5 items to include in your newsletter

by Anne Clark | Sep 24, 2020 | Business, Mailchimp

Do you find yourself struggling to think of content for your regular newsletter to your mailing list? Do you feel like you have writers block? Do you feel like you have nothing to say?

Let me make it easier for you.

Have you considered having a pre-set template? This is a great way to help you pre-plan your content and create your newsletter in a more timely manner. But what do incorporate?

Here are 5 items to include in your newsletters as regular content;

#1 Introduction

Always open with a brief hello and what you’re up to. Connecting with your audience is vital and sharing a little about you, makes them know you’re real and that you care about them as your audience.

Connection is the key.

TIP: Make sure you personalise the email to include their name. Small personal touches go a long way.

#2 Valuable information

Imagine getting an email that is giving you some awesome information relevant to you. Now imagine getting an email that’s all about them and salesy. That’s right … a real turn off. Give a little to gain a little, or hopefully more.

#3 Your latest projects or blogs

Don’t always assume your audience is reading your blogs or social media post. Remember, they’ve invited you into their personal space by allow YOU to have their email address because they may not have time for social media or may not be online as often as assumed.

Depending on the length of your blog, you may want to put the whole things in your newsletter, or insert a portion of it and link the rest back to your website.

#4 Links to other services

We often assume that everyone remembers what we do. But be honest, do you remember what everyone does? Don’t be afraid to have dedicate a section to your other services, this can be done in the form of images with the service title and of course ensure its linkable to your website where further details are.

If you have a special running, then you can dedicate this area to that. Just don’t make the whole newsletter about you, remember it’s a relationship with your target audience so a bit of give and take goes a long way.

#5 Bio

In the footer of your newsletter you can have your social media platform linked and why not add a photo of you and a short paragraph blurb about who and what you do (another refresher for your audience).

TIP: Use a professional headshot, it’s the best investment you’ll make.

#6 But I sell products not services

If you’re a retail product selling business, then you may have heard the term ‘picture tells a thousand words’. Use images of your products in your newsletter. You may have a product you’re wanting to move the last stock items off, so promote it in your newsletter, say something like ‘whilst stock lasts’ or ‘limited stock left, don’t miss out’. Putting an ‘urgency’ with it, makes people take action faster.

Launching a new product, then share it. Maybe even offer an upsell product that would go well with the product.

TIP: Do not flood your newsletter with millions of images, it gets to overwhelming for your audience.

Feel like it’s all a bit hard and just want someone to create your branded newsletter for you. Guess what? I can, I am a Mailchimp expert and can create your branded newsletter templates, or automation series. Contact me today if you would like to know more.

10 Things You Should Have On Your Website

by Anne Clark | Aug 27, 2020 | Business, Website

Building a website is not a cheap investment, especially for start-up businesses. Therefore it is so important that you are doing it the right way the first time. It’s also important to note, that not all website designers offer all the things you need. Some may simply ‘design’ the look of your website. For those who already have a website built, it’s important to check you do have all your bases covered.

A general website has the main menu items such as

Home Page – it doesn’t need to be long and overflowing with words, but it should immediately allow your visitor to know what it is you offer
About Page – it’s not entirely about you, a strategic About page will be make reference about how you backstory is beneficial to the visitor
Products or Services Page – whatever you’re offering
Testimonials Page – these little babies do help sell
Contact Page – have a page solely designated to the contact options available for visitors. Always keep in mind how your ideal client will want to contact you. (These can also be featured in the footer to top header of your home page too)

Now for some crucial elements you should be including:

Back Up System – I am always surprised how many website I come across and there is NO back-up system in place. What happens if you’re website is hacked, you loose everything. I use BackUpBuddy to back up my websites, you can learn about them here.
Security System – Hackers and bots are constantly on the prowl for vulnerable websites they can hack or destroy. Having a good security system will block out hacking attempts and notify you of attempts. I use iThemes Security Pro.
SEO – Search Engine Optimisation can feel very overwhelming for some, but Yoast SEO is a great website plugin that is user friendly.
Terms and Conditions, Disclaimer and Privacy Policy – if you are an online business, which most are these day, these little gems are extremely important. Under NO circumstances should you ever copy these of another website. My go-to team is Legal123, who sell a Website Legal Package and lots more other key documents businesses should have.
Mobile Friendly Theme – in today’s society everyone is using mobile and always browsing the net, so it is important that your website is mobile friendly. I build my website’s using Elegant Themes – Divi. They allow you to make variations on pages suitable for desktop, iPad and mobile.

If you are looking to either build a new website, refresh or simply looking for regular maintenance, then please feel free to contact me at hello@annecclark.com and we can catch about your needs.

Please note this article does contain some affiliate links.

The why and how of building an email list

by Anne Clark | Aug 11, 2020 | Business, Mailchimp, Virtual Assistant

I work with clients helping them to build their mailing list funnels. The purpose of building a quality email list is it gives you the opportunity to communicate directly with your audience, build trust and convert sales. It’s your direct line of communication to your target market.

