Episode 52: Q&A with Kendra

Kendra Corman

Thank you, guys, again for joining me for another episode of Imperfect Marketing! I'm super excited today because we're doing something a little bit different. I have a guest, her name is Angela Mitchell, and she is the owner and founder of Bridged Benefits Solutions.

Correct?

Angela Mitchell

Yes, yes.

Kendra Corman

That, do I have it right? Okay, and Angela is a great friend of mine and has been building her business since Covid right? It's been.

Angela Mitchell

Yep, since January of 2021

Kendra Corman

Yeah January 2021, so very exciting stuff. She is excellent at what she does. Just to tell you a little bit about it, she does help small to mid-sized businesses. Usually on average with what, about 100 people, 100 employees, or?

Angela Mitchell

I’d say anywhere from 20 to 200

Kendra Corman

20 to 200 employees. And she loves working with family-owned businesses, right?

Angela Mitchell

Absolutely!

Kendra Corman

So that's great, and she is all about high touch service and care for all of her clients because she wants people to get the most out of the benefits that they're paying for. Which I love that about you!

Angela Mitchell

Thank you.

Kendra Corman

Today's show is going to be a little bit different and instead of me interviewing Angela, she's actually going to be asking me questions that she has questions about in her business and we're going to talk through those solutions.

If anybody is interested in being a guest in a future hot seat, I would love to have you! You can go ahead and send me an email at support@kendracorman.com and we can chat about how you can be in the next hot seat.

But thank you Angela for being my first guinea pig I appreciate it.

 Angela Mitchell

Thanks for having me!

Kendra Corman

Why don't we go ahead, and have you kick off with your first question for me?

Angela Mitchell

All right, so there's a bunch of different social media platforms out there. How do I know which ones I should be on?

Kendra Corman

So I get this question a lot, and I love this question. Mostly because it's about where is your target audience, and that's what I start with. So you know, when people are looking for your services, where are they at?

So I'm assuming a lot of your target audience is on LinkedIn.

Angela Mitchell

Yes.

Kendra Corman

And I have the benefit of the fact that we've had that conversation before, but because you know again HR people, they're heavily on LinkedIn. That's probably a really good place for you to be talking about your services because that's where they start looking for your services. Right?

Angela Mitchell

Yeah, okay.

Kendra Corman

The other thing to think about though too, is most of the social media networks are really, really big. So if you don't like LinkedIn, because you don't like to be on it, we can probably find another network where your audience is. It may not be their default all the time, or it may not be the one that might be preferred by the statistics.

But there's a lot of different times that we can go ahead, and you can be on Facebook. And someone was telling me the other day that they've got more than 2 billion unique users a month.

Angela Mitchell

Wow.

Kendra Corman

Odds are, your target is in there somewhere if that's where you're comfortable.

So I encourage you, because you need to do social media well on a regular basis, I encourage you to first narrow down what it is you want to do. And then identify out of those choices which ones your clients or customers are on. And the reason I do again, they're so big that as small business owners, our people are on all the platforms. But you're going to get more bang for the buck If you do one well.

So when you're sitting at home on your couch in front of the TV, and you pull out your phone, which social media network do you go for? And then that will tell you a little bit about where you like to be.

Angela Mitchell

Okay, and once I decide where I'm gonna post, how often do I post?

Kendra Corman

So I encourage consistency. I mean as small business owners, we wear a million and a half hats right? So we're you know chief, bottle—what do they say? Chief, cook, and bottle washer and everything else that goes along with it. You're the CFO, the CMO, you’re the head salesperson.

You know, all of those things in it, and it really comes down to time management. I would say what can you do consistently and well? For the most part I recommend daily on your one platform because—especially if it's LinkedIn. You don't actually have to post yourself on LinkedIn once a day, but you have to interact on that platform at least once a day.

So maybe it's responding to someone else's post and commenting on that, liking and sharing someone else's post. Reaching out in a direct message. Just being active on the platform once a day I think is really important.

And then posting I would say anywhere from 3 to 5 times a day or a day — a week. Definitely not crazy, 3 to 5 times a week for the content that you're posting. Because you want it to be authentic. You don't want to overdo it.

One of my clients was posting 3 to 5 times a day, because I mean, they have a person dedicated just to social media. But they were posting 3 to 5 times a day and they're like, our interactions are going down

I'm like well you only have so big of an audience. So yeah, they're going to go down because they're only seeing so much. They're only interacting with so much. They're not going to share 5 posts from you in one day, therefore our average interactions were going down.

