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Home | Internet & Businesses Online | Ezine Marketing 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 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. There are hundreds of other people who have written to me over the years and told me what they like and dislike, what their problems are and what they need to know. So when I'm writing about a particular subject it is easy for me to imagine that I'm writing it for that one specific person. 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. 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. The information that you provide in your writing is only one reason that people read what you have to say. Newsletters that are totally focused on topic tend to be quite boring to read. There is no personality. You can't build a relationship if you write like a text book. It is vital - especially online - to inject yourself and your life into what you write. In my opinion - and experience - you simply can't talk about yourself too much! Whenever I talk about my family and friends, the number of emails I get from subscribers eager to know more rockets! Of course, you can't run a newsletter that is entirely about you! That stuff should only be the icing on a rich, content-filled cake. The best ezines and newsletters balance both, providing a cocktail of solid factual information punctuated by the real-life soap opera content that keeps the reader coming back for more. Subscribers may say that they want the important content and nothing but the important content, but my experience clearly shows that it is the day-to-day life stuff you write about that really connects. 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. Certainly there are newsletters that manage to promote multiple recommendations in every single issue - and a few 'interim' ones besides - but in the main they are from long established writers who have a lot of experience writing to very loyal readers. The vast majority of writers can't manage it without looking desperate, dishonest or lacking in ethics. 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. Another important aspect to relationship building is how frequently you publish. Many ezines and newsletters publish monthly - way to infrequently, in my view, for serious relationship building. Even weekly publication can be slow if you are not a strong and personal writer. If you can write without too much effort, go for at least twice a week. My own Kickstart newsletter was five times a week for a hundreds of issues and the biggest complaints were when I reduced to three times a week. I still get dozens of emails whenever I skip an issue! Naturally, the strongest writing you can put in your newsletter is that which you've written yourself. Tempting as it is to use other people's articles, if you want to build a relationship with your readers, the majority of what they read from you should be by you. 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. 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. The kind of writing that really builds relationships sounds natural when you read it out loud. Sentences start with and, words are contracted and the tone is informal. All of which brings us right back to the start: write as if you are talking to one person, keep it honest and personal and remember that you are not writing to a list, you are communicating with a friend. Relationship building is best done one person at a time. Article Source: http://www.articlewheel.com
Our relationship starts the instant you subscribe to Kickstart Today. Kickstart Today helps you work, rest and play plus motivation, inspiration and fun all rolled into one.
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