You have a great deal of information to share with others. You don’t want to force it on others. You want to earn their attention instead of demanding it. Earned attention is a building block of a sustainable relationship.

Earning versus demanding attention

The majority of people who are trying to share their information with other people inundate other people and don’t give any consideration to whether their recipients are actually interested in the information that is being sent to them. There is another approach that works much better in the long run and the positive results will be much more permanent. You can earn attention from people who you feel are valuable to you professionally and with whom you feel you can have a mutually beneficial relationship. A large volume of content, if shared respectfully and discretely, can really go far. On the other side, of course, you want to provide something valuable to the people with whom you are trying to cultivate a relationship. Once you have earned the attention of your chosen people, everything will fall into place.

There are several different ways in which to earn the right kind of attention through your content.

Intrigue: If your content is entertaining and humorous, people will be interested in it and it will stay with them for a long time. People love to be entertained. You definitely don’t want to share dry, boring content. Having entertaining content doesn’t mean that your content isn’t valuable. You should make it as interesting as possible for the people whom you want to read what  you are writing.

Inspire: People react and connect emotionally to what they read if it has the ability to touch them. If you can’t touch them emotionally and inspire them in some way, you won’t succeed with your content. If you share thoughts and ideas that other people can connect with and can relate to, you will be able to get them to respond to you in a positive way and to start to build a relationship with you.

Teach: People love to learn new things all of the time. The more you are able to teach them, the happier they will be. When you sit down to write content that you gear in an educational direction, there are several ideas that you will want to consider incorporating into your articles. Your content should plainly state why you should and why you should not doing something in business, how you should do something, when you should do something, and what you should and should not do.

Sharing information: If you give other people information that they find useful and valuable, they will remember you for it and will truly appreciate the help that you have given them. When you share information, you are simply giving them a tool that they can use or not use, at their own discretion. that is different than teaching them something. In that case, you are giving them information and you are then showing them how to use the tool.

Treat controversy carefully: Controversy is not always bad. In fact, if you are smart, you can use it to your advantage in many cases. It is important, however, to choose which situations and issues are worth making a big deal out of and which ones are not. If you behave appropriately with the right people in a situation that is controversial, you may earn brownie points.

 Conclusion

If you use the approach that has been discussed here and you make sure that your content focuses on some or all of those categories, you will succeed and people will interact with you and they will want to continue to read what you are writing and sharing. Make sure that you always keep the needs of the people whom you are trying to connect with in mind and gear your content to them. Most importantly, you want to get people to continue to come to you and to continue to interact with you.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

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You may be wondering why you bother writing your eNewsletter every month and sending it to your list of recipients. Maybe more and more people unsubscribe each month. You may not understand why you need to continue to send it.

Your broader social media strategy

When it comes to your entire social media marketing strategy, an eNewsletter is an extremely important component and you will see that it is a positive contributor to the success of your business over time. One of the main reasons why eNewsletters are so important to your marketing strategy is that they generate leads. Once you succeed at getting people to opt-in (in other words, they make a conscious choice to give you their contact information), they have automatically given you permission to market to them. Your eNewsletter is an excellent vehicle for all of your wonderful content that you will  use to impact your readers and get them to, hopefully, eventually do business with you.

Why you need an eNewsletter

There are several reasons why you should be offering an eNewsletter to your readers:

• Staying in touch: An eNewsletter will help you to stay in contact with your clients. You can keep them informed of all that is happening with your business, including new products, new services, etc.
   
• Improving your relationships: Your consistent offerings will make people turn to you first when they need something. After all, you are the subject matter expert.
   
• Giving valuable tools to your clients: You can share helpful tips and tricks in your eNewsletter, which will enable your readers to become more successful in their own businesses.
   
• Providing additional data: The information that you offer in your eNewsletter will provide data that you can use when you want to promote your new offerings.
   
• Gaining attention: You can request that your clients share your eNewsletter with other people. The more attention your eNewsletter gains, the better it will be for you and your business.

What makes an amazing eNewsletter

As you are writing your newsletter, you should put a great deal of thought into the concepts that should be included and in a particular order.

