Grow Your Business With A Newsletter

Writen by Meryl K. Evans

You find a Web site or receive an email about an online store with cool products that you'd like to order, but not right now. Either you file the email or bookmark the Web site. How often do you proactively return to the email or Web site? For me, the percentage is miserably low and my bookmarks file is hey-uuuge.

If getting people to your Web site is a breeze, then you're in good shape. The question is... how often do they return especially when they are ready to buy your product or service? By that time, they may have forgotten about your site and services.

Regularly connect with them through an email newsletter. It's a great way to trigger their memories, give them something for nothing, and build relationships. The payoff will be new and more business, money in the bank account. A high quality newsletter demonstrates value, trust, and stability.

Value

How many newsletters and emails have you seen from companies that were all about "them?" They discuss their newest products. Their site redesign. Their receiving an award. Does this information help you? Maybe if you're a shareholder; otherwise it useless information.

Newsletters demonstrating value by providing information to help readers in their everyday work such as solving the problems they face, keeping them on top of industry trends, and saving them research time by filtering the best articles related to the business.

When a newsletter repeatedly gives readers something of value without a price, they eventually make the buy because the company has proven its expertise through problem solving. One newsletter does a great job in using a sense of humor in its promotional items.

Watch the ratio of solutions versus selling. If selling dominates the newsletter, then it is not likely to be as effective since it's focusing on the company not the reader. Promoting services and products is fine as long as there is more problem solving content than promotions.

Readers often provide feedback showing their appreciation for our saving them time. They don't have the luxury of searching Web sites for the latest information in their industry. A newsletter gives them that, a little bit of everything in one spot. Ultimately, providing value to readers means solving their problems and making their jobs easier.

Trust

Do you buy from someone you don't trust? What about Web sites selling products? eBay has the rating system where buyers and sellers rate one another based on their sales experiences. Would you buy from someone who has 50 percent positive / negative feedback? Trust plays a role.

Newsletter publishers become a trusted information source by knowing their audience and being honest with their readers. Furthermore, as the newsletter continuously solves business problems, it shows the readers the company behind the newsletter understands them and their challenges. Add more credibility by interviewing experts or inviting them to contribute an article.

Demonstrate integrity by creating a mailing list in a respectable way (read: avoid buying lists). Grow the mailing list by"

• Using employees' address books.
• Sending it to people who requested company information.
• Including a subscription box on the company Web site.
• Adding newsletter information in an email signature.
• Writing the information on the back of business cards.

Keep the removal process simple. If someone doesn't want the newsletter, making it harder for her to get off isn't good for the business. It reduces credibility. Besides, if she can't get off, she'll add the newsletter to the spam filter. If there are 100 people like this, it wastes space and clutters the mailing list. Let them go.

Involving readers is a great way to build trust and a community. Provide an outlet for encouraging reader feedback in every issue. Invite readers to submit questions and help each other solve problems, share success stories, anything that would encourage them to write and provide information of value to other readers.

Many newsletters offer readers the chance to ask a question and in turn, post the question so other readers can help. Another way is to ask readers a question on the topic of the month and follow up in the next issue with responses. People like to see their names in lights, so it's another way to connect with readers.

Stability

Emailing newsletters on a regular schedule with accurate and timely is what it means to demonstrate stability. It's not just about finances, number of years in business, or product success.

Actions are the best way to prove stability. To do this with a newsletter:

• Deliver on a regularly schedule (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly).
• Use a consistent format (it's OK to redesign it when it is for the right reasons).
• Write with a clear and constant voice.
• Include a survey for reader feedback (sometimes change is necessary).
• Respond to reader emails.

Stability shows the company is always available when needed and comes through when the call is sounded.

While finding new clients is essential, staying in touch with current clients is vital because they have used the service and know the quality of the work. They're more likely to buy again as long as you stay in touch. Newsletters are a great way for maintaining customer loyalty while searching for new customers.

High quality newsletters demonstrate value by providing information relevant to the reader; stability by regularly sending the newsletter; and trust by speaking from integrity. While newsletter should focus on the customer not the company, both parties should gain value. As long as the three factors are in place, the newsletter should be a winner.

(c) 2004 Meryl K. Evans

Meryl K. Evans, Content Maven, is Editor-in-Chief of eNewsletter Journal and The Remediator Security Digest. She's a slave to a MarketingProfs weekly column and a Web design reference guide at InformIT. She is the author of the popular e-report, How to Start a Business Blog and Build Traffic. Visit her site at http://www.meryl.net/blog/ for free newsletters, articles, and tips.

7 Easy Ways To Ease Ezine Writers Block

Writen by Alicia Forest

If you publish an ezine regularly, inevitably there are times when you get stuck and can't quite come up with the perfect article for your issue. Sometimes just taking a break and coming back later will give you a fresh start. But other times you need more of a "writing prompt" to get you going. The following 7 ways should help you get unstuck and get writing:

1. Write a Tip Sheet Sometimes it's easier to get started by creating a list of tips. How to _______, The 5 Ways to ____________, Top Ten Tips to _______________. Write a couple of sentences for each tip, and before you know it, you have a completed article full of practical information for your readers.

2. Answer Your Most Frequently Asked Questions As your clients interact with you, you'll likely get the same kinds of questions over and over. Take one or two of your most frequently asked questions and answer it in an article.

3. Use a Client's Scenario Protecting your client's privacy (or not, if they give you permission), use their scenario as a case study. Explain the client's situation and what recommendations you gave, as well as what the results were. This will help build your credibility in your prospect's eyes as well, as this gives them the chance to see you "at work."