Then we went down to one time a day and their interactions pop back up again.

Angela Mitchell

Wow!

Kendra Corman

Because more people were seeing the same post, and they were engaging with it, and it was actually getting more reach. But ultimately, I think it's: what can you commit to do consistently?

So we start there, then we strive to do 15 minutes on each platform on your platform of choice.

Angela Mitchell

All right that makes sense and what about emails? So if I'm typing an email, what can I put in the subject line to make somebody open it — or more likely to open it?

Kendra Corman

So I like that. So there's a couple of different things. One, people want to see personal information. So you can add their first name and personalize it with that. You can—

A couple things not to do. Do not add 14,000 exclamation points. You get ONE in your whole life, use it wisely. I had a writer tell me that one time, I love that.

You know you want to — just because you think it's important doesn't necessarily mean they think it's important. So what's in it for them? If you can tell them what that is through the subject line, I think that that really helps.

Depending on your business, you could use an emoji. Some people will open with an emoji, some people won't. I would say for your business I'd probably refrain from emojis most of the time, simply because Health Care is a little bit of—our benefits are more of a serious business professional situation.

Angela Mitchell

Yeah.

Kendra Corman

From a marketing standpoint I can get away with a few more emojis.

Don't do it in all caps.

Angela Mitchell

Okay.

Kendra Corman

And let them know what's in it for them. So, how would you write that subject line of your email newsletter if you were sending this information to a client? What would that subject line be?

Angela Mitchell

Okay

Kendra Corman

You know, “the information that they've been waiting for” or you know, what is in it for that.

I usually like to recommend brainstorming 5 to 10 different subject lines before you actually send. Similar to writing a blog post and writing the headline you want. Actually you probably end up spending more time on the subject line than you do any other piece of the email, because it's so important.

First off, even before you get to the subject line. Make sure your from name and from email address are personal for that customer too. So they're going to want to see things from Angela, not necessarily Bridged Benefits Solutions, because they know you. That's how they got on your list.

And while most businesses send things from the business name, if you send it from a person, it's got a better chance of being opened.

Angela Mitchell 

That's a great point.

Kendra Corman

Then they move over to the subject line when they're filtering through things.

And again, not all caps. Not a million exclamation points.

Ask a question. Don't be afraid to ask a question in the subject line. You can, you want to tell them the value that they're going to get when they open it.

Angela Mitchell

Okay.

Kendra Corman

That's the most important thing!

If you pretend to be your target audience and Anne Hanley says this in pretty much everything she does—and most people do—you want to write to one person. So when you're envisioning the customer or client that you're writing to, what's going to make them open it?

You know, why would you know John Smith open this email? Well he's going to open it because I'm talking about hidden benefits that he's missing out on. Or you know, I'm talking about a checklist for his open enrollment and the communications he should be sending to his employees.

You know what are those things? And then I think it's, make sure that you're sending all of these communications for your employees.

And then there's always the pre-header, which is below the subject line. Most email marketing systems allow you to customize the pre-header. And the pre header is really a second chance at a subject line.

So if they're looking at it on a mobile device, it's the next line of copy. And it really helps for them to see and feel like, that next step, finishing that piece off. And so you actually get more characters in the subject line.

But again giving them value, personalizing it the best you can. And not trying to overdo it with emojis, exclamation points, and capitalization.

Angela Mitchell

Perfect! That is great information. Thank you.

I've just recently started putting together a newsletter. So how do I go about getting people to sign up for my newsletter?

 Kendra Corman

So that's a great question, and my first answer is everywhere! You never want to ask people if they want to sign up for your newsletter, because nobody wants any more email. And I don’t know about you, but I'm guessing you get a couple hundred a day like I do.

Angela Mitchell

Oh, a lot. Yep.

Kendra Corman

So when you're inundated with email, you don't want another piece of email. But you're not sending them email. You're giving them value. That's what they need to know, and they need to know what that is.

So a couple different ways that I would recommend that that you get people onto your email list. One, when you're doing in-person networking to say, “would you mind if I sent you my benefits update?”

Or, “Would you like to get things like...” And I would maybe cite 1, 2, or 3 of the valuable pieces of information that you send people.

