Do you send out an e-zine or email newsletter to your prospects and clients?

I don’t suppose you’ve ever found yourself staring at the screen the day before it’s due to send with not the slightest clue what to write?

Or you’re just not convinced that your audience gets any value from what you have to say?

If you have, you’re not alone. I hear the same concerns from a lot of people.

I was talking to a bookkeeper recently who diligently send out a monthly newsletter to her client. Although she quite enjoys writing it, she found it tough to keep coming up with new and interesting articles about bookkeeping to send out.  She was worried that people weren’t interested enough in what she did.

And to a degree, she’s right.  People will get pretty bored of reading about bookkeeping news. They’re just not all that interested in bookkeeping.  After all, that’s why they hire a bookkeeper to handle it for them.

So how should you keep your readers engaged and informed, whilst at the same time reinforcing the value that you can offer? Here are some ideas that might help…

Do some market research

Tailor you content to what your prospects need. How do you know that? Ask them.

One way to do that is via email, but with the volume of messages most people get, you’re not likely to get great response in my experience.

Far more effective is ask your clients when you speak to them on the ‘phone next: “If you have a minute, I’m doing some research – which of these 3 problems is most important to you right now – cash collection, reducing your accountancy costs, or managing to keep on top of your paperwork, or something else?” Giving a few options helps prevent the ‘I can’t think of anything’ response.

It is also useful to ask people what they think could be improved about your e-zine from time to time. Again, I’d go for telephone or face to face rather than email on this.

Work in a narrow field? Branch out!

Often, if you work in a fairly narrow field like bookkeeping, you might think that your clients are only interesting in hearing about bookkeeping. But people’s brains work by association. They typically place bookkeeping the “finance” drawer, along with credit control, accounting, raising bank finance, cash flow planning and a host of other stuff.

Prospects are very time-poor, and if they can find all the information they need on finance in one place, they’ll keep coming back, and you will start to build up trust.

Obviously, you need to be sensible. I can confidently talk about sales, marketing, communication, buyer psychology and personal productivity tips in a newsletter, but if I started running articles on fleet management, people might start to wonder what was going on.

Mindmap your options

If you’re still struggling, try this: get a blank sheet of paper, and write down what your business does in the middle. Now make a mind map, mapping out all the products services which you think your individual client (e.g. the FD, MD) buys.

Write down everything you can think of, from pencils to mergers and acquisitions advice. Once you’ve done that, put the map away for 48 hours, then come back to it with fresh eyes and pick out the 10 topics which are closest to yours. You now have some subjects to write about.

I can hear you saying “but I don’t know anything about these services!”… well, you have two options. Either do some research on them and use the information to synthesise new articles (just like journalists do), or even better…

Start an ‘e-zine mafia’

If you work within a narrow part (bookkeeping) of a more general field (business finance), how about getting together with other people in your field (such as tax advisors, accountants, debt collectors, business investment specialists) to produce a joint newsletter. You can then each brand it, and send it out to your own mailing lists, with links back to one another’s’ websites.

This has two main benefits
1. More varied content created by people with expertise
2. A much wider readership.

Who knows, you might find other business opportunities with your collaborators arising from it as well?

Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself now and again

I don’t mean sending out the same thing every month. That’s a shortcut to your reader’s junk messages list. But if you’ve got old articles from a year or so ago, and they have a new relevance today, don’t be afraid to rewrite them, adding some new information and a slightly different spin to freshen them up.

Print magazines do this all the time. If you check out publications like Men’s Health and Cosmopolitan, you see the same themes recycled repeatedly.

Remember – nobody pays the same attention to an article as you, the writer do. Readers skim things and miss key information, so if it’s a topic which you know is of interest, they’ll get value from a second run.

Read Copyblogger

If you haven’t already seen it, I recommend you check out (and subscribe to), Brian Clark’s http://www.copyblogger.com/ – it’s filled with excellent articles on how to improve your copywriting and generate new ideas.

Write down at least 3 article ideas a day

Article ideas hit you most often when you’re not sitting in front of the computer trying to work out what to write for your newsletter which has to be emailed out tomorrow.

I’ve got into the habit of writing down article ideas wherever they come me. Since I started writing, my friends and colleagues have got used to me pausing in mid-conversation to scribble notes. I’ve also found that the more I write down, the more I think of. Oh, and don’t “filter” anything at the ideas stage. Even if you know you’ll dump the idea later, make a note if it, you want quantity over quality.

Quality comes later when you pick the best 5 out of 100 ideas you’ve written down that month.