Why build a mailing list?

If Facebook, Instagram or whatever platform you’re using to connect with your target market were to close tomorrow how will you communicate with your target market. You would be left with no market, no audience and no opportunity to continue connecting with your audience to gain revenue.

You own your mailing list, you don’t own the social media platforms.

Where to start?

A list building funnel is an opportunity for you to offer something free (like a sample) to your audience that would
answers their question (pain point)
showcases your expertise

Types of freebies

Freebies or commonly referred to as Opt-Ins can be anything you desire to showcase your expertise. Some examples are:

Checklist
Ebooks
Mini Courses
Challenges
Videos
Exercises
Cheat Sheet
Templates
Workbook / worksheet
Spreadsheet
Tutorial
Free course
Printables
Report
Mindmap
Quiz

Opt-in Goal

Determine your end goal for your opt-in sequence. Yes, you are list building, however you are not just giving away things for free. Your email sequence wants to have an end goal.

For example:

Buy product
Book in for coaching service
Enrol in course or workshop

The email sequence

A general rule for email opt-in sequences is as follows:

Send your freebie and welcome them
Offer something extra that compliments your freebie they’ve already received, and introduce yourself
Talk about how you solve your audience pain points
Present your goal product or service
Pitch your final offer on the service or have a countdown until the offer expires.

If you would like to start building your email list, contact me today and let’s talk about how we can make this happen.

Why You Need a VA to Manage Your Blog and Newsletter

by Anne Clark | Aug 10, 2020 | Business, Mailchimp, Virtual Assistant

Keeping your business in the ‘eye of the customer’ is essential in order for your business to grow. As a business owner, you can easily become consumed dealing with our day-to-day matters, and not giving our business the time needed to action strategies for growth.

Two of the best avenues to gently remind your customers you are there, are through your newsletters and blogs.

A virtual assistant (VA) can assistant you in maintaining your customer contact. Creating a regular schedule on when blogs and newsletters need to be composed and released, enables you to know your timelines and your VA to know what deadlines they are working to.

Before you start going crazy producing blogs and newsletters, you firstly need to determine how frequently you should create your content and will meet your target customers’ interest. You need to make sure you are not over or under-producing them. This can be a bit of trial and error. Once you have determined this, you need to commit to your schedule.

The best way to ensure deadlines are met is to talk to your VA about;

how much time they need to create the content
how much time you need to review the work, and
allow time for final edits and touch ups.

Once this is locked in, you can then start brainstorming the content needed for blogs and newsletters. Do some research to see what your customers love and don’t love. Don’t be scare to even ask your customers, using such means as a survey.

The best strategy when working your schedule is to try and keep 2 to 3 blogs ahead of yourself, you can preschedule these to be released on your website on a set date.

How can your VA get this all happening for you, so you’re not stressed trying to keep on top it all

BLOG:

Create a list of key topics you want covered in blogs. Don’t be afraid to create a series of blogs, if your content is going to be to long.
Create a schedule of when the blogs are to be released. Working backward to create the first draft due date.
Your VA can draft the article for your review and can incorporate a call to actions at the end of your blog.
Determine what type of call to action you want from your audience. It is always good to encourage readers to comment, offer feedback or share an experience. Or you can encourage them to buy a product or service. Ensure you communicate to your VA what key call to actions you want incorporated into specific blogs.
Source free images – there are many website that offer free image to use for blogs. Some require acknowledgement from you sourcing the images from that specific website. Otherwise, your VA can use programs such as PicMonkey or Canva to create original artwork for your blog.
Update SEO – It is vital that in order for you to be found that your blog has it’s SEO words added. Your VA can enter these, and research on what other keywords would be relevant to your blog/business.

Your newsletter keeps you in your customer’s inbox. Don’t make your newsletters too wordy. A lot of people don’t love to read a lot of words (unless it’s a novel). A great way to create a newsletter is to mix up words and images and make as many things as possible linkable to your website. Remember, Traffic = Sales Conversion on your website.

Include your blogs in your newsletter too, again make sure your newsletter is linked to various aspects of your website to drive your traffic across. For example, for your blog including your newsletter your title, image and the first couple of lines, then insert a ‘read more’ and link it to your website (also link the image).

The strategy behind this is to get your customers to your website, where you have the opportunity to convert them from visitor to a customer.

Brainstorm with your VA on the main section you want for your newsletter. Eg: The Blog, Shop, Latest News, Special, or Sales.

Your VA can create your newsletter template, and there are programs such as Mailchimp that have a free level for under a set number of subscribers. It is important that your business ‘branding’ is kept consistent through the newsletters. Why? Because branding is what people say about you when you’re not there!

Your VA can source and create content, create images and links to your various website sections. They can also create a draft of your written content, you will need to guide them on key aspect such as items on sales, specials coming up or key items you want to be highlighted in the newsletter.