Maybe it's compliance related stuff, “hey would you like to get notifications to make sure that you that you stay in compliance?”

I only send you an email a max of once a month, once a week, once a day—whatever your frequency is. Once a day might be a little bit overkill, but, it's not for Amazon.

Angela Mitchell

That's fair.

Kendra Corman

You know again, but if you tell them like, how often to expect emails from you, and what that value is they're more likely to sign up. And then, so that's first. So ask everywhere you are and with everybody that you meet.

Don't just assume, get that express permission and ask them. So that's great if you're in a networking group.

So I know, Angela you're active in the chamber. I would have one on ones with different people in the groups and then I I would ask them, you know again, would you mind if I added you to—

Whatever that value is that you're providing on a regular basis. I would share it out in social media. Let people know when like, hey if you're looking for...

You know, did you know Friday is some cutoff magic cutoff for benefits, or Medicare, or something along those lines right?

Angela Mitchell

Okay.

Kendra Corman

I'm just making this up!

So if it is, would you like to get things like that? I'm going to be sharing information about what you need to do to say compliant before Friday in my —You know, so sign up here.

So you can do something like that.

Angela Mitchell

So like a teaser, instead of posting instead of posting all the information right on social media. You're doing a teaser. Okay I like that.

Kendra Corman

Yeah, so where can you add value?

I got that from one of my previous podcast guests. She actually does that and lets people know what value they're going to be getting in the newsletter so that they sign up for it. Which I thought was really good.

Angela Mitchell

Yeah I like that a lot.

 Kendra Corman

And I mean, it's something that a lot of people do, I think without thinking about it. But it's a neat way to make sure that your newsletter has extra value. Because that's what it's all about is value. You know again, I don't want more email, but I love my MarketingProfs emails.

Angela Mitchell

Okay.

Kendra Corman

You know I don't necessarily open every single one of them. But I read them, I read the subject line I see if it's got stuff that’s interesting to me, and then I choose to read it or delete it. But still again, I'm not unsubscribing because they're sending me value.

Angela Mitchell

Fair enough.

Kendra Corman

I would also think about—

So a couple different things. So one, you're going to use it whenever you meet with people. Two, you're going to bedoing outreach in 1 to 1 meetings, again asking them about it.

If you do any speaking events. So any presentations, any group presentations. You can also highlight it there and give them an easy way to join. I do know Constant Contact has a super easy like, text to join that is included with their plans so you can actually add that.

 Angela Mitchell

How nice.

Kendra Corman

And they could go through that process.

Another way to do it is to have a downloadable, or a freebie, or some way that people are paying for some piece of advice or information from you with their email address. I like to do it so that it's easy to remember.

So one of mine is kendracorman.com/30days. Tree, zero, and then days, and it gives you thirty days of social post ideas. The reason I do it that way is so that if I'm at a speaking event or, you know, if I'm talking to somebody, or if I'm doing a presentation.

I can say “and if you're interested in my thirty days of social media social post ideas. Go ahead just type in kendracorman.com/30days and you can fill that out and you'll be added to my newsletter.”

Angela Mitchell

Okay.

Kendra Corman

All I ask for on those is first name and email address, because the less that they have to do, the better. And you're giving them something of value that they're paying and compensating you with their email address.

Contact information is extremely valuable. You know, think about your cell phone and your mailbox at the house, and your mailbox at your office, and everything else in between. We are inundated with marketing messages, and so if it's permission based and you're sending me value, then I'm willing to pay for it and give you access to those channels, also.

And I think that that's really important, as long as you think of it that way, I think it makes getting people to sign up a lot easier.

So, you can also add, I would make sure that you have a form on your website. I would consider a popup on your website to direct people to your freebie. If you don't have a freebie, but you have a blog, or a podcast on your website.

You can actually time a pop up to come up after someone's like, scrolled so far through an article or spent so much time on your site. And then you can serve them up a, “hey do you want to be the first to know when I launch a new blog post or podcast?”

Or whatever and you have. Well yes, I want to know because I'm clearly finding this value, I'm like sitting on it right?

Angela Mitchell

That is great. Yep, no, that is great information! I did not know any of that was possible.

Kendra Corman

Yeah, and then you can also do alert bars. I mean there's a million and a half ways to let people know that you have things going on.

