This ninth issue of Web Words and the last in Vol. 1 will pass across the computer screens of almost 600 readers. Some of you will be too busy to even glance at the contents. Others will read it from tip to toe like Dave Hall of CompuWorks in Pitttsfield, MA. “I usually save that kind of stuff and then never get around to reading it, but yours catches my interest, and I read through the whole thing.”

The Virtues of Viral

“You never know where your words can take you,” says Judy Shenouda owner of a similar communication business in a suburb of Rochester, NY. Her niece Dawn Meltzer of Dawn Healing Arts in Lenox, MA forwarded Web Words to her last spring. “Now celebrating 20 years in business, I've been rethinking our promotional pieces, which are ready for a facelift,” Judy says. “Your material shows how others present their services to potential customers.”

To my clients in the medical profession, it may seem odd to extol the virtues of viral. But that’s viral on the Web, not viral in the body. Here’s an example of how it works. At a lunch in Springfield for the AdClub of Western Mass, I met Mary McKitrick of MCM Voices. Mary does voice overs for medical, biotech and health care, among other things. She loved Web Words and passed it on to her colleague Bob Souer. He loved it and mentioned it in his blog. I’m waiting to see how many new subscribers that mention brings. Maybe none, maybe many, but my name is now out there in a whole new community that I’d never reach in the normal course of events.

That’s how viral works.

The Bottom Line

I do newsletters for a living, so Web Words is self demonstrating. Its job is simple. It’s supposed to make people think, “Wow, I could promote my product or service this way, too.” And then motivate them to click on a link in the e-zine and contact Shawenon Communications for help.
Stand by for next December’s year-end report to see how we did. This is not an instant process. We’ve got some good clients and nice list of hot prospects, but we’re not overwhelmed yet. As Alec Stern Vice President, Strategic Market Development at Constant Contact told us when we got started, e-mail marketing has a “long tail to its sales cycle.” Most people are slow to take the plunge.

But here’s the bottom line. Every month, hundreds of people see “Susanna Opper” and “Shawenon Communications” on their computer screen. It’s a constant and persistent reminder of a possibility for their own business or community venture. And it will be there again next month.

Wendy Krom of Community Consulting Services sums it up when she says, “I love your e-zine—it’s very nicely designed, reads easily and is very informative!” When your customers and prospects say this about your business communications, you’ll hear from them, sooner or later.

My husband isn’t usually the one in our family who names inanimate objects. I came up with Snowflake for the white Honda and Grasshopper for the green Subaru. He goes along reluctantly. But when we got our GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver a few weeks ago, he had the name almost instantly. “Sophie,” he said. “It just came to me.”

Life Changing

Faster than any other transformative computer technology, Sophie changed our lives overnight. My husband Will has a great sense of direction. I often joke that he could go to a new city and find a place with just the address. Of course, he can’t really do that. But Sophie can.

I, on the other hand, was born without a “direction” gene. I get lost all the time. I even get lost when I know where I’m going. So Will has been eagerly anticipating this purchase since the summer, when we selected a navigation system as this year’s Christmas gift to ourselves. (This annual tradition began a few years ago and is almost always new technology.)

Miss Sophie got her trial by fire the weekend that I visited friends in New Jersey while Will attended a conference. It was just the two of us. I didn’t quite trust her, so I had backup Google maps for everywhere I was going. But they turned out to be useless since my itinerary kept being revised on the fly. So there I was in the dark of night driving through some residential district in a totally unfamiliar place, listening to Sophie crooning “left turn in two miles” and “you have arrived.”

Learning to Trust

But, there was a problem with the “you have arrived” part. She never quite understood where the hotel was. She was close, but not exactly right. And she’s half a mile off on where we live, too. Clearly that doesn’t really matter; that’s one place I do know. But it does raise the trust issue.

In fact, if I had had a little more experience with Sophie, I might not have been so trusting about those back roads in New Jersey. She actually got me totally lost a few days later. I was going somewhere locally, following her directions, or so I thought, when out of the blue she said, “When possible, make a legal U turn.” Hey, make up your mind, Sophie!

We’re still getting used to each other. I’m going to trust her this afternoon to take me to Barnes & Noble for an introductory e-zine startup session. I think I know the way, but I’m going to follow her directions. After all, we have to learn to trust each other if we’re going to have a good relationship. And besides, maybe she knows something I don’t.

I recently visited with a favorite Web Words reader who is in her nineties. “How computer savvy are your readers?” she asked. Well, some have limited knowledge and others are computer professionals, who know tons more than I do. So it’s not a level playing field.

This e-zine is not the place to explain terms or how things work, though I try to be diligent about spelling out acronyms. Like everything else these days, there are wonderful sources of information on the Web. Here are three that I find useful:

• Webopedia
• Tech web
• Whatis

Thanks for reading. If you liked this issue, please click on the Forward email button below to share this newsletter with others.

You're also welcome to reprint material in this newsletter as long as it is unaltered and credited to the author. If being reproduced electronically, the following link must also be included:

www.shawenon.com


Susanna Opper
Shawenon Communications
susanna@shawenon.com

413-528-6494

Copyright ©2006 Shawenon Communications. All rights reserved.