p>\n

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Other topics are often overlooked by Christian Site owners.\u00a0 People are people, they are not saints, they are flawed and don’t have a focus all the time on God.\u00a0 Instead they care about music, are, the local community, politics, pets, schools and so on.\u00a0 There is nothing worse than the same prayer letter in many different guises.\u00a0 Instead you need to write about what interests the readers.\u00a0 Sure they’ll expect you to give a Christian twist and more, perhaps something to challenge them but making it related to something day to day.<\/p>\n

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A good place to start to find interesting topics is by looking at what people are watching on the TV.\u00a0 Shows like X-Factor have a huge following at certain times of the year and commenting on it from a Christian perspective will make great reading.\u00a0 Don’t fall into the trap of making it a piece that takes a high moral standpoint because your readers won’t find that interesting.\u00a0 They watch these shows for light relief.\u00a0 They know they aren’t perfect, that people say inappropriate and un Godly things but after a hard week they are tired.\u00a0 They don’t want you telling them how bad they are.\u00a0 Lighten up!<\/p>\n

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Other places to look for good material are in the magazines and papers that people are reading.\u00a0 After all if they are buying the magazine then it’s likely they are interested.\u00a0 Perhaps you can dig out the Christmas lunch making timings or how to pack effectively for that holiday.\u00a0 These things interest people and they always open up opportunity to bring your Christian site perspective.<\/p>\n

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So a quick checklist to finish, here are some places to look for material to put in a newsletter to make it interesting:<\/p>\n

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Find the latest high viewer number TV programmes you can find the latest figures on the BARB – Broadcasters Audience Research Board website<\/p>\n

Look at the Magazines for common themes, some of the current best sellers are :<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
What’s on TV<\/td>\nIPC<\/td>\n1,421,645<\/td>\n-5.8%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
TV Choice<\/td>\nH Bauer<\/td>\n1,390,376<\/td>\n+8.1%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Radio Times<\/td>\nBBC<\/td>\n1,041,705<\/td>\n-2.9%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Take a Break<\/td>\nH Bauer<\/td>\n1,009,795<\/td>\n-5.9%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Reader’s Digest<\/td>\nReader’s Digest<\/td>\n709,152<\/td>\n-4.7%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Saga (mainly subs)<\/td>\nSaga<\/td>\n657,264<\/td>\n+17.8%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Closer<\/td>\nEmap\/Bauer<\/td>\n561,869<\/td>\n-3.7%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Heat<\/td>\nEmap\/Bauer<\/td>\n542,280<\/td>\n-4.7%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Chat<\/td>\nIPC<\/td>\n499,626<\/td>\n-8.19%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
OK!<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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You can find more information on sites like Mag forum (note the TV interest).<\/p>\n

You can find the top selling books at Amazon by simply Googling “top selling non fiction” and then clicking on the results link.<\/p>\n

You can find trends in YouTube which shows you the current views.<\/p>\n

Similarly you can watch what’s trending on Twitter.\u00a0 It’s worth noting though that with YouTube and Twitter you should not pick things that’ll date too easily since these trends tend to be “of the moment”<\/p>\n

Finally you can look at news sites like the BBC.\u00a0 They have lists at the side in the news section showing the most popular stories.<\/p>\n

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There are lots of other ways to find interesting content, e.g. Google publishes trends for the year, but the key thing is to thing about what will work coming from a Christian site.\u00a0 A review of FHM (a lads mag) is probably not what you would expect or want from a Christian site but some thoughts on X Factor and perhaps holding a Christian vote on the winner might be just the thing!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Newsletters for a Christian Site   Why will your readers want a newsletter from a Christian Site ?\u00a0 What is it that makes them want to read?\u00a0 Understand these questions and you’ll understand what to put in the newsletter and how it can help you achieve what you want from the newsletter.\u00a0 In the other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120,"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}