• Establish your reason for writing the eNewsletter.
• Figure out what you want to say.
• Figure out how you want to say it.
• Figure out exactly how you are going to share it with other people.
• Figure out who will write it and how frequently you will distribute it.
• Be consistent and use the same template every time.
• Keep your language and the message that you wish to convey simple.
• Try to keep your eNewsletter to a maximum of 1000 words.
• Make sure that your articles create an interest in what you are trying to sell.
• Make sure that the information that you offer is useful to your readers.

So, now you want to know how to write an amazing eNewsletter. The immediate answer is content. The reason that people are willing to opt-in is because of your content. People need a really good reason (a reason that is really compelling) to open your eNewsletter. Your content must really grab them. Your content needs to satisfy their wants and needs (What’s In It For Me). From the marketing perspective, your content should offer valuable and educational information and it should not cost anything for the recipient. It is very important for you to constantly keep your target audience’s needs in mind when you are writing your content. It needs to fulfill at least some of their needs.

After you have shared your high-quality content, you can offer your audience promotions and/or some other incentives of interest. It is acceptable (and appropriate) to include some self-promotion with your promotions, as long as it is done in good taste. This offering will bring you closer to an eventual sale. If you don’t currently have an eNewsletter, you should seriously consider either writing one or having someone else write it for you. There are several companies (Mail Chimp, Constant Contact, to name a couple) that can provide you with a variety of possible templates for your newsletter.

Avoid spamming

It is extremely important that you don’t spam anyone with your eNewsletter. People will read your eNewsletter if they want to read it. It is their choice. If they don’t opt in, you are automatically spamming them. The most “invasive” that you can be is to ask them if they would like to receive a free copy of your eNewsletter and proceed to let them know what they will find in the eNewsletter. If they say yes, you can feel free to send it.

If include your eNewsletter in your social media marketing strategy, you will be able to follow up with your recipients and they will eventually turn into valuable and loyal clients.

Conclusion

eNewsletters are an integral part of your social media marketing strategy. As you consistently offer your readers content that is informative, educational, and compelling, they will look forward to reading about you and your business and you will be building trust and credibility over time. Another thing that is very appealing about an eNewsletter is that it is very inexpensive to produce and it won’t cost your readers anything either.The next thing you know. they will become loyal clients and they will continue to buy from you as well as telling their friends to do the same.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

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We have all heard of SPAM and have all been on the receiving end of it. SPAM is an unsolicited, often commercial, message transmitted online as a mass mailing to a large number of recipients. So, what do we do?

The term “SPAM” comes from the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. The law was the first one in the United States to establish national standards for sending commercial Email and requires that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforce its provisions. The acronym stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act.

Many times, information that is shared online between businesses and their followers takes on a misunderstood intended meaning. There are many people who share valuable and informative information that is meant to educate and help others to overcome the challenges that they face in their own businesses. Instead of that being treasured and appreciated for what it is, the intention is misunderstood and other people become annoyed and resentful because, in their estimation, they are being exposed to too much information, find it annoying and start to declare it as SPAM.

It is definitely accurate to say that not all unsolicited materials that are distributed over the internet are spam. For example, if you have voluntarily given your Email address to a person or a business (in other words, you have opted in), you should not in any way feel that you are being spammed by those business owners. A good example of this type of Email communication would be a monthly newsletter, business proposal or some other type of message from those particular businesses.

The most important aspect of SPAM that negatively affects online recipients is that they feel that they are being bombarded with information. It is information that is coming in large volume and great frequency. Another aspect is when people start to receive the same content multiple times.

What to do about SPAM

You can’t really prevent SPAM from reaching you altogether; however, there are things that you can do that minimize how much SPAM you receive.

• Email addresses: First and foremost, you should not post your Email addresses on public forums, newsgroups, chat rooms or websites. Unless you really want to be inundated with a great deal of information that you don’t want or need, this should be the golden rule to follow when it comes to your online presence.
   
