We all have those friends who seemingly have the gift of hospitality–you can’t set an empty glass back on the table before it’s filled again, the room isn’t too hot nor too cold, and the food is always perfect.

And you may feel like I do–that there’s no way I could ever be that good at being aware of my guests’ needs.
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Audio for Your Two-Minute Pep Talk (running time, 3 minutes–because you’re a much faster reader than I am ). To download the file, simply right-click the link and select “Save Target As.” Or, you can use a great podcast program like iPodder which will keep track of all of your podcasts for you.

Download audio version of Your Two-Minute Pep Talk here.

• enclosure: http://www.designdoodles.com/blog-audio/nif-24.mp3 370248 audio/mpeg

I’ve mentioned before that I seldom watch the news on TV, so it was a bit out of the ordinary that I saw the coverage of the terrorist attacks in London last week. Several reporters mentioned the dramatic change–from being awarded the Olympics just the day before.

What does this have to do with newsletters and awareness? Just something we hadn’t yet discussed–that you need to be aware of what’s going on in your readers’ world. You don’t have to mention it, but you should be aware of it. That means keeping up to date on news stories that may impact your readers, knowing what’s happening within your industry, and keeping an eye on trends.
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Happy Fourth of July to our US readers! We’ll be back in your email boxes next Monday. In the meantime, keep sending in your questions about Awareness in your newsletter.

Jes