A COMPARISON, TIPS & TRICKS

The internet is vast and multi-disciplined. Not long ago people were in awe about email and search engine functionality, today it has become one of the first places consumers turn to in order to find information and communicate. Companies are finally starting to see the power of the internet and web-functionality to market their company, products, services and/or people. Many companies are turning to corporate blogs and electronic newsletters to get their messages to their target audience.

What is the difference between a blog and an electronic newsletter?
A corporate blog shares news and knowledge among co-workers, stakeholders, and consumers, both actual and potential. In addition, it can provide a window on the interests and opinions of the company or blog creator. A blog tends to be available on a public forum whereby people usually need not subscribe in order to read it and provide comments.

An electronic newsletter can provide similar information as a blog in a less personal/subjective format and is more corporate in styling. It is the norm for electronic newsletters to have more graphics, colours and formatting integrated into its look. Electronic newsletters are distributed to mailing lists (organic or purchased) of subscribers.

BLOG TIPS
Here are 5 quick tips to remember for successful blogging.

1 - Blogger relations

• Develop a blogging strategy that is in line with your public and media relations strategy and business goals.
• Provide relevant content consistently and write for a reason. You must find a way to represent your company, product’s or project’s with passion and excitement. Remember you do not need to write long, but you must write often. A blogs goal is to start and maintain conversations and contribute to ongoing discussions among the blogging community and your target audience.
• Keep your audience coming back by developing interesting and revevant content that matches your public relations strategy. Time new blog entries to match product launches, conferences, etc.

2 - Increase your audience base

• Keep up to date with news, articles, and other blogs that would be of interest to your audience. Describe news providing your company’s, or your personal, perspective, it is this perspective, knowledge and experience that makes your blog unique.
• If you don’t want to provide an opinion on a news item, simply provide a synopsis of the news from the community at large.
• Participate in discussions with industry bloggers and authorities. Not only does this provide valuable content additions it will enable an additional audience base and links to your blog.

3 - Dialogues

• Blogging is all about dialogues - dialogues with your audience and other bloggers.
• Remember that your dialogues, although between you and another person, are open for viewing by the rest of the audience, so remember them in your responses.
• Don’t be afraid of criticism, blogging is all about the conversation and audience interest will be fostered by your responses.
• Remember that feedback can be very constructive as well.

4 - Monitoring

• Track your conversations by using blog technologies that include notifications of comments, replies, number of views and more.
• Use RSS feed search engines to monitor mentions of your company, corporate blog posts and industry developments.

5 - Promote your blog

• Once again, use your public relations strategy to promote your blog.
• Once a new post/article is on the blog mention it in other blogs, chat with industry authorities, etc.

ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER TIPS
Here are 5 tips to remember when creating an electronic newsletter.

1 - Objectivity is the essence

• Don’t make your newsletter a sales brochure, articles should be presented objectively and be similar to what you’d find in a newspaper.
• Base your articles on factual information and write them as if you were a neutral third party. Make sure that your content is of interest to your target audience.
• When you insert opinions into stories, make them into quotes and attribute them to the appropriate people in your organization, just like a newspaper would.

2 - Be clear and concise

• Communicate your messages clearly and concisely – you aren’t writing a book nor trying to prove your vocabulary knowledge.
• People who are busy tend to scan a newsletter to see if it warrants reading. Ensure that your newsletter is easy to browse by having punchy headlines, subheads, photos or captions, bullet lists and keep the stories short.
• Make sure that your lead article/news will attract the audience, if not most people will glance at the newsletter and classify it as junk mail without even reading one story.Make sure to proofread, a  newsletter needs to be as professionally written as any other corporate communications.

3 - Design and programming

• Include graphics but don’t go overboard. Graphics include photos, artwork, pull quoted, charts or even coloured or shaded text boxes.
• With the volumes of spam emails infiltrating our inboxes every day, companies have heightened their awareness to this problem and have implemented many spam blocking technologies. It is imperative that your electronic newsletter not be considered as spam. This can be achieved by avoiding words in the subject heading like “free” or “important” and by utilizing email marketing software or hiring online marketing specialists to ensure that your e-newsletter is distributed to your target audience.

4 - Monitoring

• Like blogs, electronic newsletters must be tracked and monitored. It is easier to track e-newsletters because new computer technologies exist that provide you with a realm of data. For example you can have real-time email tracking and reporting letting you know how many emails were delivered, which addresses bounced, and why, who opened your email, which links generated the most interest, who clicked on each one, compare responses by e-newsletter topics and a host more data.

5 - Promote your e-newsletter

• Once again, use your public relations strategy to promote your e-newsletter.
• Send out your e-newsletter to your database of clients, prospects, suppliers, etc. The more people who read your newsletter the better.
• Make sure that people can subscribe and unsubscribe easily.
• Make sure that your e-newsletter can be found on your website and keep archived versions.

Tags: communications, e-blasts, eblasts, electronic commnications, electronic newsletters, newsletter, public relations

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 9:23 am and is filed under Online Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.