NewsBusiness

If you’re in business, you should have! But are you saying it, and are you being heard?

It never ceases to amaze me how many businesses have their websites set up to put news stories on them, but then either don’t put up any news at all, or the ‘news’ is over six months old – not really ‘news’ any more. And just putting up news stories on a corporate website is really not enough – news is meant to be spread, and email is the best way.

The main problem with putting a regular email update or newsletter together is actually setting the time aside to think about what to say and then to write the update itself. And of course it needs to be interesting and engaging and – subtly – include a sales message.

There are really two challenges – one, actually deciding what to write about and what exactly to write and two, mastering the technology of setting up the email and sending it.

At NewsBusiness we spend a lot of time talking to businesses about doing this, and we actually produce and send newsletters and updates via email for many of our clients as part of our PR marketing services. But we are so convinced that this strategy is vital to all businesses to drive business and sales, that we have just launched a new service which actually does all that needs to be done to produce and send this email.

Called ‘Something to Say?’, we help you to decide what topics to cover, we interview you to find out what news your business has, we write the articles, and once you have approved them, we load them up to your website and create and send an email to your database for you. If you don’t currently use an email marketing system, we can recommend a few (they are very reasonably priced), and if you don’t have a mechanism for loading news stories to your website, we can also recommend one. And unlike other copywriting services, we’ve made Something to Say a fixed price service.

For more about Something to Say? jump on this page on the main NewsBusiness website, or call us on 07 3103 5764.

PS We’ve written before about how to decide what to write and how to write here:

The Art of the Start* (or how to put pen to paper to write that newsletter!)

We are talking here of course about blogging*. Unfortunately there is no cast iron rule and it also depends on why you are blogging and who your intended readership/audience is.

If you are ‘blogging for profit’ ie making money from your blog itself, then clearly the more blog posts the better and the more frequently you post the better.

If however you are blogging as a way of showcasing your business or your business experience/expertise, then how often you should post a blog will be a function of how often you need or want to be in front of your audience.

At NewsBusiness we have found that the more often you email your list, the lower the ‘open rate’ – ie more people open an occasional email than open a weekly email. You also have to be careful that your communications – whether blog posts or email newsletter items – do not suffer in terms of quality because you feel you ‘have to’ put something out.

The other part of the discussion concerns the profile of your blog on the web, as Google and other search engines favour more frequent output over occasional output. Also if you want to build a body of work on the web – and Google again favours more over less (how discerning it is about quality is a moot point) – clearly the more frequently you post, the quicker you’ll have more content on your blog.

Bloggers who have moved from monthly to weekly to daily posts have invariably reported a sizeable increase in their readership from the web alone, but this can put a strain on your ability to do this if you need to do other (sometimes referred to as ‘real’) work as well!

Our advice
If you have decided to embrace a newsletter or blog approach to engaging your customers, prospects (and other interested parties) – which of course we wholeheartedly endorse – we strongly recommend you post or send something at least monthly.

When you are comfortable with monthly, look to move to fortnightly before making the leap to weekly. Remember that each post does not have to be a full length feature article, it can be a tip or topical observation, so writing workload does not necessarily have to increase.

And at the same time monitor open rates, subscriber rates and click through rates to test and measure the correct interval for you and your business.

*this applies to email newsletters as well – in our opinion it’s all content!

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NewsBusiness helps you find the news in your business and offers a complete creative and technology service to make sure you get your monthly (or more frequent) communications out on time every time. It’s a lot better than a generic newsletter service – it’s your news and your expertise. It’s just that we write it – so you don’t have to.

It all used to be so simple. Newspapers, TV and the radio ran the news, and businesses used conventional advertising alongside editorial to generate business. Both editorial and advertising ‘worked’ and there was rarely any crossover between the two.

Now conventional media is threatened by the perceived free-for-all that the internet has delivered, the ‘citizen journalists’ rival the TV and the newspapers from their back bedrooms, and advertising seems to have lost its effectiveness as viewers, readers and listeners stop paying attention.

This is bad news if you are a conventional media outlet or a conventional business, but great news if you’re prepared to jump into the news business, at least in terms of spreading the news about your business!

If people are no longer responding as enthusiastically to sales messages, everyone continues to be interested in information – and more and more information – about ‘things’. The internet allows us to research products, services and companies ad nauseam before making a decision to buy. This means that potential customers are now much better ‘qualified’ when they (finally) contact you, since they have found out most of what they needed to know. And the businesses that win these customers are the ones that have the most information on the internet about what they do. This information – in the broadest sense of the word – is ‘news’.

So if you’re currently in a position where there is not much ‘news’ out there about your business, how do you go about rectifying the situation?

• Start telling people your news

The easiiest way of doing this is with a regular (ie at least once a month) email newsletter or update. It doesn’t really matter what you call it, as long as it goes out regularly and is primarily informational, that is it’s not just a sales pitch. And if you put a signup box on your website with enough good reasons as to why anyone would want to receive your newsletter, you can grow your list.

• Start updating your website with this news

Search engines give preferential treatment to websites that a) have a lot of content on them and that b) are updated regularly. You can score on both counts by putting your newsletter articles up in full text on your website every time you send it.

