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Easy and effective relationship building in your newsletter.

By: Martin Avis

Or ... how to build a relationship with your mailing list.

There are lots of factors that help to build that mystical thing called a relationship: honesty, reliability, trustworthiness, charm, empathy, newsworthiness, ethics, outspokenness. But if you don't have them, you may find it hard to learn them. Without them your career as an online writer may be short lived.

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 absolute number one secret - and if you stop reading this article before the end the vital information you must take a way with you - is that you can't build a relationship with a list. Relationships are for people. You and me.

Kickstart Today, the newsletter I've been writing for years, is read by thousands of subscribers, but every single paragraph is, in my mind at least, written to just one person. It may be a reader who asked a question. Sometimes it is a close friend who I imagine is sitting in front of me. Next issue it may even be you.

Keeping the image of one person in your mind is easy. Your writing becomes more of a conversation. And the more you write the easier it gets because readers will naturally write to you with comments and you can then keep them in mind as you answer them.

You'll find that the better you get at writing to one person at a time, the more of your readers will resonate with what you've said. It is human nature to project ourselves into a situation and, by and large, we all share similar thoughts and concerns.

When you imagine yourself writing for one person, the rest of the crowd will eagerly listen in. But if you write to the crowd, you'll soon alienate the individual.

There are two often-repeated bits of advice that you'll hear time and again:

1. Use the words I and Me as infrequently as possible and concentrate on 'you' and 'your'. Readers don't want to hear about you.

2. Train your list into a buying mood by selling them something every time you communicate with 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 well-written newsletter is a balance between fulfilling its task of educating and informing and entertaining. The very best are like soap operas that make you want to know what is happening next in the writers' life.

Talking about the everyday personal things that happen in your life is how to build a relationship with your list - one person at a time, because the same things are happening in your reader's lives. Each time your life compares with one of your reader's experiences, resonance happens and you've found another soul mate.

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.

My own policy is to only recommend things that I've used and love, and to only recommend anything when I'm moved to. That means I often go weeks without recommending a single product, but when I do tell my readers about something, they appreciate the recommendation.

How often you publish is another thing that can affect relationship building and should be thought about carefully.

It is hard to build a close relationship with your readers if you don't get to talk to them very often. It is tough to allow your readers to get to know you if you only 'speak' to them once a month, for example. As everything moves so fast online, even weekly publication can be too little unless you are a powerful writer.

Once the writing bug gets to you and words begin to flow naturally, you may want to consider publishing at least twice a week. My own Kickstart Today started out life as a five times a week publication and the biggest complaints I ever got was when I reduced to 'just' three times a week!

I still get dozens of emails whenever I skip an issue!

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.

On that subject, a lot of publishers still use guest articles. While that isn't necessarily a bad thing, the best writing by far that you can publish is your own. As you build your relationship with your readers they will want to hear about you, your life and what you think. If you are going to effectively give them that, you just have to get on and learn to write. Or more accurately, learn to communicate.

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 full circle. Write as you would talk to a close friend who is sitting in front of you. You don't hard sell your friends and you don't worry too much about perfect sentence construction. It is all about communicating a message - and my message to you is that relationship building is only effective when you do it one person at a time.

Article Source: Main Articles

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