Hi there friend,
The most challenging part about writing these newsletters is coming up with the topics.
One of our core goals with these newsletters is to provide you with at least one takeaway that you could experiment with in your own marketing or customer relationship building efforts right away. This has been our goal for many years, but we started seeing consistently higher open rates once we changed the format to tell a story, being more personal in our content.
Based on the survey feedback we receive every week it appears you and our other awesome readers relate to our experiences.
And that brings me to this week's topic - where can you find inspiration and topics for your newsletters?
Life
You never know where your next great idea will come from, so keep your eyes open. You could be out with friends when a moment happens that triggers a topic idea.
Keep an open mind, don’t have tunnel vision thinking your next idea has to relate to the service you offer.
I wrote one newsletter based on getting my HVAC replaced. One question the owner of the HVAC asked me triggered the topic. He simply asked “Why did you decide to go with me?”. My answer was because of strong Google reviews - and just like that I had my
next newsletter idea. 💡
Another idea came to me late at night while reading another newsletter on my phone. I struggled to read it because of the
font size. That sounded like a great topic idea, again drawing in my own experiences.💡
Business experiences
Is there something you’re currently working on that you feel would be educational and beneficial for your audience to learn about? Maybe it’s a success you had that you could share with your audience. Or, as was the case with us a few issues ago,
maybe it was a mistake.
You may recall a few weeks ago, in one of these newsletters, we had a mistake. I beat myself up when I make a mistake. But guess what - this made for a very
relevant newsletter topic 💡, because we all make mistakes. Now I had an opportunity to share my experience and knowledge.
And we got mostly positive feedback from readers when we sent that email describing what we
learned from the mistake. Not only did people find it helpful to hear how to recover from their own email mistakes, they also told us how much they appreciated that we were vulnerable and shared our failures as well as our wins.
Customer feedback
Listen to what your customers are saying, it could help trigger a newsletter topic. Look where they could
potentially be leaving comments - like social media, on a product review, or a survey.
When on social media, don’t just look for comments on your page or posts, do a search for your brand name. You may find people are mentioning your brand (good or bad) outside of your page. What they’re saying could trigger a topic idea 💡.
The topic I’m writing about this week - where to find newsletter inspiration - was inspired by a comment someone left on our survey (which we include in every newsletter) from our newsletter about making mistakes.
“People would have just read over your little font mistake. You are exploiting an opportunity to make contact again and it’s obvious and really annoying.”
Granted this wasn’t a positive review. But I thank this reviewer very much for providing me with
an idea for this newsletter 💡.
Thankfully for my ego, all the other comments were very positive and appreciative for sharing our mistake experience.
Now where I disagree with this reader. It’s not “exploiting” an opportunity. I didn’t send
an email for the sake of sending an email, the topic was part of this weekly newsletter.
Social media
If you’re like me you’ll spend endless hours navigating social media, seeing what your friends are up to or watching crazy videos. These posts could inspire your next newsletter content. Social media is a gold mine for ideas.
Does a certain video inspire you? How about other content you’re reading or even an ad?
Where’s your next great idea
I hear it all the time - I don’t know what to write about or I’m running out of fresh ideas. And I can certainly relate. There are times
when our content calendar is filled with awesome ideas for the next 8 weeks. Then there are other times we’re struggling to come up with interesting stories each week.
The key is keeping your eyes, ears, and creative mind open for that next great idea.
