Five Surprising Reasons to Share the Spotlight

By Jessica Albon

Have you been being stingy with the spotlight in your newsletter? Shining it directly on yourself and leaving others in the dark?

Sure, your newsletter should be “all about you” in the sense that you want to keep each issue focused on the information and approach you use to serve clients and customers… But, that doesn’t mean sharing the spotlight is a bad idea.

In fact, there are five excellent reasons to start sharing the spotlight today.

1. It makes you look well-connected.
   Experts associate with other smart people. They don’t work in a cave. That means that when you share articles written by your brilliant friends in the industry, or mention that you found a certain resource through a colleague, that you’re demonstrating to readers your networking prowess. Showing readers that you’re well-connected is a great way to reassure them that you’re well-read and up on all the latest industry data.

   Give your connections credit, link to their blogs and newsletters when they offer great advice (or pass along a useful link), share their best articles, and congratulate them for their really big successes.

2. It gets your newsletter forwarded.
   People like to be in the spotlight. That means that when you call attention to someone who’s doing something great, they’re likely to forward your newsletter on to their own friends. This can get your newsletter circulated in some random, and really wonderful ways.

   Feature clients who have had great big successes (even if you weren’t involved), write up a profile on an especially excellent employee, or offer an interview with another expert.

3. It brings in search engine traffic.
   If your newsletter’s available to search engine spiders (and it should be!), sharing the spotlight can be great for your rankings. Not only will this bring your site up in new searches, but if you include links to other people’s sites, your site will also come up when people search for backlinks.

   Hyperlinking other experts, colleagues, and clients is a great way to increase your search engine visibility.

4. It makes you look confident and generous.
   People who share the spotlight are generally generous, encouraging people that readers want to get to know. If you’re sharing the spotlight regularly in your newsletter, your readers will know you’re the sort of well-connected expert they can trust.

   You’ve probably had the experience of helping someone (perhaps with a lengthy email response) only to see them take those ideas and pass them off in their newsletter (or a report to their boss) as their own. This is something most of us have experienced at least once. So, when your readers see that you’re willing to share the spotlight even when you don’t have to, they’re more enthusiastic about working with you.

5. You can use it to contact industry “celebrities.”
   If there’s a writer you’d love to get to know, or an expert you’d like to chat with, mentioning them in your newsletter can give you a great reason to email them or pick up the phone.

   Whether you get in touch in advance to seek permission or send a copy of the newsletter after the fact, sharing your newsletter spotlight can set the groundwork for future contact.

If you’ve ever been concerned sharing the spotlight might not be such a good idea in your newsletter, I hope I’ve convinced you otherwise. Sharing the spotlight is a great way to connect with readers, increase your circulation, improve your search engine rankings, and reach out to industry celebrities.

What’s more, by sharing the spotlight, you’ll shine like the expert you are!