Looking for Newsletter Content? Talk it Out.

For lots and lots of people, creating relevant, compelling content for their email newsletters can be a grind — bordering on downright unpleasant. No matter how enthusiastic one is about their business, it often is hard to come up with three or four good topics — much less actually write about them.

While there are ways to find decent content for your email newsletter from a variety of places that include news sites, Google alerts, blogs and a number of online sources that offer free or low-cost articles on a wide variety of subjects, the best stuff is always going to come directly from you.

The question is how to get it out of you and on to paper (well, if we still used paper).

At davemail, we are all about custom newsletter content, so this is a big issue around here. I am finding more clients like to just get on the phone and talk through the stories. They use our online content planner to get things started, and then we set up a time and they just talk. I do my best to keep them on track and make sure we get the vital information, but mainly, I just listen.

So if you need to get content from a client (or colleague or boss) and they are holding things up, you may suggest a meeting or phone call and let them just talk through their ideas. It is working really well for us and helping to keep newsletters on schedule.