As a consumer, I hate pop ups. As a marketer, I love pop ups. And I love pop ups because of what they do for people. They really bring attention and break into people's view and get them to stop and read.

There's one woman that I follow that was recently saying that she gets more than 50% of all of her email opt ins directly from her pop up on her website. And she's got, I don’t even know how many people she's got on her email list. But she's got thousands, tens of thousands on her email address.

Angela Mitchell

Wow. Yeah, that's great turnover.

Kendra Corman

But you got to have people go into your website. So you got to be sending them there through your emails, through you know, other interactions and things like that because they got to get there somehow. But once they're there, if they're hit with the pop up, I think it really does help with that marketing.

Angela Mitchell

Okay, so for my newsletter I use Constant Contact and I look at my metrics each month, right? And it might say like, 28% open rate. Which to me isn't a good number.

But then I look at the industry average, and it's maybe 30, 32. How do I know what those numbers mean, and what are good numbers?

Kendra Corman

I love that question, because I love data and I love email marketing! So, couple different things I would think about for your email marketing.

One, when you're tracking your metrics, I always encourage people to track against themselves. So you'll know what are good metrics based upon if you're improving in the right areas.

So if your list size is growing and your total clicks are growing, you're heading in the right direction. If your unsubscribes are jumping up through the roof, then we want to know what went wrong, right?

But we can track that over time and against yourself. So I do encourage you to do a benchmark of yourself and the yourself benchmark has become so much more important in the recent past with iOS 15 updates.

So Apple did an update called iOS 15 and it rolled out their MPP, or mail privacy protection. What that does is if people opted in, and I think it's something like 80% to 90% of the people that had the options opted in. It's not going to tell you if they open the email.

Angela Mitchell

Hm, wow.

Kendra Corman

It’s going to tell you—I shouldn't say that. It's automatically going to tell you they opened the email, no matter if they did or didn't. So open rate is going down in importance because the number of people with mail privacy protection is going up.

Angela Mitchell

So that's interesting. So I have a lady who I think is the first to open my newsletter every single month, but she may not be.

Kendra Corman

She may not be opening it.

Angela Mitchell

She may just be automatic. Okay, she may have never even seen my newsletter. Okay.

Kendra Corman

Correct. Yes, so Apple mail, or if you have Apple mail on your device. You don't have to have @me.com or @mac.com or @applemail I don't know what other ones, iCloud.

If you have one of those email addresses. Yes, you got mail privacy protection. But me at kendracorman.com, if I had an iPhone or an iPad that I was opening email on also using the mail app. It's preopening those for me too.

So anybody that's using the mail app—so they could have Gmail, and Outlook, or AOL or any of those things. But if they're using the mail app, they're included so open rates have been trending up over time.

So I encourage you to not look at open rates but rather look at clicks. Make sure that you're creating opportunities for people to click in your email and interact with you or reply by asking them a question and asking them to reply. Those interactions are going to be really important because that shows you engagement.

Now one of the things in the metrics that a lot of people talk about is, like my click rate Well click rate is the number of Clicks divided by the number of opened emails. Well emails are now going up. Email opens are going up because they're being pre-opened that means your click rate's probably going down.

So If you look at total Clicks instead of Click rate, then you're in a much better position. That's why benchmarking yourself is so important. Right now we have a ton of information on industry averages for open rates and for click rates. But they're sort of going out the window right?

Angela Mitchell 

That makes sense.

Kendra Corman

So, because of Mail Privacy protection. So when you're looking at your email marketing metrics, I encourage you to track your list size.

It's not about the biggest list. It's going to be about the most engaged list. But still, I like to know that I'm going the right direction you want to look at your total clicks. You can look at your unique clicks.

The difference between total clicks and unique clicks is if I have three places to click in an email, and one person does all three they count as three total clicks, but one unique click.

Angela Mitchell

That makes sense.

Kendra Corman

Or if they go back in and click on something like 17 times, because they use it as like a reference email, they count as one unique click. So you can track total clicks, unique clicks if you want.

I also track how many were delivered. So I get bounces, people move on, people change Jobs. They do a lot of different things, and that email address might not be valid anymore. And so I'm always looking to see how many of my emails, or what percentage of my emails, were actually delivered to real email addresses. And I'm always removing the bounces on a regular basis.

Angela Mitchell

Wow.

Kendra Corman

So again, we're tracking list size, clicks—total clicks, unique clicks—we're tracking deliverability. I would also track unsubscribes.

