All of information I’ve described above would not cost much to procure – probably just a matter of a few phone calls, a couple of hours surfing net, and a day or two of someone’s time putting it all together.

Obviously you need to be careful not to use other organizations’ copyright material without permission, but in my experience organizations aren’t all that possessive about their stuff and will cheerfully grant you permission provided that you credit them appropriately. After all, their material isn’t much use if no-one’s allowed to see it.

What a difference this type of content makes to an organization’s external newsletter! You instantly gain respect or your readers, because you’re giving them something tangible without asking them for anything in return. And this can only reflect in one way on your business relationship with them.

Online tips

I’m not quite sure what difference is between e-zines and online newsletters. I think it could be one of those instances whereby everyone has a slightly different idea of what this particular type of communication should do and be called. If you ask that question of three different online comms experts you’ll get three very plausible and totally different answers. As usual I try to find common denominator and in this case, it’s this: in much same way as its paper-based ancestor, onlinezine (how about that for a new word) is a regular piece of one-way communication that supplies its audience with news and updates about you, your organization and your activities.

The online version will be taken much more seriously by its readers if in addition to necessary reminders about your products and services, you also include some genuinely useful and interesting information. However online version, in keeping with most other online descendants of offline media, must be much shorter and far more condensed.

One of primary uses of onlinezines is to “drive traffic to website.” Now in itself this is relatively harmless and provided that everything is done right, it usually works. And then once you’ve got visitors hooked into all your superb content on website you have a captive audience to whom you can sell your own stuff if it’s a company-only site or your advertisers’ stuff if it’s a more open-ended one. Or at least that’s theory.

However as you would expect some organizations get this hideously wrong, and in my view most vivid example of it is online newsletter that comprises little more than a list of URLs with filepaths length of a several soccer pitches. Nothing, but nothing is more irritating to someone like me than an enticing e-newsletter with grabby headlines plus a few words leading into topic and then … nothing. Just a fancy URL which even if you do click on it usually doesn’t connect with page you want on website anyway.

If you’re in a position to choose how an online newsletter is put together and you want to get best possible results from it, please, please remember to put enough into it so there’s something “in it for them.” Of course if you have a website you’ll want to drive traffic to it. But create a realistic balance.

Don’t be so naïve as to think you can force people to click on to your website by dangling a carrot just out of their reach. If they’re anything like me they’ll feel resentful and antagonized by it and will resolve never to visit your site even if dragged there by wild horses.

My own personal preference is standalone variety of online newsletter that makes clicking through to website merely an optional extra. But I know that in a business context this is not as commercially attractive.

So probably next best thing is online newsletters that supply audience with a summary or shortened version of content so they get key points, and refer them to website for further details. That’s an acceptable balance that will encourage people to click through to site if they have a genuine interest plus time to spare, and if they haven’t time at least they’ll remember you and your summaries fondly and be more inclined to click through to site next time.

You all have probably experienced stress at one time or another in your life. You might even be experiencing it now as a reaction to this article. Stressed out people have very definite body language. I can spot you a mile away. Other people can too, they just might not know why they are having a reaction to you (your stress!). Look at people around you (at home or at work). If they're eyebrows are raised, their shoulders scrunched up around their ears, hand clenched - chances are they're stressed out about something. If you're having a meeting with them and don't recognize their body language then meeting might get tenser because you might mirror their body language and get stressed out yourself. It's not healthy for you and it creates a lot of tension, turmoil, confrontations, frustrations and disagreements - all because you didn't read and respond to their nonverbal communication. They subconsciously sucked you into their net of stress, worry and upset and THEY GOT YOU!

Now, what about you? Did you know that most Americans hold their stress in upper part of their body? And because we do, people can read us so easily. Consider signs I mentioned in last paragraph. People can "pick" up on us so easily just as we can pick up on them! We like to be in proximity to other people because we can read them as they can read us! I had a marketing consultant that wanted to become a coach. Her biggest goal was to stop traveling so much and at same time her biggest challenge was to take up telephone coaching where she wasn't in presence of her clients. She didn't believe she could figure out what was going on because she couldn't "see" other person or in fact, read other person's body language. Body language is that powerful. Because it's that powerful, everyone should be familiar with it and understand positive and defensive postures. When you do, you understand what's really going on with people around you - either at work or in your personal life - because we all, at some time or other speak in double messages.

It's important to understand double messages, which we hear/see all time. Why? Because whenever we receive a double message, we tend to put a question mark behind spoken message and believe unspoken message. I've said this before and I want to re-emphasize it again! Double messages make us incongruent. How do adults learn best? When they are in a congruent environment. If you're going to be effective, learn 2 most important languages: spoken and unspoken word.

(c) 2005, Linda Talley. All rights reserved.