Saturday, December 5, 2009

7 Steps to Writing Effective Newsletters

7 Steps to Writing an Effective Newsletter in Business to Business (B2B):

1. Publish regularly. It is vital to keep the commitment to the readers. If the newsletter is distributed the first Tuesday of the month, then meet that date.

2. Provide catchy and descriptive headlines. The newsletter may feature a very interesting and well written article, but readers will skip over it if it is boring and non-descriptive. “CEO Expects Company to Double in Size within 5 Years”.

3. Use different size Headlines. If all the headlines were the same type size, none of them would stand out. Different size headlines help the readers prioritize the order in which they should read the articles, from most to least important.

4. Write strong lead sentences. After the headline, the first sentence, or lead, is the most important part of the article. Write the article so the most important information to the reader is listed first. “Blue Moon CEO Roy Jones unveiled plans on increasing the company size in 5 years at the annual shareholders meeting in Miami.”

5. Keep consistent type styles and fonts. Keep the newsletter uniformed. Use the same text style and fonts for all the articles. If the text is too long in an article, do not reduce the type size, cut some words out to make it fit the allowed space.

6. Lay out articles on the page one-column wide. Layout all the articles on the page in a one-column width section. This may consist of 3 columns per page; left, middle, right. For example, top of the page article covers all 3 columns across the page and halfway down. Another article covers 2 column sections in the bottom left, with a 3rd article in a 1 column space on the right bottom of the page. This makes the newsletter visually interesting.

7. Use photos. Photos are the best way to draw-in readers and make the newsletter visually exciting. If a computer system is involved in an article, show a picture of the system too.

The layout and format of the newsletter is like a newspaper article. It could range from upwards to 2000+ words. Newsletters are generally 1-3 pages long.

There you go. Try these steps and let me know how they worked for you. Your comments are welcomed.

Frank Eaton is CEO of Frank B2B Communications, a business to business marketing and consulting company CG4HBD5A4AE7

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