Image credit: Chris Brogan
I got Chris Brogan’s newsletter delivered to my email a short while ago. For those of you who might not know him, Chris is one of a few legitimate Social Media rockstars. You can follow him on Twitter @chrisbrogan, on the Trust Agent fan page on Facebook (a great book by the way), on his blog and via his newsletter.
I was talking to friend in the software business via email yesterday, and again earlier today, about using story to help him in his marketing efforts and about some of the mechanisms he might employ in doing so. We were talking about newsletters as one of those mechanisms and his impression of newsletters was that they were used only to convey “news”. I reminded him that the very best of “news” always told a story and suggested that he might want to read the post I put up at the end of August Newspapers and Story Telling. The money quote out of one of the articles I referenced was “Most importantly, newspapers have to stop reporting the news and start telling good stories again.” The same goes for company newsletters. Start telling your news by telling your stories. And that brings us back to the good Mr. Brogan and his newsletter.
It is a study in using story elements to bring your newsletter to life. The very first thing that he does is personalize it, “Hi Gregg”. Not a big deal you’re thinking? Email mail merge, no big deal, right? Wrong! It’s huge. And, it sets the tone for the rest of the story. He’s talking directly to me. I know that there are 10 gazillion other people reading the same email, but that’s not the point. He took the time to personalize it, to set up a communication channel between us, an avenue for the story to travel through. For those of you who get a lot of newsletters, think about how almost all of them start. “Dear [Company Name] Customer”, or “Greetings!” or any number of other impersonal beginnings. So, lesson number one, personalize. And not just your newsletter email but all of your communications if you possibly can. It makes a big difference and gives you a leg up on the competition who doesn’t.
After the personalization, he follows with four short paragraphs, the first a little story about the “corn moon” (full moon), the superstition that surrounds it, and how, in his experiences, it sure seems to make us act differently. And then he ends the story by inviting us to participate. “How about you?” he asks. And here we see lesson number two, invite your readership into your stories. Let them relate to your stories in such a way that they can relive and tell their own as well as sharing in yours. And in doing so, you’ll form a very strong connection.
Two of the main story lines of the newsletter deal with “Fighting the Fear of Failure” and “Picking Habits” and in both of these Chris picks an element from his own life to weave the story around. In Fighting the Fear of Failure he relates his own early failure at Grasshopper Media. And, he encourages us in our own struggles to “Start Early, Fail Fast. Start Again.” Then he leaves us with this. “The people who succeed the most are those who fail the best. The list is huge. You should try to get on it.” Now, I understand that you don’t have the benefit of having the full story in front of you, but that’s a pretty inspiring ending don’t you think? It’s the age old theme of the phoenix of success rising from the ashes of failure. And that leads us to lesson number three. Tell your stories around the themes that have resonated with people since they first started telling and listening to stories. We’ll talk about a lot of those as we continue to explore how you can use stories to establish and deepen your relationships with your customers.
If you don’t already subscribe to Chris’ newsletter, you can do so here: Newsletter. Are you starting to get some ideas as to how you can use your newsletter to convey much more than just “news”? How to deepen those communication channels and relationships? Please share those with us in the comments if the spirit moves you!
