Pictures are a great way to help your newsletter content resonate more strongly with your readers. Pictures can help explain your perspective on the subject matter of your articles and give assistance to visual learners in really understanding your content. Of course, you can also use pictures to provide comic relief and to help pique your readers’ interest. But without hiring a designer, how do you know which pictures to pick and where to get them?

1. Choose pictures that tie into the content somehow. Try not to be too obscure, you don’t want your newsletter to be a puzzle to readers. For instance, if you have an article about filling out forms, you can choose stock photographs of forms with pens, piles of papers, or something similarly connected. Don’t choose a picture of a hamburger because you personally like to eat hamburgers while filling out forms—that will only confuse your reader.

2. Find pictures that you have a right to distribute. You can visit the Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov/index.html), Every Stock Photo (http://www.everystockphoto.com/) and morgueFile (http://www.morguefile.com/) for free photos with few (if any) usage restrictions. Be sure you check each picture you attempt to use and verify that you have permission to distribute it on a newsletter.

3. Pick good pictures. Sounds like a no brainer, right? Well, think again. While you may not be looking for a photo shot by Herb Ritts, when using free photos you are often using amateur photos. You should choose those that are not out of focus, don’t have confusing or unpleasant Photoshop effects, and aren’t distracting. Photos that look too clumsy or unprofessional will detract from the professional look of your newsletter.

4. Use photos that are not offensive. Your newsletter photos should not show any offensive items, words, postures, hand gestures or body parts. When looking for photos, be sure to look at everything in the picture—not just the center—so that you don’t miss any hidden offenses.

Insurance is a business based on relationships. People want to buy insurance from agents that they know and like; agents who are active in the same communities and social circles and agents who have just six degrees of separation from themselves. While the internet has brought access to a wider circle of clients, it has hurt our ability to meet some of the social circle requirements set deep in our client’s subconscious. One way that many agents are trying to bridge this gap is through daily or weekly blogging—which is a great idea—if you know what you are doing.

Have a Clear Message

Your blog posts should have a clear, easy-to-read message that your prospects (and other readers) will understand. If you aren’t sure how to keep your posts focused just pick three main points for each and write around them. Do not try to use words you aren’t familiar with to impress—it’s okay if the posts just sound like you.

Give Solutions

While your posts may contain the discussion of certain problems—like the problems caused by not having health insurance—they should not leave your reader with nothing more than a review of everything that could go wrong. Instead, they should contain solutions so that your reader has some actionable advice to take.

Set a Reasonable Posting Schedule

Once you decide how often to post on your blog, you need to stick to that schedule. When you are consistent it will boost your traffic and show how seriously you are taking the blog—which helps your readers to take it more seriously. If you are planning on taking a vacation, you can always write your posts ahead of time and schedule them for posting.

Be Authentic

Imagine what this blog would look like if we thought we should put on artificial airs when we wrote it:

Thou shall writeth thou blog posteth whilst avoiding ratolorum.

While Elizabethan words are a bit of a stretch, any language or sentence structure you use that your prospective clients don’t identify with might as well be Elizabethan. It’s okay to be yourself even if you don’t have any formal knowledge of the writing craft. Your message is what matters most—not your mastery over the use of the semi-colon.

In these days of political correctness and overly cautious legalese, many agents think their newsletters must toe the line of boring to keep them out of trouble. This concern with doing the right thing can create newsletters that are uninspired, stale and so safe they might be used as floatation devices.

Well-written newsletters with evergreen content and viable solutions can be interesting to your readers while still serving as a sales tool if you know what steps to take to keep them from boring your readers.

Use your newsletter as a tool for prospecting—not an announcement board.

Chances are your reader is very interested in articles that can improve their quality of life, educate them about financial security and wealth accumulation, and help them make informed decisions. What they aren’t interested in are the everyday workings of your office or insurance companies. Now, A.M. Best and Standard & Poor’s ratings changes are the exception since those help to cement the insurance companies as trustworthy and reliable.

Help your clients identify with the newsletter by including some testimonials—from people like them.

Nothing will move your potential clients more than seeing testimonials from people in similar situations who worked with you on a problem’s solution. Be sure to ask your former clients for testimonials that you can print in your newsletter. Ask them to thoroughly discuss the problem they had that you resolved and get their permission to print it with their name.

Provide your clients with actionable steps—ones that they can easily take with your help.

Your clients want to know how to fix their problems. They want relatively painless solutions that you can help them with. Make sure your newsletter articles explain the solutions you can offer and give your clients some knowledge base and help them to understand why they are viable solutions.