Or ... effective writing that builds relationships every time.
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 secret to building a great relationship with your list is to stop thinking about the people you write to as a list. Nobody builds relationships with lists - only with people. One to one.
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.
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.
The more you can make your writing appear to be one-to-one, the more of your readers will imagine themselves as the one you are talking to. It is like a whispered aside in a real conversation - it makes the listener feel special.
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. Sell something to your list every message to 'train' them to be more receptive.
In my view, both bits of advice are utter rubbish from a relationship building point of view.
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.
It is the personal information that is most effective for relationship building because the same things are happening in the lives of each one of your readers to a greater or lesser extent. By sharing your humanity you are putting yourself at the same level as the reader. Each time he or she say's 'yes, that's happened to me' or 'I thought that too' you have found a new best friend.
Then there is the vexed question of how often you should try to sell things to your readers. The nature of a newsletter lends itself to constantly bombarding your poor readers with offer after offer, but unless you have a great writing style and personality to match, it can be counterproductive.
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.
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!
When your readers complain that they haven't received an issue, you know that you've made a connection.
Of course, if your newsletter is full of other people's writing and doesn't have a personal style, then very frequent publication may be a bad thing for you.
Which brings me to content. Many people still think that a newsletter can be a mish-mash of guest articles. I'm sorry to have to tell you that that particular model stopped working well several years ago. Now, your readers want to hear what you think, what you have to say, what your experiences are. And to provide them with that you've got to sit down and learn to write.
And when you do start learning to write, forget most of the rubbish that you learned in school or business. Write like you'd talk to a close friend, not to your teacher or business client.
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.
About the Author
I'd love to build a relationship with you! Subscribe to Kickstart Today - free three times weekly. {a href=' http://www.kickstartdaily.com'}Kickstart Today is Internet marketing, business, personal development and great movies plus motivation, inspiration and fun all rolled into one.Get your own completely unique content version of this article.
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