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In the first part of this little series, I talked a bit about the importance of relevance. In that post, I said that one way to focus on relevance for the recipient of an e-newsletter (really, any marketing message) is to think about the conversation going on inside their head and then trying to match that conversation.

It’s an old idea really, one that’s sometimes called “message match” in other contexts (ie, if they click a Google Adword with a certain headline or offer, repeat the headline or offer on the landing page). Others have called this approach “frame of mind” marketing, in which you try to figure out the prospect’s frame of mind before you put together your message.

Still others, like Dan Kennedy, call this the MARKET part of the MARKET-MESSAGE-MEDIA approach…in other words, get to know your market’s needs, desires, fears, hopes, and what have you, and the messaging part becomes really easy. The media buy then becomes a natural outgrowth of the process, instead of the primary focus (which you still see in the industry, sad but true).

In any case, you’ve done your homework and you now know something about your audience and the conversation going on in their head. I’ll continue to use the example from the first part of the series, namely that you’re a consultant who takes on strange or off-beat jobs that the really big consulting firms can’t handle. In other words, you have a vested interest in getting inside the heads of the folks at these big firms and tell them why you’re a good candidate for subcontract work.

You’ve already decided that you need to talk about things that relate to that audience: specifically, your topic(s) of expertise, and how to best hire someone like you. Now, you can come out and say, “Hire me because I’m good!” but that kind of approach hardly ever works. When you think that you’re writing a newsletter that goes out on a regular basis, you start seeing how ridiculous it would be for someone to get this blatant message over and over and over again.

So what you have to do is figure out an editorial calendar. You want to demonstrate your expertise with articles, and you need to hit different angles and aspects of the same topic (your expertise) over the course of a year. So now’s the time to sit down and plan out the year. Take out a desk or wall calendar and go through each month, asking yourself the following questions:

• Is there a special seasonal significance to this month? Are there topics I can cover that relate to the season?
• Are there major events during this month I can tie to?
• Are there special needs in my business that require extra communication during this month?
• Is this month a good time to try different formats, such as a podcast or workshop, that I can promote through the newsletter?

These four questions will get you started (there are many, many others) but let’s drill down a bit, as I already see some of you shaking your heads. Let’s take the first question. I know that many of you aren’t retailers, and you’re thinking to yourself, why should I care about Christmas during November and December?

Well, maybe you don’t, in the traditional sense, but every season brings on its own little challenges. For example, if you were a security consultant, an article or two about identity theft during the holiday season probably wouldn’t go amiss. If you were a bank sending out a newsletter to your accountholders, security reminders about identity theft, phishing, and pharming would be good (not to mention, it’s a good time to remind them of low-interest loans for that new car!).

If its summer, and you’re in the insurance business, perhaps its time to remind folks about the upcoming rains and does everyone have flood insurance? Or coverage against hurricanes if you’re on the Gulf Coast?

But let’s get back to our primary example. If you’re that small consultant taking subcontract work from the big guys, you know something about the cycles in the consulting business. You know that Q1 is generally pretty slow–all you’re doing is trawling for work, writing proposals, and recovering from a crazy December. Come March and April, it’s a different story. Work is in full swing, most of it with a July 4 deadline, and it stays that way until around late June.

Then there’s another break mid-July to mid-August while everyone goes to the beach on vacation. Then in September, things ramp up again for a crazy period that ends right before Christmas.

If you know this rough schedule, then you can rough out an editorial calendar and fill it with reasons to communicate. In other words, you want to have something relevant to say other than that thing that is only relevant to you, which is “do you have any work for me?”

So in Q1, your newsletter would probably have articles in it that talk about how to use someone like you to plan upcoming budgets or projects, or how to run an audit on unsuccessful projects from the year before. In Q2, your newsletter would have content in it that features specific expertise on the kinds of projects you like to take on, such as ecommerce or chemical engineering or translation (whatever).

In Q3, your articles would focus on how to prepare for work-life balance in the upcoming silly season, or how to hire someone who will be able to work well in XYZ environment. You might slip in some information about how something you did last year will make things easier this year too. Finally, your Q4 articles might look ahead a bit to your usually dry Q1, reminding folks that if they still have a budget, pay you now and you’ll do the work in Q1, etc.

Ideally, at the end of the process, you should have 2-3 things to say in each newsletter, along with something special to add. For example, you might include a coupon or a special offer (hire you in December and get 10% off the bill) or an announcement (5% of receipts in May got to Literacy Austin) or maybe just a free report or audio podcast.

Now that you know all this stuff, you can plan for it. You can line up guest speakers (if you’re doing a workshop) or interview the right customers or people, or gather testimonials. You can even take things a step further and theme every edition, tackling a major area of expertise with each issue (or all the issues in a quarter or month).

In the next part, we’ll talk about the next step, which is building trust and validity with each newsletter.

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