Writing a Newsletter

A newsletter gives an organisation regular contact with the people interested in what it does. Those readers might be members, clients, supporters, volunteers, employees, partners or simply people who have asked to be kept informed.

What they have in common is that they have chosen to give the organisation some of their attention. A good newsletter makes that worthwhile.

Know Who You Are Writing For

Before deciding what goes into a newsletter, be clear about who receives it. A newsletter for members of an organisation may assume knowledge that a public newsletter cannot. An internal newsletter may contain information that has little relevance outside the organisation.

Problems arise when several audiences are treated as though they were one. If the newsletter goes to a mixed readership, consider what those people genuinely have in common and which information is relevant to all of them.

Not everything the organisation wants to announce is necessarily something every reader needs to know.

Decide What Is Actually News

Organisations generate information constantly. Meetings take place, projects progress, people join, events are planned and decisions are made. A newsletter does not need to report all of it.

Give priority to information that is new, useful or interesting to the reader. An upcoming deadline may matter. A change to a service may matter. The result of a project, an opportunity to participate or an event people can attend may matter.

Routine activity can still be worth mentioning, but it should not crowd out information that has a direct effect on the people receiving the newsletter.

Put Important Information Where People Can Find It

Newsletter readers do not always begin with the first word and continue obediently to the last. They scan headings, notice dates and look for the subjects that concern them.

Help them.

Use clear headings and keep related information together. If someone needs to register by a particular date, do not separate the deadline from the registration information. If an event has changed location, make the change obvious rather than hiding it in the middle of a long paragraph.

The more important the information, the less work the reader should have to do to find it.

Edit Contributions

Newsletters often contain material from several people. A committee member sends an update, a volunteer writes about an event, a department supplies an announcement and somebody else contributes three paragraphs when one would have done.

Contributions do not have to be published exactly as they arrive. Editing them for length, clarity and relevance is part of producing the newsletter.

The aim is not to remove the personality of individual contributors. It is to make sure the reader receives a newsletter rather than a collection of unrelated submissions.

Give the Reader What They Need to Act

If you want someone to do something after reading an item, make sure they have the information required to do it.

An invitation needs a date, time and location. Registration needs instructions and, where relevant, a deadline. A request for volunteers should explain what is involved. A link should lead to the information promised rather than leave the reader searching through a website.

Read practical information separately from the surrounding article and check it as though you were trying to follow the instructions yourself.

Length Depends on Content

There is no correct length for a newsletter. A short monthly update and a quarterly publication covering several activities have different jobs to do.

The better question is whether the material deserves the space it has been given. A significant story may need several paragraphs. A minor announcement may need two sentences.

Do not make every contribution the same length simply for the sake of balance. Importance to the reader is a better measure than importance to the person who supplied the material.

Regular Does Not Mean Repetitive

A newsletter may be published weekly, monthly, quarterly or only when there is enough to say. Whatever the schedule, avoid filling it simply because the next edition is due.

Repeated reminders may be necessary, particularly for deadlines or important events, but the rest of the content should give readers a reason to keep opening future editions.

If the same introductory paragraphs, organisational descriptions and routine announcements appear every time, readers quickly learn which parts they can ignore.

Read It Before You Send It

Newsletters contain a surprising number of details that can go wrong: dates, times, names, links, telephone numbers, addresses, prices, deadlines and event information.

Check them. Then check the newsletter as a reader rather than as the person who assembled it. Are the most important items easy to find? Does anything require knowledge the reader may not have? Is the same information repeated unnecessarily? Is it obvious what someone should do when action is required?

A newsletter does not need to contain everything happening inside an organisation. It needs to contain enough of the right things for its readers to be glad they opened it.