Do not make yours just another newsletter

If you are interested in marketing in general, and more specifically online marketing, then you will know all about email newsletters. They are invaluable and people have made a name for themselves from selling through their email lists. Having a newsletter is literally a list of potential leads, which you can contact quickly and easily with very little effort and have a good conversion rate. This is the theory at least. Is this the reality though? The answer is of course no.

Why you should have a newsletter
Lets recap quickly the reasons you should have a newsletter. Firstly, to inform your subscribers of new products, and special offers. This is the main and often only reason for most businesses. It is also a great way to let people know about changes in the company, any issues such as product recalls, and to offer some industry news. It gives you the opportunity to build a relationship and therefore trust.

So the question your all thinking about is – if everyone else’s newsletters are doing all these marvelous things and bringing in a constant stream of sales, why is mine not? The simple answer is that almost every business offers some form of newsletter, and yours is simply just another newsletter. Imagine this – if every product we buy has a newsletter, we will end up with inboxes flooded by newsletters. It is simply not feasible to expect people to read every newsletter.

Getting people to read your newsletter
How can I make people read my newsletter? Getting people to subscribe to your newsletter is a big step. They have made a commitment and shown some trust in you. Now you need to reinforce that and make sure you give them a reason to keep on reading. We set ourselves apart quite simply by offering value. The key is to make your newsletter a lot more than a sales pitch. People do not like being sold to, but they do like buying.

Some guidelines to follow:

• Form a relationship with your readers by letting them know more about you or your company.

• Offer free information and products to your subscribers.

• They are subscribed because they are interested in your product, so by all means let them know about them. Let them know about industry news and developments.

There are no rules or guidelines for newsletter format. Some may prefer to release a regular newsletter perhaps monthly, or even weekly, letting people know what is going on. Others may only send out newsletters when they have something to say. Both are fine. Just make sure you have a good balance between keeping your subscribers informed and interested, and overloading them with information and cluttering their inboxes. Your subscribers are willing to give you some of their time, but not all of it. Be respectful and aware of this and you will do well.

There is no doubt newsletters are very useful tools and should be part of your sales process. How do you make your newsletters stand out? What reasons are you giving people to keep reading?

Apologies and Contingency planning

I am afraid I have been out of town and not found time to manage this blog and write for it. It is a shame, and I regret not writing a load of articles beforehand. The truth is that I thought I would make time. Planning is invaluable. There are times when you can not do much and some things are just inevitable. The vast majority of times though, a well thought out contingency plan would solve any of these potential issues. I did not have a contingency in place.

In life we learn a lot the hard way. Most of the times through laziness. There is so much information out there, so many life hacks, productivity tips, resources, and any other type of advice and information you could possibly need. Why do we all seem to choose to learn the hard way? The answer is quite simple really, we naturally choose the option which requires us not doing anything, not investing time and effort upfront. It takes a concerted effort to plan ahead and sort out our affairs.

When I left town I had very little planned. It was admittedly a last minute and extended trip. I do not own a laptop as of yet. I have never needed one. This left me with some serious problems, considering how much of my business is online. In the last couple of days I have been trying to get on top of things from abroad. I set up a calendar and emails I can access from anywhere. These are the basics that I need. I caught myself out, dont let it happen to you.

So to conclude, my top tips for everyone:

• Have a contingency plan, you never know when you will need it.
• Make sure you can keep on top of your business wherever you are.
• Make sure you have access to your schedule, you do not want to having conflicting plans.
• Plan ahead, you can not underestimate the power of effective planning.

Do you always seem to learn the hard way? What stops us from doing things we know will be beneficial and help us out?

Video – Should you use video on your site?

It has long been known that video is the way of the future. It is more interactive, it gives us a better sense of what is going on and a closer relationship with whoever is talking. Being able to see someones face, or what they are talking about, and being able to hear their voice adds extra dimensions to content. Sarcasm for example, is hard to convey in writing alone, but very obvious when you can hear the tone of voice.
Video on the Internet took off a few years ago with the birth and rapid rise to fame of Youtube. The value of video on the Internet can be seen by the fact Google were willing to spend $1.65bn to buy Youtube. Google have recently been testing video ads, an addition to their popular contextual advertising program, Adsense. This is further evidence to support the theory that video is big, and going to get a whole lot bigger.

