Hannah McNamara

It happens to everyone.

You've been faithfully sending out a newsletter every month, packed with timely tips and information for your clients and potential clients. But now, as the year is approaching 2/3 gone, your idea well has run dry. You're just stuck for topics and good information to write about in your newsletter.

Get "unstuck" by planning newsletters for the rest of the year

If you need to get yourself "unstuck" and come up with good newsletter topics for the rest of the year, try taking a slightly different approach. Instead of sitting down each month and brainstorming something new to write about, sit down today and plan your topics for the next several months. Think in terms of seasonal or topical messages related to issues your recipients might face during specific times of the year.

Start by pulling out your diary or calendar and look for key dates in the coming months. Examples might include Christmas, Mother's Day, Easter, and the like. How might your services be relevant to those key dates? What can you share about yourself, your brand, and your service offerings that readers will find appropriate for that particular time of year?

Create several theme newsletters

Another good tactic is to create theme newsletters, again related to particular events, dates, or times of the year. Are the Olympic Games coming up? Try following an Olympic theme to give your monthly newsletter a fresh twist. What about birthdays of people whose experiences would be of interest to your readers? Richard Branson's birthday was in July, so an option might have been to do a "Branson Business Approach" theme last month?

Once you've decided on themes for your newsletters, write them down, and start planning the content. For the greatest effect, carry the theme through from your newsletter to your blog, your website, and any other promotional tactic you might use that month.

Automate your newsletter distribution

You can write newsletters in advance and set them up to automatically go out to subscribers at the appropriate times. My favorite source for a wide variety of auto-responder services is aweber.com, a comprehensive provider that makes it extremely easy and convenient to automate the process. All you have to do is input the content, select the distribution date and the distribution lists, and you're done.

© Copyright Hannah McNamara