Tuesday, February 10, 2009

How To-62: "How to Start a Newsletter"


How to Start a Newsletter


from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

There are several different topics about creating a professional newsletter or designing one. But what if you've never even started a newsletter before and need to just get off the ground? Here are some helpful things you can do to get started.

Steps

  1. Define the goal of your newsletter. Are you doing it just for fun? To make money? To draw new visitors to your website? To advertise your products and services? To educate? To inform? The newsletter's purpose will influence how it's written and distributed.
  2. Identify the content you intend to print. What topic are you addressing, and how broad will your coverage of it be? Since newsletters come in various forms, there is a variety of subjects you can cover. Online newsletters can apply to online communities or groups, and print newsletters can apply to a company or town or a school.
  3. Identify the target audience. Who are they and what do they want to know? How will the newsletter serve them? If you are writing for teenagers, for example, make sure that your writing style is appropriate. If you are writing for a company, likewise, make sure your style is professional and applicable to the work environment.
  4. Determine your production schedule. You need to know how long it will take to write and edit content and set it up in the newsletter.
  5. Determine how many people you need to get started. At the onset, you probably won't have many people to help you. And in today's technologically-advanced world, you can probably handle most of it yourself. If your production schedule (from the previous step) is more frequent than every two weeks, you probably need at least 2-3 people to help you.
  6. Determine how your newsletter will be published. If it is online, make sure you have an email mailing list or a website to post the content. If it is printed, determine if you are mailing the newsletter or placing in a public location. Printed newsletter also require a printer of some sort, whether its your laserjet at home or a professional printer.
  7. Get working. The key to getting your newsletter off the ground is to actually get publishing. Whether online or in print, it's important that you stick to your production schedule. If you find that you have enough content and manpower to publish more frequently, make sure your readers understand the change up front.

Tips

  • Desktop publishing software has improved in leaps and bounds and can set up a pretty fancy newsletter. More advanced software can create online and print version of the same newsletter as well.
  • Human beings love to laugh. It's best to include some fun, if not light-hearted information, stories, or even comics.

Warnings

  • Don't take yourself too seriously. A newsletter is a little different from a newspaper in that it doesn't have to follow various "unspoken" journalism rules nor does it require articles to be objective.
  • It is never OK to take copyright material and republish it, even if you credit your original source. You must use copyrighted material with permission. That said, there are many public domain information firms out there that can give you interesting content for your newsletter.

Related wikiHows

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Start a Newsletter. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

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