Of all the topics I have touched on through the summer months, “sponsored conversation” is the one that has rung the most bells, and raised the most interest.

“The Sponsored Conversation” is a fancy title for having outsiders write your email, blog and news group copy for you, writing as if he/she is a member of your company, in an agreed style.

The benefit is clear – where the writer gets the style and approach right then not only do you get regular copy to place on your blog, and to send in your weekly email to past and potential customers, you also get it written in a style which really can attract readers, and which can draw them into your world.

The fact is that while all of us can write, writing text which appears as emails or web copy is a highly specialist art form which incorporates a fair amount of science. I would never say that most people can’t do it, but it can take years to become a really good practitioner of the art.

So the issue is not so much that if a non-expert writer writes your promotional emails and blogs, then you won’t do very well, it can be worse than that, in that the result can be a turn-off for the reader. And once turned off, readers rarely come back. I

In terms of the blog, the reader will not go to your site again. In terms of the email he/she will simply press the “unsubscribe” button, and you will have lost them.

The great test in this market is the notion of writing every week. Could you think of something original, exciting and interesting to say to your customers every week – something that will draw in readers to the blog, and keep subscribers on the email list? If you can, and if you are doing it and it is working, you don’t need an outsider undertaking a “sponsored conversation”.

But if you have tried and it doesn’t work – or if you are horrified by the notion of writing to customers and potential customers each week, and you believe that such an approach will just turn the reader off, then it might be well talking to others who have done it.

And here’s just a thought. My comments appear three or four times a week on this blog, and also appear on the Hamilton House email news service. We also produce one blog which (with a variety of writers) appears not three times a week, but three times a day – and its readership is still increasing (with a third of a million hits last month). It can be done.

If you would like to talk about sponsored conversations please do give me a call on 01536 399 013. If you would like to see how these emails appear as an emailed news service just send an email to direct-mail-secrets-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. You will get a confirmation back – just reply to that, and you’ll be in. You can of course unsubscribe at any time.