One thing I often do for clients is review content and make suggestions. Sometimes it doesn’t take much, a few minor tweaks here or there. Sometimes we need to make some big changes to ensure that potential clients know WHAT they do and why. And more often than not, we’re cleaning up the content to make it tighter and more efficient. Too often we take five words to say what could be said in one or two.

Take a look at your content, does that giant paragraph LOOK like something you want to read? Does it make sense? Does it use twice as many words as necessary to say the same thing? It may be time for a refresh.

In the past 24 hours I’ve received emails that aren’t in an approved newsletter program, but are obviously sent to multiple people. The first email stated at the bottom “if you’d rather not get this kind of news from us, just let us know and we’ll unsubscribe you.” And that’s fine. I emailed the person, who’s a colleague, and mentioned throwing it into a newsletter program. They said they want people to open it if it comes directly from their email program. Well, okay.

The second email came from an insurance sales person (always my favorite, right after financial planner emails…) and the first line was cheesy and obviously they did an email merge program for “Hey Elizabeth” and then onto the canned “call me so I can sell you stuff.” No opt out option, and nothing personalized.

If you want me to give you my money, spend some effort and time being personal, OR be honest. I send out my monthly newsletter that is obviously going to a lot of people in my network. But there’s no hiding it. If I want to reach out to you individually, or to a smaller group, I’ll make sure to be a real person to you, in hopes you’ll be a real person to me.

Otherwise, you’re burning bridges you didn’t know might be there.