• Start sending some of this news out to ‘the media’

Don’t expect great results from sending news releases out to your local paper or to a national TV station, unless you have worked out why either of these outlets would want to cover your story. Instead look at your story and work out which media outlets would really like it. The best places may be industry journals or specialist magazines or websites.

Any positive coverage online will not only drive people to your website, it will probably generate inbound links which will help your website’s search engine rankings.  Any positive coverage offline will also drive people to your website (whether or not the web address is mentioned) and will raise the profile of your business much more effectively than any advertising can.

OK, so you’re already convinced that writing a regular newsletter or “update” (what you call it doesn’t matter) is a great way of boosting your sales – and you’re planning to send it out to your “list” – your clients, prospects and business associates.

You know it shouldn’t be a sales letter as such, as people get pretty fed up just being sent a “10% off this week” type email, and you know it should be informative and educative… and interesting.

But you just don’t know what to write. You’ve got a classic case of writer’s block.

How do you unblock? Here are a few ideas that work for me and for other people that have to write on a regular basis.

There are really two types of writer’s block. Type one is the “what should I write about?” type block and type two is the “I know what I want to write about, I just can’t think of the right words” type block.

Type one – “what should I write about”

Ways of dealing with this:

*try to imagine yourself as an outsider to your organisation and think about what they might be interested in reading (perhaps once you have briefed them a little on your business) – you are an expert in your field, so give them the benefit of your expertise!
*same as above, but find a real outsider and ask them
*ask team members what they think – especially if they are fielding sales enquiries: what sort of questions are they being asked? (that you know the answers to) – what sort of problems are customers coming up with that you are able to solve?
*is there a current topic in the news where you have a professional opinion you’d like to share?
*take yourself outside your work environment to get a fresh perspective or get some new ideas – go for a walk/run – even just going for a drive in the car can do the trick
*sleep on it

Type two – “I just can’t think of the right words”

This is the classic writer’s block – you’re sitting at your desk, pen in hand (or laptop in front of you) and the inspiration just isn’t coming. There’s only one simple answer to this: just write something! Anything!

Sometimes it comes naturally and sometimes it doesn’t – and funnily enough the end result is always the same – the article gets written, even if you completely rewrite it, or it gets some heavy editing. A great tip is to just imagine how you would talk to someone, and write that way – conversational articles are much easier to read than technical pieces, even if they might be grammatically incorrect**!

In case you’re wondering, this article was written late yesterday evening and I re-read it this morning before running it by a colleague. It’s obviously made the grade. But have you found it useful?

*with apologies to Guy Kawasaki who – literally – did write the book
**although it pains me to say – but correct spelling is still vital

In April this year BRW magazine published the results of its Top 50 Great Places To Work survey. Google Australia came first (no surprises there then), but in at number 7 came local Manly QLD based construction and civil engineering company BMD. With 1194 employees it’s the biggest business – in terms of number of employees – in the top ten by far. The interesting thing was reading what the employees had to say about BMD and why it is such a great place to work.

The social side of things organised by the company was very much appreciated by employees – things like interstate office sports competitions, but one remark by an employee was telling. His wife had just had a baby and, out of the blue he had a call from the person who puts together the BMD newsletter, asking the baby’s name and other details for a small piece in the publication. The employee in question was taken aback – and pleasantly surprised – that the company was that interested in what was going on in his life.

Now clearly having a newsletter alone is not going to get your organisation into the Top 50 Great Places To Work – but it’s indicative of an approach that is likely to get you there.

Company newsletters may sometimes seem a bit ‘old hat’ or superficial and boring – but they don’t need to be. A good – and regular – newsletter is a great way of communicating to staff members, particularly those that do not sit at a computer all day, and particularly where an organisation is geographically very spread out. BMD fits this category, as do many retail chains and retail franchise groups. In these sorts of organisations employees can sometimes feel cut off or not involved in what the business is doing at any level beyond their branch. A newsletter can inform and enthuse those people (again) – and occasionally pleasantly surprise them by taking an interest in what they are doing!

…but “the newsletter is one of the most efficient ways of communicating with customers”.

We didn’t say this – this is a comment from Peter Blasina, perhaps better known as the Gadget Guy on Channel 7’s Sunrise breakfast TV show, in an article for Nett Magazine. The article goes on to quote business analyst Sarah Lacy in Business Week:

“Of course, we’re all waiting on companies like YouTube, facebook, Slide and Twitter to come up with the next great Google-esque plan to make money from social media. Meantime, why not reap some low-hanging fruit with a newsletter?”

Read the full article here.

Email is a vital business communications tool, but it is important to realise how people read emails, particularly newsletter-style emails.

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Just think about how you go through your email inbox – skim reading is probably the order of the day and many may not get read at all. Jakob Nielsen, the web usability guru, reckons that 2 seconds is all you’ve got to persuade someone to continue reading your email. What does this mean? Well, it probably means that the days of fine-tuning a beautifully designed email newsletter with ten plus long articles are gone. Today people are interested in sound bites and short hints and tips.

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Of course the good news with this is that writing a regular email is a lot easier if you’re just sending out a paragraph or two. This doesn’t mean that you can’t use email as an introduction to a longer article or explanation on your website – it just means that the presentation of the email has to fit in with the recipient’s need to find out pretty quickly if the email is worth reading, or if it links to interesting articles worth clicking through to.

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This article on this very subject on the Sydney Morning Herald website from 2004 still holds true today.