I Want to know that the people on my list are getting content that they enjoy, and if they're unsubscribing then I want to know if I'm doing something wrong. I may not be doing anything wrong!

I may want my unsubscribe rate to go up if I am changing my focus a little bit, or you know again, it could be an older list that's more dedicated to my consulting business versus my digital course business.

With that shift I'm going to expect some people to drop off my list and that's okay.

Angela Mitchell

So don't take a personal.

Kendra Corman

First of all, don't take it personally! But second of all, I'm like, I always tell people you can unsubscribe we'll still be friends. I might be upset with you for a day, but we'll get over it.

But as that, but you do have to watch to make sure that like it doesn't go from like “oh I've got about 2 unsubscribes every week, or every month I send my email.”

And then all of a sudden you have 45 unsubscribes. It's like okay, what happened here? What did I do or not do that that people are looking for.

And I think that that's really important to highlight because you want to make sure. That's a really good flag, that you're not delivering people the content they want, is if they unsubscribe. Because it's a lot of work to unsubscribe. Usually I'd rather just hit delete right?

Angela Mitchell

Makes sense. Absolutely.

Kendra Corman

If you're looking at your newsletter engagement, I would definitely look at that.

Another thing to keep in mind is, every so often you're going to get replies. You're going to get people asking you to follow up, or reaching back out. Because the whole point of email is trying to stay top of mind with your target audience.

Not necessarily for people like you and me, Angela, that are, you know we've got high touch sales businesses. So it's not like everybody is looking for a new benefits provider every day right?

Angela Mitchell

Right?

Kendra Corman

That would drive you guys crazy that would drive them crazy.

Angela Mitchell

It would be nice though!

Kendra Corman

Yes!

But again, they're not always looking for a new benefit, so it's going to be a little bit longer of a sales cycle. And so, you're going to want to stay top of mind.

I get emails all the time from people talking about, “hey, I get your emails regularly and I haven't forgotten about you, here's what I'm working on. Can you help me with this?”

Angela Mitchell

Okay, so just staying out there.

Kendra Corman

I get a couple of them a week and so I factored that into my email metrics, also.

Angela Mitchell

Okay.

Kendra Corman

And then I always track to like, what I'm talking about, and what my key message is, so that I can identify any issues if my key message isn't resonating with that group.

Angela Mitchell

All right that makes sense. That was great info, I appreciate it. Every time I talk to you, I learned several new things. I had a whole new page of notes today!

Kendra Corman

Thank you! What other questions do you have?

Angela Mitchell

So do you have different, do you use different email lists for different—

You said you have 2 different businesses right?

Kendra Corman

Mm-hmm.

Angela Mitchell

So I just have one business, but should I be sending different newsletters to different segments of people?

Kendra Corman

So I would say yes. I love segmentation. And the reason I like it is because when I think about someone like you, Angela, who's targeting HR departments, business owners, CFOs—whoever's in charge of the best, right?

Angela Mitchell

Mm-hmm.

Kendra Corman

Right? Because the smaller the company, it might be a CFO because they don't necessarily have a head of HR. When you're targeting those people, they're looking for different information than I would look for from you, as a potential referral partner.

So if you can give me tools and information where I can speak more, and sound smarter about benefits. Or there might be some other things that are going to help keep you top of mind for me to refer you to other people, that would be helpful.

And then, you can go ahead, and you know, send a more—service based, I'll call it—email to your prospects and customers.  Because again, if you have that referral base that's different, and maybe not a customer because they're small businesses.

Angela Mitchell

Mm-hmm.

Kendra Corman

I mean, they're super small businesses, but they're interacting with your customer. You may want to give them different tools. It doesn't have to happen every month.

So if you send a monthly email, you don't have to segment and send different creative every single month and spend a ton of time you know writing emails and things like that. You want to make sure that whatever you sign up for, you can be consistent with.

But I have a client that I work with. They work with for profit and nonprofit companies. We send out a nonprofit specific email probably 4 Times a year, so not much. They both, for profit and nonprofits both get the same content most of the year.

Angela Mitchell 

Okay.

Kendra Corman

You know 3, 2 what is it? Yeah 3, 2/3 of the year they get the same—I'm like, I'm doing math in my head that's scary.

