It’s not often I get tagged for memes of a business nature. But spiritual business coach par excellence, Mark Silver, saw through my fluffy exterior and knew I’d have something to add to the best productivity tips in all the land, the rapidly escalating group effort to corral the best of entrepreneurial wisdom by my former Great Big Small Business Show collaborator, Ben Yoskovitz. So here goes nothin’…

You don’t have to explain the beauty of a project like this to a listmaker. We revel in lists: the how-to, to-do, tip-mad fests that other people put together. We live for memes, boy howdy.

What intrigued me most about this exercise was the one limitation placed on those of us who saw fit to pick up the gauntlet: Challenge yourself to pick one. Because, of course, the delicious truth is, while there are many excellent “hacks” to improve productivity, my number one tip is to choose the one that works for you.

Yup—that’s it…suckers.

No, seriously, it’s deceptively simple, for it means spending some time identifying what’s tripping me up at any given moment. And yes, it also means I need to reassess from time to time, because my barriers to productivity shift, as well. What trips me up Monday—lack of sleep, say, or needing an injection of Karin’s fun after a weekend of too much work and not enough play—may not be the issue on Tuesday, when I’ll about needing to do some of the “sprints” that Dawud Miracle mentions, or Hump Day, when I’d give my right arm for some of Monk-at-Work Adam Kayce’s clarity.

Of course, I won’t cop out there; I’ll play nice and share One Great Thing I’ve found that’s been working for me lately. (Which I know—I know—makes this post technically about two tips, but my #1 tip is so meta, it makes my head swim.)

Are you ready for this life-changing, earth-shattering Tip of Tips?

Keep things tidy.

Yes, literally by keeping my desk clear—or at least, of all jobs but the one I have going right that second—and my surroundings neat and the dishes done and every other stupid, mundane thing my Swedish grandmother told me mattered back in 1964, when I got fobbed off on her during my parents’ second honeymoon, actually makes a difference.

Hi-Baby, the CEO. Who knew?

xxx
c

P.S. They may have been tagged already—this meme’s been bubbling for a few days—but I’m tagging:

• Ilise Benun (because coaches always have the best tips)
• Scott Ginsburg (because that whippersnapper has output that puts people twice his age to shame)
• Rebecca Morgan (because to keep so many plates spinning, she must be a productivity guru)
• Bonnie Gillespie (because girlfriend could write four books on productivity in the time it took me to write this), and…
• Danny Miller (mainly because I don’t think anyone ever asks him any business-y questions either, but even if he knows nothing about productivity—which I’m sure ain’t so—he is one of my all-time favorite writers)

Image by mer incognito via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: memes, productivity, tips.

I’ve been sitting on this post for what seems like eons. Every time I sign up for a new newsletter, I cross my fingers and hope and hope and hope. And almost invariably, I am disappointed.

It’s very hard, apparently, to get a newsletter right, and really, really easy to fuck it up.

And so, in the interest of me, me, me…

The communicatrix’s top 10 tips for creating a newsletter people will read every time it hits their inbox:

1. Content is king

I’m a designer. I like things to look nice. My two favorite newsletters? The only ones I will recommend at the end of this post? One is text-only and one is, um, ugly. There, I said it. Who cares? I read that sucker every Friday morning, stem to stern. Like I said, content is king.

2. Leave me wanting more

People who subscribe to newsletters usually subscribe to lots. If yours is too long, guess what? There are others that come just as regularly, and aren’t. Of course, there is almost no such thing as too long if your content is good enough. But why kill yourself? You’ve got 51 more weeks to fill, cowboy. Besides, the point of the newsletter, as I understand it, is to get someone interested in your business. I would think the two greatest ways to do that are to tell me incredibly useful information, thereby establishing yourself as an expert, and to leave me wanting more of your expertise.

3. Watch the ads

Hey—it’s your dime and your time. I can understand an ad or promo here or there. Just be careful. No one’s content is that good.

4. Be as regular as taxes.

Those “when I feel like it” newsletters? Those are articles. Unless you are one of maybe 25 people whose words I hang on, I’m not interested in your articles. Really—I’m not.

5. Regular means once per week, per two weeks and if you’re amazing, per month.

I mean, go ahead and send me that once per month email. But know that there are some people sending me an emailed newsletter with great content every week. Which means maybe consider #1 & #2 and go back to the drawing board.

6. Think long and hard before using that email I gave you to send me something else.

I’ll give you one, maybe two shots. Then you’re outta there.

7. Keep the self-congratulations for friends and family.

I almost never care if you’ve won something. Unless it directly affects me, in which case, knock yourself out.

8. An HTML email with links back to your site instead of embedded content is not a newsletter.

It is a pain in the ass standing in the way of me and information. Don’t do it.