• Opening messages: There are many tools and filters available that will stop SPAM mail from reaching you. For example, Yahoo provides several options to help you. You are able to choose all of the Email messages that you think might be SPAM and click on the “SPAM” button. Once you have done that, those types of messages will no longer come to you. You will not see them in your inbox.
   
• Don’t reply: If you have any suspicion that an Email receive by you is SPAM, the worst thing that you can do is to reply to that Email. Sometimes, the message appears to be inane but in actuality, it is not. Many times, you will have received a message and you have the option to unsubscribe. When you do that, you are proving to the spammer that you exist. If you are pretty sure from the subject line that the Email is SPAM, you should delete it without opening it at all.
   
• Don’t click on any links in a spam Email: Because spammers many times have several unique pages on their websites, when you click on a link in the SPAM Email that they have sent to you, it gives them a clear message that you (and only you) have received the message that he or she sent to you.
   
• Never forward an Email from someone whom you don’t know to a list of other people: The classic example of this is the chain Email. This is a perfect way for spammers to get their hands on new lists of people to harass.
   
• Never use your home or business Email address: When you are registering on a website for some service or a giveaway, always use a free Email address, such as Hotmail or Yahoo to create an address that will only be used for that purpose.
   
• Think before you join: Before you decide to join an online list of any kind, you need to make sure that the owner of the list has no intentions of selling your contact information to anyone else. Check to see if you are able to opt out of receiving unsolicited Email from that website. A good way to know for sure is if you read the website’s privacy policy.
   
• Preview your messages: Most Email programs allow you to preview all of your Email messages before you actually open them. In Outlook, go to the View menu and select Preview Pane. Once that is turned on, whenever you want to preview a message, single click on it and you will see the preview.
   
• Use a SPAM filter: There are several decent SPAM filters, such as spamBayes for Windows (which is a part of TechSoup’s Free Downloads section and won’t cost you anything)
   
• Set your privacy settings correctly: You will want to make sure that the privacy settings don’t allow you to receive any solicitation from other websites in your Email profiles. If and when you sign up for free Email accounts, make sure to uncheck the preselected choices that you don’t want.

Conclusion

Although SPAM is a very large annoyance to everyone, it is a way of life in this era of technology. Because everyone will continue to stay connected and will become even more entrenched in all things electronic going forward, we need to find the most effective way to live with what we have and do it in the most intelligent and effective way possible to make sure that it doesn’t cause any real damage.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

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Email newsletters with the customer in mind provide valuable, informative and helpful information. A newsletter is a very effective marketing tool. It assists customers in meeting their objectives and it increases the profitability of your business.

Please remember; however, that your customers will not be the only people to read your newsletter. Your competitors will also read it. With that in mind, make sure that you are careful not to put information into your newsletter that you wouldn’t want your competitors to get their hands on.

When considering how to make your newsletter effective, keep in mind that repetition of information is a good thing, as long as you are not the one who is doing the repeating. You should get your customers to write about your goods and services, highlighting benefits and key features. Whenever possible, encourage them to use metrics. Using metrics is a very solid and successful method of demonstrating the high quality of your offering.

A customers-only section in your newsletter

This section will allow customers to get answers to their “How do I” questions easily and quickly. You should provide a thorough index and a way for the customers to easily search by specific products or topics.

Your focus should be on helping your customers to make use of your products to their full potential. Your newsletter can highlight products and services that you choose, offer testimonials, include a “Tricks and Tips” column and address customer service questions in a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section. Remember to get approval from your customers before you send them updates and product information.

Attract new customers through your free informational newsletter

You should mail your newsletter to all those who sign up on your website, even if they aren’t customers. The newsletter will provide valuable information to comparison shoppers as well as supplying useful information to your customers and your competitor’s customers. Additionally, your newsletter can address questions that don’t necessarily apply to customers, such as general questions regarding your area of expertise and questions related to products and services.

Have a clear understanding of who is reading your newsletter

Focus your content on the needs and wants of your readers. You can generate content by using online information-gathering research services.

Keep your newsletter focused on your customers’ needs, not yours

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