They get the same content 2/3 of the year and there's only 1/3 of the year that we actually change it up. And that's around year end giving, which is when they bring in 60 to 70% of their income and that's when we change up the message for nonprofits. Because it's really going to resonate with them.

Kendra Corman

And we see the change in performance.

Angela Mitchell

Okay, great advice.

Kendra Corman

Overall performance for those emails goes up because the segment is smaller and it's definitely more relevant. And it's again, easier to write to that specific group. So that's something to keep in mind when it comes to segmenting.

But again, you know, we're small business owners. We're solopreneurs, entrepreneurs. We have a lack going on. Chief, cook ,and bottle washer, I think is one that I always hear all the time.

We're doing so many different things I would rather you do one really well than do a bunch that are segmented and like, not be able to pull them off on a regular basis. So consistency outranks segmentation.

But again, I would think about you know, headed into you know the summer, late summer before people are getting ready for open enrollment. It's starting to be on their radar.

So maybe you pull out potential referral partners there and send them a special note saying “hey I'm looking for people that are interested in investigating whether or not they should stay with the same benefits provider. I'd love to do a free consultation if you know anybody that you think might be interested, or might be worth having a conversation with, let me know, or think of me.”

Here you know, “click here to download something that helps them review their benefits” or whatever it happens to be. And so you're giving me a tool that I can use with my clients, that might help you with yours, and get yours, right?

Angela Mitchell 

Yeah.

Kendra Corman

So maybe that happens just once a year. But again, if you think strategically about who's on your list, I always encourage people to segment and tag people or tag people whatever it is, when you're adding them to your list rather than later. Because it's a lot harder when you've got 2000 people on your list to start tagging them and identifying who's who than when you got 20.

Angela Mitchell

Yeah, and that that's something I haven't done. But luckily, I don't have 2000 on my list just yet.

Kendra Corman

But again, when you're doing it, if you identify those segments that you might want to contact in a different way. Like, you might even want to target people based on if they've got 20, you know or under 50, and over 50 Right?

Because there's different laws related to some of the benefits that they have to provide.

Angela Mitchell

Yeah for sure. Yeah.

Kendra Corman

And I don't know, it might be like, there might be some that are down at 0. But are there times that there might be some different messages for those two groups?

Angela Mitchell

Yeah, absolutely there is some overlap but there's definitely different laws for different segments.

Kendra Corman

So it might be nice to say, “hey I know that you have less than 50 employees. Just want you to know a couple of things that you're not actually required to do.”

You know you might want to think about it. But you're not required to do it. Whatever that happens to be could really help people understand.

And I think—and I might be wrong. But I think I saw, and I think you actually told me this. There's some things that you're required from a benefit standpoint to provide like, if you have 30 people, like there's a different number other than the normal 50 that people identified with FMLA, right?

Angela Mitchell

There are yep. There's some 30, there's some 20, and there's—it goes down to one. If you have one employee, there are some things that you're required to do.

Kendra Corman

And I think a lot of people don't realize that they think of that 50 FMLA, and I've got less than 50, so I'm good. And they're not necessarily. They need to know about the 20, and the 30, and the one.

And you know those different thresholds.

Angela Mitchell

Yes, yeah.

Kendra Corman

And so having maybe, a size segmentation when it's that important from a compliance standpoint. That might be important, because if I have 100 employees, then I'm pretty much hitting everything, right?

Angela Mitchell

Right.

Kendra Corman

I'm going to have to do everything. I'm probably big enough that I have my own HR department, they're helping me keep compliant. But as a much smaller business under 50, then I have a lot more complications because I don't necessarily have someone running compliance.

Angela Mitchell

Okay, I think that's great advice.

Kendra Corman

And so again, there could be some benefits —

There could be some benefits in keeping those people separate too. And then you know, again I think it just helps with that messaging and the ability to talk to that one person.

So when you're writing your newsletter, and you're writing to the person with 20 employees. The messaging can be a little bit different, could be a little bit more basic, because you know you're not sending it to somebody in HR. You're sending it to someone that may not be as familiar with benefits.

Same thing if you're sending an email to me, as a potential referral partner. You don't necessarily want to talk to me like I know everything about benefits, but you also don't want to talk down to your 100+ people organizations, right?

Angela Mitchell

Correct. Yep, yeah, that makes sense.

Kendra Corman

So yeah, so I encourage you to think about how you can do things just a little bit different. And again, keep in mind it does not have to be every newsletter.

