Broadcasting your brand
by Paul F. McNeese

Fuel for your business

Online newsletters represent one of the quickest and most cost effective ways for you to broadcast your brand by building a cadre of interested, loyal readers — people who will help you leverage your brand through their own readership and through their willingness to tell others about what they see as “a good thing.”

Taking those first steps
The thought of starting your own online newsletter — or e-zine as they are often referred to in the Internet vernacular — might seem intimidating at first, but consider the following.

• Online newsletters can be inexpensive to produce. Most likely, you already have the equipment you need to begin: your computer and your word processing program or a text editor.
• You don't have to learn anything fancy. A very good newsletter can be produced using plain text — no complicated graphics, photos, etc.
• E-zines can be distributed for little or no dollar cost: 
1. You can do it yourself from your own computer using a standard email program;
2. You can use an online distribution service at low (or no) cost;
3. You can purchase inexpensive software to handle the chore in-house and with more sophistication than your standard email software provides;
4. Lots of help is available online from others: there are even newsletters telling you how to produce newsletters.

The benefits
Now, look at the benefits you can realize from your online newsletter. Use your newsletter to…

• regularly demonstrate your excellence and expertise to a targeted market;
• build your credibility and reputation;
• provide a vehicle for market research — surveys, polls, questionnaires;
• create a platform for sales of products and services;
• save trees!

Content reflects your unique brand identity
You must understand that a newsletter is only as effective as its contents. And, given that one of the most important aspects of your brand is your unique personality, it follows logically that you personally should write at least some of the content. If you do this regularly, and if you've really developed a viable brand concept, your newsletter will tend to produce favorable — if not spectacular — results. Sure, you may consider using articles from others, but be certain that the tone and theme of each makes a contribution to your own brand development.

The bottom line
For specific tips on content, publishing frequencies and other newsletter basics, check out Fuel cells. From this may come a valuable marketing tool — your very own online newsletter — completely supportive of your brand message, tightly focused to help assure your brand-awareness success, and maybe even fun to write and publish. But you'll never know unless you try. To borrow a few words from Nike, “Just do it!”

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Fuel cells

Here are some tips and guidance to help you along the way:

• When determining exactly what content to publish, first subscribe to other newsletters published by leaders in your field. Fill your newsletter with the kinds of topics and items that you like and that best suit your own brand and your target market.



• Be consistent with your content — produce a newsletter with a tight focus.



• Publish information that has value. The more relevant your information, the more loyal and responsive your audience will become.



• Keep the newsletter brief, preferably written in an informal, conversational style, with short paragraphs and lots of ideas.



• Make it easy to subscribe, and tell readers how they can tell their friends and colleagues about you if they like what they read. Give your readers the choice to opt-in to your list — and give them a way to unsubscribe at any time.



• Involve readers by inviting feedback to a question or issue, and then publishing the responses; conduct a poll or survey, and then report and analyze the results.



• Set up sections in your newsletter that are consistent with every issue. Readers will come to get very specific information sometimes, and they want to be able to find it easily when they arrive.



• Establish a regular schedule of publication and stick to it. People are creatures of habit and will come to expect — and welcome — regularity.



• Base the frequency of your publication on your interest level and your work schedule. If your newsletter is to be — or become — integral to your communications strategy, then you'll need to give it appropriate attention. Rule of thumb: the more often you publish, the more quickly you'll build a subscriber list.



• Be a good neighbor — treat your subscribers as you would your neighbors: protect their privacy (don't sell, trade, lease or otherwise permit your list to be used by anyone else).



• Edit your newsletter carefully. There's nothing as off-putting as a typographical error, and more than one will mark you as careless. Don't trust yourself to edit your own material. Let several others review it before you commit to publishing it.



• Be personal wherever you can. People love to see their names in print. Many of the email newsletter delivery services will allow you to insert a reader's name or first name (if available) into the text of an email newsletter. Investigate this capability and use it.



• Use your newsletter as a test vehicle. Try out new sections, ask leading questions, invite response. Change only one thing at a time, though, so you can accurately measure the response.
  

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Fuel for your soul

Consider these words of wisdom:
The most practical piece of advice I've ever received — or given — comes from Natalie Goldberg, one of America's premier teachers of written communication, who simply states, “Your writing IS YOU.” The lesson: your newsletter should brightly reflect your personality and relate seamlessly to your branding in both theme and content.

Your newsletter — an ego trip or just good business?
If, for even a minute, you see your newsletter as anything less than an ego-less expression of yourself, WAIT. The time to publish is not right. In other words, don't publish an e-zine just to have one. Try these three questions as a gauge of whether or not now is the time:

• Am I willing to make the commitment?
• Do I know exactly what I want to get out of it?
• What will my readers get out of it?

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