Your newsletter must be different – and a great example

By Stella Orange | Comments Off on Your newsletter must be different – and a great example

My client Jen had a powerful idea recently.

She’s a weight loss coach (even though she hates the term). And as soon as she got on the call, she said, “Stella, I’ve never met a woman with a weight problem.”

(!)

Then she said, “now how do I turn that into a newsletter article?”

And out of nowhere, Jay-Z’s song “99 Problems” jumped into my head. And the lyric: I got 99 problems, but a b*tch ain’t one.

(Yes, I agree. It’s not nice to call women Bs.)

But the point is, creativity works in mysterious ways.

I said, “so what if you do an article listing the 99 problems women use eating and food to try to solve?”

You got 99 problems, but weight ain’t one.

Everyone leaned in. (We run the Writing Brigade by video conference, so I could see it).

And then Jen says, “I love it!”

In the 10 minutes that followed, we made a list of 99 problems women often have, that we then use food, eating and booze to solve (or stuff).

Including stuff like:

  • Your closest relationship is your TV
  • Your iPad and video games replace love
  • Your bed is too big
  • Your bed is too empty
  • Netflix is your best friend
  • Your couch is your best friend
  • Wine is your best friend
  • Anything with cheese is your best friend

She wrote a bit more than that, because she’s a smart woman who also is working on revealing more of who she really is in her writing.

(After she lost 30 pounds, she’s totally ripped. Making her a skosh unrelatable to many of her clients, some of whom want to lose 50 pounds or more).

But what a great idea, right?

And I’m not really tooting my own horn here, either.

I’m tooting to horn of the PROCESS of talking your ideas out with other people, BEFORE your hit send, print, or publish.

It’s pure gold.

And it’s what we’ll be doing all year together in Write Club. As of this writing, the charter memberships are sold out.

Don’t want to sound like everyone else? Then make a plan to come up with new ways to say and do things – like Jen and her 99 problems article. You can read her full article here. UPDATE: Jen told me that her people LOVED this article – she got a TON of personal emails back from her readers. This is a great example of increasing engagement by doing things differently. Here’s to a successful pattern interrupt!

Mighty thanks to Goggla flickr photostream for the 99 Problems photo.

Stella Orange is a copywriter who helps people put their work into words. For eight years, she wrote email campaigns that resulted in more than a million dollars in sales for her clients. In that time, Stella also taught popular marketing writing workshops to business owners on both sides of the Atlantic -- and a few in Australia and New Zealand. In 2017, Stella cofounded a creative and consulting shop offering a complete and slightly unorthodox line of business advising and marketing services. She continues to write copy and advise clients on customer delight, how to resonate with more sophisticated, discerning clientele in your marketing, and just who, exactly, your ideal clients are. Stella is the founder of Show Up And Write, a weekly writing group and writes a letter every two weeks or so (here’s the sign-up). She lives with the Philosopher and their two kiddos in Buffalo, New York, a fifteen-minute bike ride to the Canadian border.

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