You don't have to have 7 versions of your newsletter. Maybe every once in a while you look at the article that you're writing, and you think about a different angle, if they had less, or if they had more people. Or if they were a referral partner.

And maybe it's just one article that gets changed out, it doesn't have to be the whole newsletter.

Angela Mitchell

Okay, that's a great perspective. How do you feel about, do I have to write every single article? Or can I attach to legitimate verified sources for information in my newsletter?

Kendra Corman

Oh, I love that question!

Okay, so I would say you don't have to write everything. You can definitely attach to legitimate sources. Sometimes depending on where it—whoever wrote it—sometimes I'll create a new copy, if I have the right to reproduce it.

And give content to originally, this article originally appeared on, you know, some association’s website.org, or something like that. And give them credit, but also put that potentially on my website.

It gets Google a little bit up in the air because of duplicate content. I get it for SEO. But at least you're keeping them inside your, website and driving them to your content, which I do like. I would say, you know again, the more you can drive them to your website, the better off you're going to be.

That's going to help your overall search engine optimization, but you don't have time to write 17 articles a month.

Angela Mitchell

Right? I do not.

Kendra Corman

I don't have time to write 17 articles a month. And because of that, we do have to manage our time a little bit better.

So you could write a blog post that has links to those sources. So you can say you know, “It's open enrollment time and I'm getting a lot of questions. A lot of people are asking me what they're required and not required to provide —” or this or that.

“So here's 3 bullet points, and then here's a link to the organization that was talking about it.”

And sending them there.

Angela Mitchell

Okay.

Kendra Corman

You can actually do some summaries, and some shorter summaries, to send them to that type of C-content. You could actually do a resource post that said, “here's my top 10 resources for employee law—”

I don't know I'm making that up.

“—employee regulations, or compliance, or health care compliance.”

And you could actually give them all the links in that post and then send them there because you already know what those links are.

Angela Mitchell

Okay, right.

Kendra Corman

But you're aggregating that information into a one-stop shop. You're not sending them necessarily to a different website, but more sending them to your website so they see you as the resource provider. And then they can go and look at the different sites that they want to look to look at.

Angela Mitchell

Okay I think that's great. So do just kind of a little recap, but then also provide back up for them. They can verify it.

Kendra Corman

Yeah, and it doesn't have to be super long. It can save you a ton of time that way. Couple things that I  would caution you with.

One, don't use like, an AI system to write any blogs or anything for you. Google has pretty much come out and said that AI is computer generated content, and they don't consider that original content.

There was something that they said, but it's going to negatively affect your rate rankings in the end. So you definitely don't want to do that.

Angela Mitchell

Mm-hmm.

Kendra Corman

And again, don't overthink what you're writing and providing.

So there was a woman who did an email newsletter that I used to get and read, and she would do like a 2 sentence introduction to whatever that article was about that was trending. And then she would link to the trending article.

She didn't have a blog on her website, but she would send you like, the weekly trends and there were 5 or 6 of them of what was trending in marketing, and it was pretty interesting stuff, and it gave me that information.

I did still look to her as the expert because she was providing me that digest of what was trending. So there is still value if you wanted to link to it from your website, but you want—or I mean from your newsletter—directly to them and not go through your website.

Again, it all comes down to what you're trying to achieve with it, and how important that information is to you that it would maybe warrant being on a blog post.

Angela Mitchell

Okay, that's a great perspective.

So, I think it's all the questions I have today.

Kendra Corman

Oh awesome!

Thank you so much for being my first hot seat guest, I appreciate it!

If anybody else is looking to have their personal situation—

Personal marketing evaluated, or you have questions about marketing, about your specific situation and you'd like to chat with me about it. Again, like I said, I'd love to have you. You are welcome to go ahead and email me at support@kendracorman.com and we can chat about what your questions are and how to get those answered.

And if you want to reach out to Angela, because again, like I said, she's a fantastic benefits agent and provides her clients with a super high level of service. And I think that's really important in today's market as we constantly don't realize what our benefits are, and it's just really murky.

Angela Mitchell

That, it's a great way to say it.

Kendra Corman

Her contact information is also in the show notes. So be sure to grab that, reach out to her if you have questions, or are looking for new benefits solutions, of course.

And again, thank you so much!

Angela Mitchell

Thank you.