Newsletter How To: The Do And Don’t Issue

Newsletters should be informative. Companies send internal and external newsletters, announcing products, packages, or pertaining to corporate wellness and the health of employees. Newsletters can serve as a sounding board for corporate culture; they can keep people in-touch with current events, current ideologies or past actions. They can come in many forms: print media and direct emailing are the pervasive two mediums. The dos and the don’ts on newsletters are centered on only one thing: readership. Without a base of readers all of the work that goes into the newsletter is for nothing at all.

Do consider your target audience. Are they employees of a specific company? Are they people interested in a specific industry? Is the readership broad? If so, what is their commonality? This commonality should be brought up in each issue to some degree or another—the newsletter needs to prove its value. How-to bring this demographic together is central to maintaining readership. Don’t isolate segments of readership too much. A special interest piece is nice from time to time, if it evolves from issue to issue, covering the entire readership early in their relationship with the newsletter.

How-to draft the newsletter in a way that reaches the audience is simple. Integrate ideas that interact with the lives of the readers. More specifically, focus topics on things that readers can do to improve some aspect of their lives, or topics of concern that raise informational awareness, or, human interest pieces that offer inspiration are often popular. Ask your audience what topics they would like to see covered. Cover those topics. Then ask for feedback on your coverage. The newsletter should be in a constant state of revision. Do not be fearful of changing formats, or changing focus, but do be weary of reader interaction. The more your audience feels ownership of the newsletter, the more interested they remain.

The dos and don’ts addressed here are broad topics of how to serve your audience as a successful newsletter publisher. Developing content and formatting it fluidly for readability is the fun part of the process. Be creative. Try fun formats and test the waters and your readers comfort levels with interaction. Above all be engaging and have fun with it all. Do readers like to see silly photos? Sometimes they do. Do readers enjoy frivolous writings? Rarely they might like a little levity. Do readers enjoy content that is tough to read or relate to? No, they never do. Those are the real keys to producing a successful newsletter.

By: Feerst Dan

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FrontLine employee - Learn about the world's only editable, multi-format, turnkey, employee newsletter - FrontLine Employee. Industrial social worker Dan Feerst is the publisher and author of the employee newsletter for the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Small Business Administration, hundreds of businesses and industries worldwide.