Once your newsletter content is created and ready to go, make sure your VA checks all the links are working, and that they send you a copy to review.

Your VA can schedule and once your newsletter has gone, you’re VA will be able to advise you the open and click rates, as most newsletter programs advise this for you.

Don’t be afraid to test various styles and formats for your newsletter to see which format gets the most higher click rate with your readers.

If you have any questions, or would like to know more information feel free to contact me via my contact page.

5 Easy ways to source social media content for your business

by Anne Clark | Jul 30, 2020 | Business, Social Media, Virtual Assistant

One of the most common headaches business owners face is what kind of content to share on social media. Or they are simply finding themselves stress because they’re putting pressure on themselves to come up with new content all the time.

Headache be gone!

When it comes to content, we fail ourselves as business owners. Why? Because we are currently spending 80% of our time creating new content, but only 20% sharing our content. We should be spending 20% creating and 80% sharing (and re-sharing) content.

Here are 5 ways you can utilise previous content you’ve created for your social media.

Previous content/posts

Keep copies of content and images from previous post and don’t be afraid to reuse them. Very rarely do people go through a business’ content from 2 years ago, therefore if it’s still relevant re-use it. Even content from 6 months ago is reusable, or last week. If you have a series of images you use for people to sign up to your mailing list, then re-use it at least once a week, and more if you’re posting more than once a day.

Blog content

Most blogs should have a call to action, which could be signing up to newsletters, booking in discovery calls, purchasing a product etc. Re-share your blogs, especially if relevant. Take snippets of the blog content or write an intro and add a call to action, such as click on the link for more, or you could share the whole blog. If you’re blog was an article of tips, just like this one, copy a tip and tell readers to click on the link for the more tips. Use different images for social media to re-share old blogs (if you’re not comfortable using the same image).

Expertise Categories

In business, we all have niche areas, and under our niches are categories we specialise in. For example: in my coaching business, I am a coach who specialises in intuition, alignment, boundaries, balance and boundaries. Therefore, I would share content around those 5 areas. As a virtual assistant, I specialise in social media, newsletters, blogging, productivity/systems and online management. Again, I would share expertise content around these areas.

Testimonials / Feedback

Feedback sells, often when someone is searching for a new product or service, they check out what others have said about it. You might have testimonials on your website, in emails or have had awesome comments on your social media platform, use these to share with your audience. Feedback on your service are big sellers.

Hints of things to come

Entice your audience with some of the projects you’re working on, or perhaps the blog you’re writing about this week. Tease them with what is to come. Perhaps if you’re making a new product take a snippet image of it and ask them what they think it is.

It is okay to share and re-share your content. Don’t be afraid to do so.

If you’re making a branded quote for the week’s content, then why not make a whole heap of them for the next couple of weeks or months and save yourself time and effort. This is BULK acting.

Don’t be afraid to pre-plan your content, and then if additional items come up add them in. By pre-planning and scheduling your content it enables you not to feel so panicked that you haven’t posted anything or having come up with content.

If you’re struggling to create the time to manage your social media, then let’s chat about how I can help you manage this. Contact me today.

How to set up your Mailchimp Account

by Anne Clark | Jul 21, 2020 | Business, Mailchimp

Mailchimp is the All-In-One integrated marketing platform for small businesses, to grow your business on your terms. It’s free for your first 2000 subscribers, it enables you to use it’s automation functions for signs and sending welcome emails. It integrates with your website.

Some of the functions Mailchimp offers are:

• Sending Newsletter Campaigns
• Creating Automation Workflows
• Creating Landing Pages
• Creating Websites
• Posting to Social Media

It integrates with wordpress, zapier, slack and canva. And 300+ others.

It provides reporting analytics to enable you to enhance your campaigns.

You can sign up here.

Getting Started

Thing you’ll need in order to get started:

As Mailchimp is a web-based application. You will need to have an internet browser.
You’ll need to provide an email address that will be associated with the account you’re setting up. As you’ll need to verify and confirm your account and URL.
Your Mailchimp username must be unique, and cannot be reused.
You will need to provide a mailing address, I would recommend using a PO Box for security purposes especially if you do not operate your business from a physical premises.
All accounts start on our Free plan, so you don’t need a credit card to sign up.
If you choose to purchase add-ons or upgrade to a paid plan, you will be able to pay these via credit card or paypal.

Sign up for an account

Click here to sign up. It’s important to note that when you sign up you are agreeing to terms of use and anti-spam regulations.

Type in your Email, Username, and Password, and click Get Started!

A confirmation message will appear advising you to check your inbox to activate your account set up .

Activate your account

When you receive your account activation email from Mailchimp Client Services, you can complete the account setup.

Click the account activation link in the email.

You will need to confirm Humanity screen, check the I’m not a robot box, and click Confirm Signup.