Effective tips for E-Newsletters

[Sales Cooke]

While the e-newsletters are not really part of the social media world, how you use them to communicate with your clients can provide a nice link to some of your other social media related activities. These can be productive program for enlightening and informing your customers and prospects. That said, I recently read an interesting article that I wanted to share with you on the eight tips for writing good newsletters. Nothing turns me off more than newsletters that are gratuitous self promotions or an incessant weekly blast of jabber. I love a newsletter that shows up monthly or quarterly and has some insight or information similar to what I might get from Business Week or Fast Company articles except shorter. Here are some ideas for content that reflect this perspective.

1. Share your expertise.
2. Hold a Q&A session.
3. Tell a story of success.
4. Conduct an interview.
5. Feature fun facts.
6. Take an in-depth look at a product or service.
7. Springboard off of current events (news items, holidays, etc.).
8. Ask your readers.

For a complete read of this blog post click here.

[Jacki]

Thanks! You can find me at Know Your Place

[Sales Cooke]

Perfect. I blend the blog content. I add a new plus include an old, in case people have not subscribed yet. Jacki, what is your blog name? I would like to subscribe.

[Jacki]

I just started a newsletter 5 weeks ago that's completely taken my career to another level. I actually took a different approach, though. I don't put my blog content in the newsletter. Instead, I designed the newsletter to establish my authority in my field, give them unique content they can't find anywhere else, and peak their interest so they will then come to my blog or website. This way, they have to actually open and read my newsletter if they want the content, plus they feel they are part of an exclusive group. An added benefit: It makes it alot easier for tracking purposes.

Then I take one specific part of the newsletter and post it on my blog a week later. This gives my blog readers an insight to what's in my newsletter if they aren't already signed up, plus gives me easy content for a post.

[Steven Groves]

Ahh... I'm up in Pinetop with friends and the wireless connection is perfect.

Well, the idea came from a conversation with Darren Stevenson and Steve about leveraging your blog content for a newsletter. What we hit on was the idea that all your posts may not be what you want to end up on your newsletter.

Steve said that you can fee RSS into Nouri.sh for your newsletter. So we talked about what can you do to single out the ones you want to put in a Nouri.sh newsletter.

I suggested that you might use the 'Category' function to assign a category of 'Newsletter' content. With a TypePad or WordPress blog (and probably others as well, those are just the platforms I have used most often and know something about) you can then bring up that category, snag the RSS feed for just that category and voila' - through the magic of technology, you can have a segmented use of your content from blog to newsletter automatically.

I mean to actually attempt the process ad will report back on how well it works. Stay tuned!

[Steve Heideman]

Who says that E-newsletters are not part of social media?? There is a great tool called Nourish Nourish is a next generation newsletter service which allows you to take any RSS feed from content you publish (like a blog), and convert it into an automated email newsletter your readers can subscribe to. It is absolutely phenomenal. The beautiful thing about Nourish is that you do not have to double your efforts with your e-newsletter. You write your blog, and it is automatically converted to your newsletter--no muss, no fuss. There is a free version and a paid version. I use the free version but the paid allows more branding etc.
Don't want your whole blog to be part of your e-newsletter?? No problem! Steve Groves had a great idea on how to take only certain posts and use them for your e-newsletter service...Steve?

[Sales Cooke]

I use the link feature in the newsletter as I am writing it. It is just like creating any other link. If there is a faster way, I would love to know. Forum question?

[Steven Groves]

Steve H- had a great tip on how to take blog posts and automatically have them link to a newsletter. Wish I could remember what the service was he talked about... (nudge to Steve H)