How to Generate Valuable, Relevant Content

In the ideal world, customers look forward to your emails, share them with their friends and family and even have a separate folder in their inbox so they can easily refer back to them. Yet for many small businesses, there’s a gap between the ideal world and their day-to-day reality.

To close that gap and attain email marketing nirvana, it comes down to creating valuable and relevant content. So if you’re stuck for ideas or you’re in a content creation funk, here are five ways to reignite your email efforts.

1. Anticipate and answer popular questions. If you’re getting asked the same or similar questions from customers, you can bet that other customers also have the same questions in mind. Write content that reflects those common questions and your business will be top of mind the next time your customers are in the market for that product or service.

2. Stats. People gravitate toward stats and data when it’s relevant to their interests. Keep up on what’s happening in your industry and pass along the stats that are interesting, quirky and amusing yet still related to your business.

3. Tips & Tricks. Offer quick tips or shortcuts on anything related to your business that will help your readers improve some aspect of their life. These can be cooking tips, home decorating ideas, or suggestions for improving your golf swing, for example. When you freely share your insight, you’re able to more actively engage your readers while subtly showcasing your expertise.

4. Your products at work. Spotlight how customers use your products every day and encourage them to share how they may also use in them in new and different ways. This can be as simple as home remedies for fighting the common cold to innovative ideas like using pantyhose filled with road salt to prevent ice damage on gutters.

5. Q&A. Start a Q&A column with questions submitted by your readers. These help personify your business and can also lead to online discussions where your customers weigh in on the topic and provide additional advice.

Steve is Constant Contact’s small business expert in Illinois and Wisconsin. A knowledgeable marketing expert with 30 years of experience, Steve has helped thousands of small businesses, associations, and nonprofits develop and implement effective email marketing, social media and online survey strategies. A popular speaker and educator, Steve gives small businesses and nonprofits the tools, techniques, and strategies they need to grow and expand their business and to maximize the power of relationship marketing. Steve’s experience in small business ownership, business development, sales, and fundraising help associations, small businesses and nonprofits achieve success.

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