Elements of a Successful Newsletter - 1: The Reader

1. The Reader.

Probably the most common mistake novice company newsletter publishers make is this: writing about the wrong person.

What do I mean by that? Simply, that it's not enough (and it's not effective) to write about you, your office and your service. The fact is this: while you are no doubt incredibly interesting to you, unfortunately, no one else will share your interest.

Instead, they'll just say "so what?"

So while you'll want to include information about who you are and what you do in some way, the bulk of the newsletter should be about topics that will interest the reader.

This doesn't mean you have to steer away completely from writing about real estate. But instead of writing about the features of what you offer (saying, basically, how great you are) write on subjects that show your expertise as a real estate agent.

Here's how to do it.

You might be tempted to write about how you market homes, your open house strategy, your years of experience, etc.

They're all important facts. But what readers really want to know is things such as:

• what they need to do in order to sell their home quickly and for a good price
  
• easy ways to fix up their home for sale
  
• what buyers are really interested in
  

You see, each of these articles is about something that is likely to interest your reader. But you also get to promote your services at the same time.

There are several benefits to doing it this way:

1) You interest the reader right away, making it more likely they will read the story
2) Your article won't seem like an ad and it won't seem like you are bragging
3) You offer a real, genuine benefit to using your service, and back that up by proof that you deliver what you promise
4) You demonstrate your expertise in a non-threatening and no-pressure way, building credibility as a quality Realtor rather than just as someone trying to win their business.

Follow these guidelines and you'll create a newsletter that people want to read - and that will make it more effective overall.

For more information and a free newsletter you can use for your farm, see www.readytogonewsletters.com