9. Keep it within your purview, but useful to me.

This is incredibly hard to do, but it’s really how you hit it out of the park. One of my new favorite newsletters is Mark Silver’s Business Heart. It’s all text, has a dopey-ass name and is outstanding almost every single week. Silver’s area of expertise is “heart-centered business practice”—in other words, how to do business without feeling like a tool. He’s focused and passionate about what he does, and communicates simply and elegantly about all sorts of things I find helpful, like how to approach writing a book, how to think about marketing in a way that doesn’t make you cringe, etc. He’s consistent, respectful, gives openly and doesn’t push. Guess who I’m going to refer someone to first when they’re looking for a coach like him?

10. When in doubt, offer tips.

Everyone loves tips. Well, everyone who subscribes to newsletters, anyway. Rebecca Morgan and Ken Braly’s SpeakerNet News gets read first, every Friday, even before I click on my Salon links. I’m not even a speaker, but it’s chock full of excellent tips on stuff like self-promotion, marketing, travel, organizing, systems, etc. In fact, if someone has a newsletter for me that is as good as SNN and has only organizational stuff, I will pay you five American dollars. (I must subscribe to it for at least one month before you receive your prize.)

xxx
c

UPDATE: I just found another great point about what makes a great newsletter in—you guessed it—a newsletter!

11. Don’t forget outbound links.

This is kind of a corollary of Rule #1, but enough of a good point to bear mentioning on its own. I like goodies! All people like goodies! Give away goodies! Lots of other good stuff in this article, although the newsletter itself breaks Rule #8, so it doesn’t make the hit parade.

Nick Usborne in “Four Ways the Best Newsletters Are Like Blogs,” from the MarketingProfs.com newsletter link

UPDATE (11/30/07): I’m going to start a list here of additional newsletters to add to the canon:

• Sonia Simone’s Remarkable Communication. Sound marketing advice, a no-bullsh*t tone and great links. (weekly; sign up here)

Image (and headline) by Eammon via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, eNewsletters, eZines, how to, marketing, Nerd Love™, newsletters, online marketing, tips.

Being a bossy, self-involved chick who’s all about the unsolicited 411, I’m way lovin’ this this meme from Jon Strande, of 100 Bloggers fame (which reminds me, I must get my butt in gear).

• What do you do? - Current (commercial) actress. Former (and, for rare clients, current) copywriter. Budding designer. Aspiring communicatrix (a pundit-like position I imagine will fuse all of these—way, shape or form, TBD).
• What are the challenges? - Keeping my head from exploding.
• How do you overcome them? - By excluding from my life that which is neither useful nor beautiful.
• What is a typical day like? - No such thing, really, allthough a “median” day might include an audition, some writing, a bit of design work and, hopefully, some form of head-clearing stuff: a walk, a trip to the gym, a lie-down…
• How do you manage information? (Email, Blogs, etc) - TypePad hosts my blog—love that UI! I like Entourage for my main email and use gmail and Yahoo! accounts for public interface. I swear by the bucket method of brain emptying/information collection that David Allen outlines in the most excellent Getting Things Done; my Palm and the lined notebook(s) I always carry with me are my main buckets. I use NewsFire for my RSS feeds locally and Bloglines on the road. I am a geek; I make no apologies for this…
• What are your 3 or 5 favorite books
  The Artist’s Way - life change ain’t easy, but it’s always worth it
  Factotum - Buk is my go-to guy when I’m feeling blue
  The Razor’s Edge - I gave my crappy honors thesis novella the same title out of undying undergrad lust for Maugham
  Bread and Jam for Frances - if you’ve got a kid, go buy it; if you don’t, go buy it anyway
  Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life - whether or not you believe in feng shui, you must admit that to focus intention on something changes it…and I got two checks for $10,000 each when I focused on my kitchen/prosperity bagua
• What are your favorite web sites/blogs? I’m always happy when I see updates to the feeds from Gawker, michaelnobbs-dot-com and Crossroads Dispatches. I wish 2Blowhards had a feed.
• What tools/technology do you use? - PowerMac G5 (mostly Photoshop, Quark XPress, Final Draft and MS Word), G4 PowerBook
• What’s your favorite quote? - “Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.” —Niels Bohr
• What is your “secret to success”? - You don’t have to be the brightest kid on the block if you’re willing to work ten times harder than the one who is.
• What are your greatest accomplishments? Personal? Professional? - Learning to live in the present.
• What are your hobbies? Or, how do you break the monotony and stay energized? - After too many years of tedium, I’m happy to report that there is no monotony in my life. But when I need a break, I bust out the guitar, the sketchbook (this is a new one, for which I owe a debt of gratitude to Michael and Brenton), take a long walk or unplug and curl up with a book. The thing that energizes me most is connecting with kindred spirits—a long talk with one of my gals, a birthday party for which fifty of my closest friends come out on a school night, being in the loving arms of a brilliant cast in a genius piece of art.

Grab the Q’s, add your own A’s (on your own blog, if you fancy, or in the comments if you don’t). Don’t forget to trackback me and Jon if you’re a bloggin’ baby.

In other words, share the love. In case you hadn’t heard, it’s the answer…

xxx
c

TOPICS: communicatrix, links, List-o-rama!, meme, tips.