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Ten Relationship Content Ideas for your Email Newsletter
Hello. My name is Mike Braun. I’m the Online Marketing Manager for BizActions, an Email
Newsletter Service that touches the lives of over two and a half million clients, customers,
prospects, and referral sources each month. This is the first in a series of videos designed
to help you develop your own resources into abundant, meaningful content ideas for your
newsletter. Before I move into the Ten Relationship Content ideas, I think we should lay some
ground work with this introduction, because there are key concepts you need to understand
that will apply to every idea that follows.
First of all, why did I include the words, Relationship Content in the title of this
video? It’s because most firms don’t realize that when they start a newsletter, its purpose
should primarily be a means of building relationships with their customers, clients, prospects,
and referral sources.
Now, I’ll concede that you need to use your newsletter to provide information your products
and services, as well as updates, and innovations as they become available, but only talking
about products and services is missing out on the real power behind an effective newsletter.
In the traditional bricks and mortar world, building a Relationship is all about joining
groups, meeting people, getting involved in industry associations, attending trade shows
etc. While none of these processes should be eliminated from your marketing efforts,
there is a very big and different relationship world available to a business today through
Internet relationships. And the entire process and strategy for building and managing Relationship
Capital on the Internet is different.
Not only is it different but it requires a unique set of skills, a new language, and
new thoughts on how to build and manage the process. Just like physical relationships,
your newsletter relationship requires effort. You can’t just throw money or manpower at
it and expect it to flourish. But with the right focus, it can be surprisingly easy to
accomplish.
A simple definition of Equity is assets minus liabilities. Equity in your business is what
makes it valuable. If you use Relationship Capital to build a solid foundation for your
business, your Relationship Equity will grow. Just like the equity built through investing
in any business over time, the inherent value of the business rises. Inflation accounts
for some of the inherent value of a business as equity rises, but more clients, and a strong
reputation result in a far greater impact on Relationship Equity.
So what do you do with online Relationship Equity? Well with little effort on your part,
you can use it to persuade satisfied clients to purchase your next product or service in
advance. It can mean their accepting a sincere apology when something goes wrong rather than
jumping ship. Everyone knows that solid relationships lead to profit and online relationships and
the profit they generate isn’t any different. A solid relationship in any arena always equates
to trust, loyalty and yes, money.
Business succeeds or fails based on relationships. Your firm may build the best products in the
world or deliver the best service around the world and back, but that doesn’t build relationships.
You do. Your people do. And most importantly your solutions do.
But how do you demonstrate solutions through a newsletter. Real solutions require specific
problems that need to be overcome. Most clients won’t simply equate any generic broad solution
you offer as relevant or worth their effort in pursuing unless you narrow the focus of
your solution.
You can narrow that focus by including content in your newsletter about real world problems
actually faced by those reading the articles. Doing so establishes a connection between
your firm and your reader and that connection will turn these new articles into Relationship
Content, not product and services content.
You will be amazed at the trust and loyalty you can built with Relationship Content that
simply talking about generic product or service solutions will never build. Relationship Content
will cement your reputation as an expert because you will be offering information not readily
or easily accessible to the general public, but only to the readers of your newsletter.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Including interesting articles, announcements, and other
types of content in your newsletter isn’t that easy. The title “Newsletter Publisher”
probably isn’t the title on your business card. It only describes one of the duties
that somehow found their way into your job description.
So considering your other duties, it’s only reasonable to assume that most newsletter
publishers find that after a while, the month-to-month inspiration starts to slip and they find it
difficult to come up with meaningful topics to entice and engage readers and keep them
coming back for more. But wait. There is hope. If you’re thinking, “I have no idea what
to write about and I never will,” I’m going to give you Ten Relationship Content
ideas in this video series. But each of those ideas will rely on one critical component.
That component is: Remember that you need to write every article as though you are the
reader and write what the reader wants to read. So what kinds of articles can you write?
Well, there is a wide range available to you and I’m going to suggest you use them all.
When trying to come up with the perfect idea for an effective article, many people lose
sight of many of the obvious topics that are compelling to anyone, whether or not they
are currently interested in your service. Sometimes the simplest or most common events
prove to be the strongest relationship builders in the eyes of your readers.
Well, rather than make this introduction any longer than it already is, I’m going to
break the ideas up into separate video chapters. Don’t miss any of the videos and you’ll
soon have more content than you ever imagined possible.