Designing an Eletter
December 10, 2007
In October I decided that it was time for me to do my own eletter. I have read lots about e-letters, especially from the expert, Michael Katz at Blue Penguin Development. I spent a lot of time thinking about my purpose with the eletter. Basically, I want people to remember my name, associate it with the web and with technology and perceive me as a subject matter expert. I also want people to actually read the eletter. My audience will primarily be business contacts. I don’t want it to be something that only people who are working on a website find relevant. I want it to be relevant for everyone.
So I talked to a number of people about it and finally decided on doing something educational about technology. My background as a software trainer will help. I will take some of the terminology and concepts that are bandied around, and that many people feel that if they don’t know what they mean they should act like they do and actually explain them. Plus I will give tips on how to be more efficient using Microsoft Office. I hope to respond directly to users questions as well. It will be a monthly publication. I say all this to let you know the process that I went through. It is basically the same for any business.
1. figure out who your audience is
2. think about what you know about that they might be interested in
3. start writing
I have done 1 and 2 and will start working on 3 for a Jan debut. Of course, I also had to take the time to decide on a eletter company to do the distribution so it’s legal and easy. After much research and trial, I decided on iContact. I will explain in another blog entry. And the database. I went through lots of business cards and built up my initial database.
Also as a side note, remember that for item number 2 you do not actually need to write about your business. For example, a lawyer does not need to give free legal advice, they could explain common laws that many people don’t know about or provide a healthy recipe of the month. As long as the content is good and the audience is interested.
A side note on your database. It’s important that you start building a list of people willing to be contacted so that whenever you decide to contact them, you can.
Blah-I hope this entry wasn’t too boring but I thought it might be useful to see what my process was in case you’re in the same process.