4. Comb Through Your Reading Box Do you have a Reading Box (or tray, file, pile)? If you're like me, I get a ton of info via email everyday that I really do want to read, so I have a box where I toss all the stuff I print into (actually, it's now two boxes!). Go through your own pile, and see what ideas pop up for you from there. (I do this often when I'm trying to switch from mommy-mode to businesswoman-mode.)

5. Learn Something New and Pass It Along Did you learn something new recently that you can share with others? Or is there something you want to learn more about? Go and do some preliminary research and share your findings with your readers.

6. Interview an Expert I love this one, but don't overdo it. Your readers want to hear from you, which is why they are reading YOUR ezine. But once in awhile, having an interview as an article, as long as it provides valuable content for your readers, can be a nice change and even fun. Send your expert 3-5 questions to answer, and turn the interview into an article by adding an introductory and concluding paragragh. (I enjoy giving these kinds of interviews myself, so if you'd like to interview me for your ezine, shoot me an email at alicia@clientabundance.com and let me know.)

7. Get Back to Basics Think back to when you were just starting out in your business. What were the things you found most challenging? Choose one or two and offer your advice on how to get beyond those stumbling blocks.

Any of these ideas should get you started, and then the words will start to flow. I know when I'm writing sometimes, I'm thinking "ugh - not in the writing groove today at all" but once I get going, I'm usually pretty happy with the end result (but I do LOVE to revise, and revise, and revise... :)).

Copyright 2005 Alicia Forest

Alicia M Forest, MBA, Multiple Streams Queen & Coach™, & Founder of http://www.ClientAbundance.com , teaches coaches, consultants, online entrepreneurs and solo professionals to attract more clients, create profit-making products and services, make more sales, and ultimately live the life they desire and deserve. For FREE tips on how to create abundance in your business, visit http://www.ClientAbundance.com.

Free Content For Websites Simple Oneway Targeted Links

Writen by Kimberly Kellish

Anyone who owns a website knows that one major aspect if survival is getting links. Not just any link will do, we need to get highly targeted links to help our websites become more popular and better ranked in Search Engines. Link exchanges can be tedious and a lot of work if we do them one at a time. One of the newest methods of gaining highly targeted links is through submitting free content to article sites. This can help market your site while also helping others come up with content rich in keywords that they need for their own sites.

When writing articles we can write about what we know. Make sure to write articles that are keyword rich that will help not only other websites in the same area of expertise, but also will be relevant to our own topics. With a link back to our own site inserted into the articles, you will receive one-way targeted links and hopefully gain relevant traffic to your own site from your efforts. Obviously the reverse is also true. When we use these free content websites for our sites we can increase keyword relevancy for pages in our sites to help in things like page rank and popularity of our sites in general. When using free content it is extremely important to read the sites TOS (terms of servce). Many article exchange sites have strict rules to abide by like including hyperlinks inserted by the writers of the articles and links back to the website that you got your article from. Removing any of this information can get you banned from using these article sites and can also cost you to lose you hosting account if it is found out that you are not abiding by TOS.

5 Steps to Gain One-Way links through Article Writing

1. The best way to go about using articles to increase your traffic is to write what you know about. Try to write at least on article a week to keep fresh, new content out there and hopefully have an article to satisfy everyone's needs.
2. Find free article sites that have high traffic and therefore will likely get your articles out to more people.
3. Vary your keywords. When you write your articles try different popular key phrases so that you appeal to a larger number of people. Do your research on places like overture.com to see keyword variations that are popular and searched for most often. Knowing which key phrases are more popular you can write more articles with these phrases.
4. Watch your article stats. Not all article directories offer statistics on who takes your articles, but you can always use search engines to search for where your articles are. Search using either your name if it is in the article bi-line or a specific quote from an article to see where your articles have been placed.
5. You can also write other sites directly asking for them to use your content on their website specifically. This way, you can get your articles, and links, in places you already know would be helpful to both your site and the site you contact.

Writing articles can be time consuming, but when you consider how much time it takes to get a single link through link exchange sites versus writing a single article and having it picked up by numerous other sites without doing anything more then posting it to article sites, you should see a greater payoff. Time is money in this business. Take advantage of what you know and write articles to gain highly relevant one-way links.

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Seven Tips On Submitting Your Ezine Articles To Content Sites And Publishers

Writen by Radhika Venkata

1. Make sub-lists from Your ezine publishers list:

If you have an ezine publishers list, seperate the list based on the topic of the ezine. Send only specific content to specific ezines. For example if you write ezine articles on self improvement, don't send it to search engine based ezines. The more specific you choose your ezine publishers, the more chances of getting published.

2. URLs in Your ezine articles:

Always check the urls in your ezine articles. After all, one of the purposes of writing and submitting articles is to get some prospects. Right?

3. Offer 'Win and Win Situation' to the publishers:

If you are promoting your product through the ezine article, offer the chance of inserting affiliate link for the publishers. Or provide any free service to them or to their subscribers.

4. Automate the process:

Use some sort of software to automate this submission so you don't have to go through each email address and send one by one.

5. Ezine publishers Instructions:

Some ezine publishers send some specific instructions like short articles, or a link back from your web site etc. Feel free to follow them to get more chances of publishing.

6. Ezine + Online publications:

Some ezine publishers send ezines to their subscribers and also they publish their ezines on their web sites as archives. Tell you what... This is a big plus point for your link popularity and also it brings you visitors all the time.

7. How many and how often to send the ezine articles:

Give a minimum of one month gap to send a second article again to a publisher. Ezine publishers receive many articles every day and following these tips increase your chances of getting published:

= Well formatted article
= Clean subheadings for the articles
= Only one article per email
= Thank you note for their time
= Shouldn't be like a sales letter
= Topic oriented and simple explanations
= No spelling errors
= No broken Urls

Radhika Venkata (c)

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