To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

e. e. cummings

Being yourself. They say it’s the secret to being happy :-). And, according to mr. cummings, it’s the hardest battle you can fight.

But, it’s also the secret to a truly great newsletter.

Yesterday I received an email from a fellow who has a list of about 9000 readers. His monthly newsletter is on the short side–one feature article and an advertisement.

He wrote because his readers don’t respond the way he’d like them to. They don’t send feedback about the issues, they’re not buying at a “normal” rate.

But, his biggest concern is that he’s not touching readers. And that’s a problem.

You know where I’m going with this :-). What his newsletter was missing was HIM.

See, newsletters don’t touch readers. They’re cold, impersonal, emails.

But YOU can touch readers THROUGH your newsletter.

And you do that by ADDING more YOU to your newsletter.

Like e. e. cummings says, it’s the hardest battle you can fight. BUT, it’s also the only thing that makes a newsletter worth publishing.

Because, face it, a newsletter that makes profits is nice. And a newsletter that gets you lots of nice emails from readers is nice.

But the only thing that makes it REALLY worthwhile is knowing you touch readers.

If you’re confused about adding more of yourself to your newsletter, these three steps will get you started.

1. Share personal stories. Take something that’s happened to you in the last few days and relate it back to your newsletter topic.
2. Share your mistakes. Mistakes make us human. And it’s those mistakes that often touch your readers the most.
3. Share your triumphs. Readers want to hear about your wild successes, too. Make sure to balance the mistakes with successes.