Top Relationship Building Tips For Super Responsive Newsletters.
Or ... how to build a relationship with your mailing list.
Building a relationship with a largely anonymous list of people who have randomly subscribed to your ezine or newsletter sounds like a hard challenge. In fact, it is much easier than you may think. Of course, you'll need to demonstrate a few character traits in the things you write. For example, you won't get far unless your honesty and ethics are unquestionable. Reliability and trust are the foundation of any good relationship and you'll need to build on them with charm and empathy for your reader's feelings. Add in a generous sprinkle of outspokenness and the ability to keep your writing newsworthy and current and you have a winning combination. Not all of these factors come naturally to everyone, but learning them is vital.
Let's concentrate here on the key factors that I believe you can learn that will set your writing apart from 99% of the rest, and give you a head start in building relationships with your readers. These are the things you can put into action from today.
The first and foremost secret is to never think about your readers as a list. 'List' is way too anonymous. You can't ever build a relationship with a list - relationships are for people.
When I sit down to write Kickstart Today, I never write to a list. I write to Richard, who I met for the first time at a seminar and who sent me a Christmas card. I write to Pearson, who started out as a subscriber and soon became a close mate. I write to Margaret, who sends me lovely emails. I write to my daughter, who reads Kickstart at work.
There are hundreds of other people who have written to me over the years and told me what they like and dislike, what their problems are and what they need to know. So when I'm writing about a particular subject it is easy for me to imagine that I'm writing it for that one specific person.
The strange thing is that the better you succeed at addressing one person in your writing the more you'll get emails from other people asking how you knew exactly what they wanted to hear. Your writing will resonate because there are only so many concerns to go round and by addressing one person's thoughts, you'll appear to be reading the minds of many.
Everybody loves to eavesdrop, but the reality is by writing one-to-one, everyone will think you are writing to them personally. But as soon as you write one-to-many, it becomes impersonal and bland.
As far as writing ezines and newsletters are concerned, over and over again I see so-called experts writing hoary old advice:
1. Eliminate the I's and Me's and maximize the 'you's'.
2. Your readers have to be trained to buy things from your recommendations. You must sell to them every time you write - so they know what is expected of them.
Both are nonsense if building relationships that are what you want to do.
People read your newsletter for the information you can give them to make their lives better/easier/more successful. If that was the only reason they read you, then the I/You ratio of 1:5 that is often quoted would make sense. But the reality is that people do business with people they like and they get to like you by knowing about what is going on in your life.
In my experience, so long as you are delivering the real information too, you can't talk about yourself and your life enough! I get far more emails about the personal things I write than about the stuff my newsletter is really about - and I love it!
A good newsletter is like a soap opera - it draws the reader into the life of the writer and makes him or her eager to know more.
Subscribers may say that they want the important content and nothing but the important content, but my experience clearly shows that it is the day-to-day life stuff you write about that really connects.
As to trying to sell them stuff every time you write ... well, that is very dangerous unless you can pull it off with a a lot of charm.
You will sometimes find a newsletter writer who has mastered the art of the constant hard sell, but most who try it just end up looking over-eager to grab your money.
When I write my own newsletters, Kickstart Today in particular, I can sometimes go several weeks without recommending anything at all. After all, if I haven't been using or reading something worth telling people about it is usually best to keep quiet! That way, when I do mention something that I genuinely recommend, the response is excellent.
Frequency of publication is another factor to consider that can affect your relationship building with your readers.
A monthly ezine will have a harder job building a positive personal relationship than a weekly. And in my view, even a weekly is hard to build a close relationship with.
If you can write without too much effort, go for at least twice a week. My own Kickstart newsletter was five times a week for a hundreds of issues and the biggest complaints were when I reduced to three times a week.
When your readers complain that they haven't received an issue, you know that you've made a connection.
It goes without saying that over-use of other people's writing in your newsletter can damage your relationship building if you aren't careful.
Many ezine publishers still fill each issue with other people's articles. While that isn't a bad thing in moderation, too much can be. The whole point of building a relationship with your readers is so that they will want to hear about you, your life and what you think. Don't be afraid to give it to them. That does mean you have to learn the craft of writing, but the rewards are well worth the effort.
Which brings us to another old chestnut: grammar. The grammar you use in your newsletter should have more in common with the conversations you have with your friends than with anything you ever learned at school.
Write conversationally, using conversational grammar (sentences CAN start with and, contractions are better than okay!)
Which brings us right back to the beginning - when you sit down to write, every paragraph that leaves your fingers is a conversation with one person who is sitting in front of you. An old friend, not a list. Relationship building has nothing to do with lists, it is about reaching one person at a time.
I'd love to build a relationship with you! Subscribe to Kickstart Today - free three times weekly. www.kickstartdaily.com'>Kickstart Today is Internet marketing, business, personal development and great movies plus motivation, inspiration and fun all rolled into one.
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