Podcast Summary: My Digital Farmer Podcast

Episode 351: How to Find Weekly Email Topic Ideas When You Don’t Know What to Say

Host: Corinna Bench
Release Date: March 4, 2026
Show Notes URL: mydigitalfarmer.com/351

Episode Overview

In this episode, Corinna Bench focuses on one of the most common challenges for direct-to-consumer farm marketers: how to consistently find engaging topics for your weekly email newsletter. She shares practical frameworks, personal examples, and proven strategies to help farmers and small business owners overcome “blinking cursor syndrome” and generate content ideas effortlessly. The episode is filled with actionable tips, real-life stories, and resources to help you deepen your customer relationships through meaningful storytelling—even if you feel stuck for ideas.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Importance of Weekly Email Connection

• Corinna encourages regular, personal communication with customers, reminding listeners that farm customers are unique: “Your farm audience is a really unique kind of customer base…they just love their farmers and they really do like to hear from you, especially when you get kind of personal and share your real life with them, not just your promotions.” (08:24)
• Overcoming imposter syndrome: You don’t need to be an amazing writer to connect and add value.

2. Main Frameworks for Generating Email Topic Ideas

A. Use Parables & Illustrations

• Leverage life stories, metaphors, or object lessons to teach and inspire.
  • “Is there a story from your life that happened this past week or something that’s happened in the past that you could just point to, that you could tell this story and then find the nugget of wisdom that's inside of it?” (12:53)
  • Example: Corinna tells the story of her son learning to swing—turning it into a lesson on perseverance and encouragement (14:16).

B. Prompt with Photos

• Use your phone’s camera roll as a prompt for recent stories or moments on the farm.
  • “I’ll whip out my phone, look at the camera roll…sometimes it just means looking at your photo roll.” (17:02)
  • Example: Sharing a picture of her son picking raspberries sparked a relatable family story (18:00).

C. Curate User Generated Content (UGC)

• Maintain a folder of customer photos and stories (e.g., from private Facebook groups) to draw on when ideas are scarce.
  • “If I’m coming up against a brick wall, I can go into that folder, look at these pictures, and see if one of them jumps out at me.” (19:54)

D. Use Question/Prompt Lists

• Create or download prompts to inspire new topics.
  • Corinna offers her own list of 50 prompts. “[You can] quickly scan it and there’s usually at least one to three of them that spark an idea.” (21:40)
  • Download: mydigitalfarmer.com/emailtopics

3. Storytelling Frameworks for Email Content

1. Start with a Feeling

• Identify the emotion you want your customer to feel (inspired, relieved, aware of a problem, etc.), then recall a story that evokes it.
  • “Sometimes I want them to start feeling the burn or noticing a problem…other times, I just want to inspire and help my community believe anything is possible.” (25:06)

2. Start with the Lesson

• Decide the principle or mindset shift you want to teach, then find a story or metaphor to bring it to life.
  • Example: Teaching that “mistakes are necessary to becoming your best self” with a story about her son learning to fly RC airplanes, normalizing failure as part of the process (34:16–36:49).

3. Start with an Experience or Metaphor

• Use a recent or memorable experience (even from childhood or business) to extract a relatable lesson.
  • Example: Waiting in line at a theme park, using height requirements as a metaphor for qualifying leads in business (37:04–38:30).

4. Start with a Problem

• Highlight a challenge your customers face and use the email to open a “problem loop” you can solve (later in the email or in a follow-up).
  • “The problem's solution is actually your product. That's another way I've seen that done.” (31:49)

4. Practical Tools for Maintaining Content Flow

• Keep a “Story Bank”: Maintain a note or digital file to log interesting events, moments, or experiences you could reference for future emails (40:40).
• Teach or Share a Resource: Feature recipes, guides, lead magnets, blog posts, or even external resources your customers will find helpful (42:01–43:08).
• Repurpose & Recycle: Use older content, blog posts, or guides—most of your audience won’t remember seeing them before, especially as your list grows (44:49–45:36).

5. Balancing Promotional and Non-Promotional Content

• Follow a ratio: Three value-driven emails to every overtly promotional one (roughly 3:1)—with soft sells in the PS nearly every week (46:45).
  • “Because I do the work of telling other kinds of stories…these periodic overtly promotional emails, they land differently with my audience.” (46:47)

6. About Farm Marketing School & Additional Resources

• Explains her Farm Marketing School membership, which provides bite-sized marketing projects, coaching, and community support (“It’s like having a farm marketing mentor and a room full of peers in your corner.” 39:18).
• Offers specialized courses and 30-day project builds on email marketing, nurture sequences, and more (49:00–49:45).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Overcoming Doubt:
  • “Who wants to hear from me? Who am I to have anything to say? Who am I to think I have any kind of value that I could bring into the room?…Both of which are just not true.” (08:49–09:08)
• On Storytelling as a Marketing Tool:
  • “We're trying to be the wise farmer. We're trying to find the nugget that inspires people so they can hear that story and think about: where do I need to hear this lesson in my own life?” (36:12–36:49)
• On the Power of Repetition:
  • “Once you've got like…30 things in there, you can just be recycling that. There does come a point when enough is enough.” (44:53–45:14)
• On AI Tools:
  • “Now with the help of AI and ChatGPT…if we feed it examples of our work, it can learn how we sound, how we write so it can at least spit out an early draft for you.” (49:46–50:13)
• On the Value of Community:
  • “We have a monthly zoom call on the third Wednesday of every month where we meet up as a community and you can ask questions, bring work you're working on, and we can audit it or talk through it. It's really cool. I love it. I just love it.” (51:00–51:19)

Key Timestamps

• (08:24–09:08): The unique relationship between farmers and their customers, and overcoming self-doubt.
• (10:14–12:53): The challenge of choosing email topics and Corinna’s approach to parables and illustrations.
• (17:02–18:40): Using your photo roll as a memory prompt for storytelling.
• (19:09–20:46): Collecting and leveraging user-generated content (UGC).
• (21:31–22:48): The value of a list of prompts or questions.
• (25:06–26:40): Using feelings, lessons, and metaphors as starting points for stories.
• (34:16–36:49): Story of mistakes/failure as a normal step in success.
• (44:49–45:36): The importance of repurposing existing content.
• (46:01–47:31): Promotional vs non-promotional email ratios and strategy.
• (49:46–50:31): Using AI to kickstart email drafts in your own voice.
• (51:00–51:19): The power of community and group coaching in Farm Marketing School.

Resources Mentioned

• 50 Email Prompts PDF: mydigitalfarmer.com/emailtopics
• Farm Marketing School Membership: mydigitalfarmer.com/fms
• Main Email Course for Farmers
• Free Email List / Marketing Onboarding Series: mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe

Final Encouragement (in Corinna’s Words)

• “I believe in you. I want to make sure you know that I am so, so excited for what this year is going to become for you. Stay in my world. I want to encourage you and support you.” (52:38)

This episode is a must-listen for any farm business owner looking to build stronger customer relationships and create more impactful, authentic marketing—especially when you’re feeling stuck for content ideas.