Most sites can benefit from video

Blogs can benefit greatly from video. Watching a 5 minute video is less taxing than reading a post for sure. It depends very much on the content but Mark from 45n5, Jim Kukral and Shawn Collins all post videos daily pretty much. As someone who follows a number of blogs I enjoy these because they are a nice break for me. Your eyes get tired from reading constantly. Hearing someones voice makes you feel somehow more connected.

Product sites can benefit hugely from videos. Videos featuring products so that the reader can see them more closely, and how big they are and what they look like. On top of this you can identify features for the reader, and show the product in action. This extra more detailed coverage could very easily help boost sales. An educated customer is more likely to buy and less likely to be dissatisfied once they have made their purchase. I have noticed mobile phone companies do this a lot, but the retailers not so much.

Review sites were some of the early adopters of video on the Internet. Particularly video game review sites such as IGN. Remember video does not just mean someone sat in front of a camera talking. You can have screen grab footage demonstrating software or games too! Voice overs pointing out features and potential shortcomings. People like to know more about things. Imagine if Amazon offered a video of the author discussing his book on the same page as they have the book’s details and customer reviews. This is an area that has not been explored so much yet.

Personal sites are by definition about a person. What better way to put across who you are than video? There is plenty of scope for creativity here. It very much depends what you are and what you want to promote. A budding musician can create videos of them playing gigs, or exclusive videos of new songs. A consultant could produce small bite sized videos of them offering free advice. A budding movie director might release small clips offering tips to other budding directors, or even short films. Again, the possibilities are endless.

Corporate sites are late adopters of video. In this new media web 2.0 age companies need to present a more human image. They need to stop being faceless and start to show they care. A video is a great way of adding some humanity.

Online TV show

Want to produce a small niche TV show? Online is the way to go. People are spending much more time in front of their computers than in front of the television anyway. The expense of broadcasting is very prohibitive to smaller niches. Dealing with a big network is a lot of trouble. They have to cater for big audiences, andunfortunately that means small niches get very little airtime.

So online is the way to go – what next? The cost of hosting a sizable video and streaming it to a sizable audience is not small. There are loads of free sites which can help you out with this. Once you gain some momentum and start to attract some money, then you can look into hosting yourself. The key benefit to online is that it allows you to start small and keep your expenses low, then scale relatively easily. On of my other projects is a very niche online video magazine. We have enjoyed success with this format, and generated a lot of buzz. This is a new and rapidly rising concept. If you want to get in – now is the time.

Editing

This is a time consuming process. Depending on what you hope to produce, this could be done yourself on a simple piece of software, or it could take many hours and be very expensive. The choice is yours. If you are a blogger wanting to produce a quick daily video, then by all means piece it together roughly yourself. Over time you will learn to do things more cleanly and look more professional. If you are producing a film, or a corporate video you will need to make sure the editing is of a high standard. Anything else will do your image no favours whatsoever.

A quick tip

Thanks to Mark from 45n5 for this great tip for distributing your videos. If you are a blogger looking to create some video content, sign up to tubemogul.com – this is a quick and easy way of managing all your accounts to the main video sites like youtube, blip, google, revver etc. With one click it will automatically upload your video to all of these sites, and track the views for you. A big time saver.

The downsides

• Editing software can be expensive. Very basic productions can use bundled software, but anything needing to look professional will need a more expensive suite.
• Video cameras for high quality productions are not cheap. A blogger can get away with a small camcorder, a film maker or a corporation cannot.
• The hardware used to produce and render the video will need to be fairly high end. Editing is very tough on your computer. Working on a slow computer can be veryfrustrating and severely effect your productivity and enjoyment of the process.
• Compared to writing, filming, editing and tweaking video is very time consuming.
• Video files are not small. Streaming or even downloading will hit your servers performance quite severely and use up bandwidth quickly.

Conclusion

I say video is the future and go for it. Will I be producing video for this site? Not for now. The reason is that I have plenty to write about and at this point in time, I am doing video in one of my other projects. I have already mentioned how time consuming this is. One key reason many people will not use video is quite simply that they love writing. Writing at length about a subject is very healthy and a great activity to do. This is why I do it and love doing it.

Do you use video on your websites? Have you noticed improved traffic or sales because of it? Do you have future plans to include video? What problems have you encountered?

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