Newsletters are the in-thing in today’s business world. They promote goodwill and establish long-term relationships with customers and employees in a company. They are quite effective and yet surprisingly inexpensive. Having said that, let us get into the nitty-gritty of writing a business newsletter.
Naming the newsletter
Give a catchy name to the newsletter so that its recipients could refer to it with ease. Any short name derived from company’s products or services is always preferable. By way of example, a company in the field of tourism could select Travelogue as the name for their newsletter whereas the name Steel Digest was picked appropriately by a group of companies selling steel products.
Bring out the newsletter at regular intervals
The best way to remain connected with your customers or employees is to publish your newsletter periodically. Whether it is a monthly or quarterly publication, you must publish it on time without fail. Just as people look forward to the next issue of their favourite periodicals, your customers and employees would expect to get copies of your newsletter on scheduled dates. Your commitment for the publication will never be doubted if you are regular and punctual about your newsletter.
Try to include interesting and useful information in the newsletter that would not be otherwise available to your customers and they will eventually get hooked to it.
Plan content carefully
A newsletter must devote reasonable space for company news on its products and services, feature articles, editorial comments, and letters to the editor. It should also provide latest statistics related to company products or services. If the company wins any award for any contribution in national or international field, the news should be shared with others through the publication. Similarly, outstanding individual performances among employees should be included in the newsletter. This would also motivate others for working towards excellence.
Include photos of events such as customer meets or employee awards. The newsletter need not be confined to only self-promotion. Its credibility increases if the editor acknowledges where the company stands in competition with others. A genuine customer grievance could be given due prominence in the publication along with what the company has to say in the matter.
Content is what matters most. Include elements in the newsletter that your customers and employees would like to read and your newsletter will be a success. Try to be innovative and include topics such as the ones listed below for generating enthusiasm among readers.
Any new product or service which your company has painstakingly developed and has become successful in the market.
What contribution your company is making regularly towards social causes and environmental issues.
If your company is adding new products or services to its portfolio, let your audience come to know about them first from your newsletter and not from newspapers or advertisements.
Discuss delicate subjects like product recalls and steps taken to avoid such problems in future in an honest manner.
Basic Layout and Design
A standard size newsletter of size 8.5-x 11 inch would look good if each page is made of 3 columns. Depending upon their importance and length, headlines can be of different sizes to cover articles. We all find the same pattern in newspapers. Do not make the mistake of having uniform headline size for all articles. But that does not mean you should have too many sizes; it would then be visually unattractive.
If you are not sure how many styles and font sizes you should use, follow the leaders. All publications of newspapers and magazines use one style and one font for the main text. The newsletter would then attain a consistent appearance rather than becoming a hotchpotch of printing.
If all articles are of uniform length and are spread all over the pages, it may not look so attractive. A little of designing to fit longer articles and shorter stories requiring less space can be done suitably to make it appealing to the eyes. People, after all, pay more attention to what appears good.
Lastly, the finer points
Whether your newsletter should be online or printed one would largely depend upon your resources.
The number of pages the business newsletter should contain will be decided by various resources available particularly man-hours earmarked for the project. As a thumb rule, each page would involve around 10 man-hours for writing, proofreading, and editing.
Keep space for Corrigendum for any spelling, grammatical, or factual mistakes that might creep in. Upcoming events should be announced in advance.
Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in April, 2010. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.
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—About our writer:
Satish Dey is an engineer with 35 years of professional experience in marketing and market research. He has nurtured his love for freelance writing for nearly a decade and has writing experience in business writing, report writing, and article writing. He has edited a business newsletter for the Chamber of Commerce for seven years, contributes articles regularly to a magazine for elderly people and blogs on topics ranging from global warming to industry.
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