Your newsletter is like the light saber of marketing tools. It’s powerful, potent and just plain cool.

An effective newsletter keeps you in front of customers, allows you to showcase your knowledge, nurtures customers and attracts new ones. No, that’s not a Jedi mind trick, it’s the truth.

While newsletters are a valuable part of your email marketing strategy, it takes time to brainstorm good topics to keep them interesting. To help you create newsletters that even the wise Obi-Wan Kenobi would be proud of, we put together a list of possible newsletter topics.

Highlight blog content
Since your small business is creating must-read content (you are, right?), why not promote it in your newsletter? We do. At VerticalResponse, we take pride in offering high quality blog content that’s chock-full of tips. You can do it, too. Or as Yoda says, “Do. Or do not. There is no try,” (and, yes, we promise that’s our last Star Wars reference.) If you don’t have blog content, include any videos and even pictures you’ve taken; these count as content too.

Take a look at our newsletter, VR Buzz. You can see we tease our readers with just enough information to encourage them to read the whole post on our blog.

Tell your company story/history
Even if you just opened your doors a year ago, your small business has a history. In each newsletter, you can offer recipients a little history lesson. Coca-Cola does this in its monthly newsletter. Take a look at the last article, “Checking In at a Former Coca-Cola Plant.” The “Learn More” button takes readers back in time to an old Coke plant that’s now a hotel in Savannah, Georgia. Try offering snippets of your company’s history in your newsletter.

Use creative events
Did you know June is National Candy Month? Hershey’s does. The candy maker used this little-known event to promote sales in its newsletter. You can do the same thing. There are hundreds of odd “holidays” like this. From ‘Bring Your Pet to Work Day’ to ‘Iced Tea Day,’ you can certainly find an event that reflects your business. Tie this event to your own company and write a blog post, create a video, take pictures, or create a landing page around that topic and mention in your newsletter just like Hershey’s.

Industry news
When there’s something going on in your industry, share it with your readers. If you run a sporting goods store, for example, you could create a piece about the gear used during the National Hockey League’s playoffs. If you run a shipping company and are faced with new state-mandated regulations, you could write about that. Including third party content that isn’t your own, but would be of interest to your readers is also great. Just make sure you give proper source credit.

Royce Leather, a New Jersey-based company that sells leather products, wrote about a leather trade show taking place in Pakistan. Since the company works with manufactures in that country, it’s impacted by leather trade shows and other events like this and shared the information with readers.

“Telling our customers about events like this shows that we’re engaged and forward thinking,” says Andrew Bauer, CEO of Royce Leather.

You, too, can look like a thought leader by keeping an eye on industry news and when something pops up, take a minute to tell readers how the information impacts the industry and your business.

Etc.
Of course, these are just four examples, but there are plenty more. Here are a few additional topics you can include in your newsletter:

• New product or service arrivals
• Recent business awards
• Employee of the month
• Behind-the-scenes pictures
• Upcoming events
• Changes to your website
• How-to videos
• Upcoming sales
• Holiday gift ideas
• Product tips

Have any more topics to add to this list? Share some of your best ideas in the comment section below.

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© 2014, Contributing Author. All rights reserved.