Our Internet traffic continues to grow at an exponential rate. For example, last month our app received 2.7 million page views, and our website traffic is up more than 300 percent over last year.
As we come to the midyear point, I did an analysis and found an area that is not growing is our opt-ins to receive our newsletters, including my own Strang Report. I realize, for example, that when the newsletters are listed as “The Strang Report: Commentary From the Founder of Charisma Magazine,” that’s not particularly descriptive or appealing unless people just happen to know me. So, I’m thinking of changing the name and the focus.
Last week, I posed some questions about the Strang Report on my Steve Strang public page on Facebook and got a lot of very interesting answers. So, while I normally try to write about matters of culture and significant events going on in the world, I decided this time to ask for feedback on how I can improve my own newsletter and also increase the number of readers beyond the 30,000 that it’s currently at.
I tend to write about topics ranging from controversial subjects to sharing a need and asking you to support it, such as I did recently with the tornadoes in Oklahoma and raising money for the survivors at Sandy Hook. Some of the newsletters that are the most read are when I write about TBN or Benny Hinn.
I had an idea to change and instead of writing about current events or personalities in the charismatic movement to writing more about leadership.
I have a particular interest in leadership issues and have access to some world-class Christian leaders. But when I pose this in my Facebook account, a lot of the response said they like reading my opinion and that leadership blogs are a dime a dozen. I still have an interest in writing about leadership, and instead of writing about it week by week, what I may do instead is start a second newsletter with probably 10 installments that people can subscribe to and get them weekly for the 10 weeks. My plan is to call it Leadership Matters and to highlight one Christian leader with a leadership principle that will actually make an impact. In the back of my mind is an idea to do a book on this later. This will help me to create a following and see how it resonates.
I really am interested in your feedback. What do you think of these ideas? I’m wanting to do something that resonates with people and that they would send around to their friends so that I can grow my newsletter significantly.
If you have ideas about our website or our Charisma News app (which you can download on iTunes as Charismanews or you can get it by texting CHARISMA to 24587), please give me that feedback. For 38 years, I’ve been interacting with our readers, and that’s how I built Charisma and our business. Now with social media, there are new ways to get feedback rapidly, and I look forward to hearing from you. By the way, if you aren’t signed up for my public page its Facebook.com/StephenEStrang. You can follow me on Twitter @sstrang.
Stephen Strang 
