The hunt for the free stock photo is over

(Blog post updated.)

Stock photos are necessary to fill in the blanks, to say what cannot be said through words and ensure your website or blog is attractive enough to keep your visitors interested. Thankfully for entrepreneurs, website owners, and bloggers, there are more than enough cheap, or even free, stock photo sites to go around without having to resort to expensive stock photo websites.

To save you time and money, we have put together this comprehensive stock photo list featuring some of our favourite free and cheap stock photo sites. Happy searching!

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Are you too busy working social media to bother with an email newsletter? You could be missing out on more than you realise.

Lately I’ve realised that most of the newsletters I find in my inbox are from bigger businesses. Those from small business (and the newsletters I most enjoy reading) seem to have disappeared. I can count my own newsletter in that statistic, too. The Clever Streak newsletters have been few and far between lately, and I hang my head in shame.

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Last week I told you to ignore the advice of the newsletter gurus.  Too much advice in the beginning can trip you up.  You worry so much about “doing it right” that you never get around to doing it at all.

Now that you’ve started your newsletter it’s time to look at the useful information that the gurus can share with you.

When the Gurus are right.

There is a lot of useful information available online that will help you refine the newsletter you have begun.  These people aren’t called gurus for nothing.  My advice would be not to try and follow them all.  Find an expert whose information seems to resonate with you and stick with him or her.  That’s your intuition telling you you’re on the right path.

Here are some of the best pieces of information about email newsletters that I have come across lately.  I hope you’ll find them useful.

You can’t go past Copyblogger  for sensible, practical and effective advice.  My favourite of his tips:  Write your headlines first.  It’s so easy to start writing and then end up with a piece that’s totally different to the one you planned.  If you have an intention in mind, set your headline first, then live up to it in your content.  It will “keep you honest.”

The Copyblogger site also has a useful post on “How to Write Headlines that work.”  It covers the different types of headlines you could use and tells you when to use them and looks at some of the results they get.

The Content Marketing Institute has some great advice on how to come up with content for your newsletter.  It suggests dividing your think topics into the areas of past, present and future.

What news in the recent past can you write about?
What’s happening now?
What’s coming up?

Constant Contact has a post on how to get your readers interacting with your email newsletter through the use of a clear call to action.  Tell people where to go, give them an easy way to get there, and most importantly, give them a reason to go there. It’s simple but it’s one of the things that trip us up.  Just look at some of the newsletters in your inbox. How many forgot about a call to action?

Again from Constant Contact is the reminder that you are emailing as a person, not a business.  People don’t want to hear from a business, they want to hear from you so be a little personal in your approach.  You can tell them what you are doing, what your plans are or tell a story about you and your business.  It’s the personal touch that will help you establish a connection.

And now to those pesky stats.

Your statistics will tell you how your clients are reacting to your newsletter.  Depending on the system you use, you’ll be able to see how many opened your newsletter, how many click throughs you had and which parts of the newsletter grabbed most attention.

Now, the stats aren’t all that straightforward.  The terminology can be tricky so before you panic that you only had a 10% open rate, read the next posts which will help you understand what it all means.

Mail Manager explains how to understand the open rate, what it means and how it is calculated.  It will take some of the pressure off you!    Campaign Monitor shares more information  including figures on typical open rates within specific industries.  It will give you some idea of the target you are aiming for.

There is a lot of information in here and techniques that you will come to master in time, but please don’t lose sight of your purpose.  Fill your newsletter with the content your market wants and they’ll read it because they see that you are the person who can give them what they need.

Last week we looked at why you write your newsletters.  This week we’re going to look at ways to entice people to read your newsletter.

Many newsletters go straight into the folder of deleted items and that’s usually because they are boring.  They don’t even tempt us to read it long enough to find an unsubscribe button.  You know the type, don’t you?

So how can you turn your newsletter into something that people look forward to reading?

First of all, toss out all the advice from the guru’s before it does your head in.   It’s all useful information but it’s quite overwhelming, isn’t it?  That can all wait until later.   Right now we’re going to concentrate on just getting started.  (Did I hear a sigh of relief?)

Let’s think about the people you are writing for.  We know two things about them.

1. Firstly, like all of us, they are creatures of habit.
2. Secondly, they usually prefer to be part of a community.
3. People love to know what other’s think about things before they make their own decision.

So how can you use this knowledge to get your newsletters read?

Habit can work for you.

Teach them to expect your newsletter at the same time each month.   Be consistent.

Lay your newsletter out in the same format each time so that they learn to look for the information that interests them in the same place. For example, if you are offering links to resources, you might choose to put it at the bottom of the sidebar.  Leave it there.  Some people won’t read everything you write but they will still benefit from your newsletter if they can find the item they are looking for.

Remember that familiarity and habit go hand in hand.

Community can work for you.

We live in communities because we’re a social species.  We like to know people and what is going on for them.  When you write your newsletter, share a little about yourself and allow people to know you.  It doesn’t have to be personal information; just enough to show that you’re human and you understand what life is all about.  That’s how you’ll establish a connection with your readers that will make your newsletter more personal.

When you write your newsletter, write it for them and not for yourself.  Write to help, not to sell.  Think about what is going on in their lives and what thoughts are running through their heads.  Tap into this and write a newsletter that answers their questions or solves their problems.  Share your knowledge.

What others think.

Have you ever noticed a group at work when they have to make a decision?  There is always someone who leads the pack by making the first decision.  Often, the rest stand around and see what others decide to do before making a choice, and that choice is usually to follow the crowd.

We like to know that we’redoing the right thing and so we are influenced by the actions and opinions of others.  You can use this to your advantage by including testimonials or case studies in your newsletter.  It’s called ‘social proof’ and it hits a home run every time.  Believe me, these stories are like seeds planted into your readers brains.  When the time is right they will germiminate and give your reader the right answer at the right time.  The answer is you.

Your newsletter is a business tool

Yes, your newsletter IS a business tool but perhaps not in the way some people think.  It isn’t about selling,  It’s about connecting and building relationsbips.

Sales will grow out of the relationships you build and nuture.  How will that happen?

Because they READ your newsletter.

So, the ultimate goal for the writing of a newsletter is to get it read.

Before you worry about statistics or slave over creating the perfect headline, get into the routine of producing a newsletter that is filled with the things your client’s want to read.

Next week we will look at fine tuning the newsletters you create by using some of that guru advice, but not enough to scar you for life.