The Cut Sheet newsletter: Should I keep doing it? Why or why not?
The general trend in media consumption is on-demand. I come to this forum regularly, but on my schedule. So when something shows up in my inbox that isn't something I need to address right now, I usually trash it. I don't say that disrespectfully -- I appreciate the time and effort that it takes to produce a regular newsletter -- it's simply a matter of time management on my end. I'll happily spend inordinate amounts of time reading and responding to posts on the forum, but only because I've chosen to do so. Attempts to get my attention for non-critical matters via email don't work well.
From my perspective -- which may or may not be representative -- the return on investment in The Cut Sheet isn't there, despite the good intentions and considerable effort involved.
I also check in here daily, so the newsletter is not always opened but I noticed the RinexDates reference, that was cool!
Christof.
Thank you for the honest feedback (and the compliments, too!) -- I always know that the cool folks here will always give me real feedback without the fluff. I truly appreciate that and it's exactly what I was hoping for.
When reviewing the size of the list, opens and clicks statistics, it is a bit of a mixed bag, so hard to decide one way or another. But I can say that I was leaning toward maybe trying to find a better way to use my time to work on Surveyor Connect. I've gotten some really good feedback from people just replying to the newsletters, saying how much they like it. But at the same time, I have to look at whether it is effective or not (and how much compared to time spent working on it). I think having 30+ issues sent out so far is a large enough sampling to make decisions.
I need to continue it at least until mid-June, since I have Trimble advertising in that space (once per month).
I do have an alternate plan though, to keep a newsletter going, but in a different way. I've found a service that will aggregate the latest surveying-related posts in the forum plus external news articles, then all I have to do is pick the ones I want to send out. Then it will create a newsletter and send it for me. Pretty neat system with little time requirements on my side of things while still enjoying the benefits of the newsletter (both for the readers and for the website itself).
The time saved will allow me to maybe find other marketing channels. I do want SC to continue to grow, but only with legit users that are surveyors or very interested in surveying. I'm proud of the quality membership numbers we have and I want to keep it that way. Even if it means having smaller overall numbers than others in the same space. It's not about the quantity, it's about the quality.
So, anyway, thanks to all for helping in this research! I appreciate you!
