Create a newsletter that everyone wants to read.
A newsletter is an excellent communication and marketing tool. It can promote products and services, provide information about upcoming events and answer frequently asked questions (FAQs) about an organization. Commercial and non-profit organizations may also use newsletters to improve employee morale and create a stronger sense of community. If you are creating a newsletter for your organization, devote time and effort to the planning stage. Members will look forward to reading a well-designed and well-written newsletter.
Instructions
1. Know your audience. If you are creating a newsletter for your workplace, find out more about the interests of your colleagues and clients. Meet informally with employees from different departments and ask for their input. Alternatively, you could send out a short questionnaire asking colleagues and clients to indicate which topics they would like to see addressed in the newsletter.
2. Determine the purpose of the newsletter. In a large workplace, you may decide to create a newsletter that keeps employees up-to-date with the latest research and technological advances in the industry. Alternatively, you could create a newsletter that focuses on the social aspects of your workplace. For example, you could keep track of any births, weddings, anniversaries and social get-togethers. If you are creating a newsletter for a community organization, you may decide to focus on fund-raising.
3. Borrow a few ideas from your favorite newspapers and magazines. Place the most important article at the top of the newsletter. Use the input from your surveys to determine the different sections of the newsletter. Create attention-grabbing headings for each of these sections. For example, you could organize the newsletter by question-and-answer, FAQs, employee-of-the-month, software reviews, new products or social notes.
4. Use the concise writing style of newspaper journalism. Whenever possible, use the active voice and keep verbs in the present tense. Do not try to impress the audience with flowery descriptions, jargon and multi-syllable words. Keep a dictionary and style guide on hand as you prepare the newsletter.
5. Add more voices to the newsletter. Invite community members to contribute articles and interview experts in your industry. Showcase any positive testimonials from clients. Include an acknowledgment box that lists everyone who contributed to the newsletter. This may encourage more employees and clients to contribute. Refer to books and publications that may interest your readers.
6. Use the newsletter template from your word processing package to prepare the newsletter. Alternatively, you can create your own style or ask an artistically-inclined colleague to help with the design of the newsletter. In either case, decide upon a consistent format that will properly showcase the content of the newsletter.
7. Lay out all the articles, pictures and artwork. Decide on an appropriate and manageable length for the newsletter. Select the number of columns; most newsletters use two columns. Use three or fewer typefaces for your copy and no more than two pieces of clip art and/or photographs per page.
8. Provide contrast with headlines, alignment, color and shape. Use boldface on all headlines and make them double the point size of the body text. To create more contrast, use bold sans serif type, such as Arial, for headlines and a a serif font, such as Times New Roman, for body text. Use color frames and boxes to highlight special events or announcements.
