Newsletter Tutorial:
Developing your
Content
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> Newsletters
By
Peter Cooper
Even if you
have the best ever concept for a newsletter, it's useless unless you actually
proceed with it. The first step is actually getting on with things and producing
your first newsletter step by step. It'll probably take longer than subsequent
editions but since you're constructing something from nothing, this is hardly
a surprise.
The main thing that keeps a newsletter popular
and successful is its content. Whether it's just a collection of links or original
1,000 word articles, it doesn't matter. What's important is that it's something
that your target audience will want to receive. If it's not, why should they remain
a subscriber?
There are several main types of content you could
include with your newsletter. Let's run through some of them.
News
Up-to-date
news can be considered a major plus for a regular newsletter, especially if it
is useful and targeted towards its audience.
There are many
ways to get hold of breaking news. The first is just to pay attention to news
reports on TV or the radio, but a better way is to find news on the Internet.
MoreOver.com indexes thousands
of stories a day in as many subject areas, so you can probably find something
of interest there.
You could also subscribe to receive regular
press releases from a service such as InternetWire.com
or NewsBureau.com.
Links
If
you have interesting and regular links in your newsletter which benefit your audience,
then you're on to a winner! Sadly we can't provide any recommendations of places
to go to find links since they'll be very specific to your subject area.
Articles
Even
newsletters dedicated to links and news usually have at least one article in each
edition. Other newsletters entirely rely on articles for their content. Hopefully,
you should have an idea of what sort of content you want in your newsletter already.
There
are three main ways of getting articles for your newsletter. You could either
a) write them yourself, b) pay someone else to write them, or c) use free articles
available on the Internet. The first two options don't need to be explained, but
the third may sound a little alien to those coming from the traditional off-line
media.
There are a large number of writers who write articles
for free, on the understanding that you do not consider the articles to be exclusive,
and that you publish a small 'resource box' after their article. The 'resource
box' contains information such as their name and profession, as well as a small
piece of advertising blurb and a link to their Web site. In effect, they are offering
you free content in return for free advertising, and for many newsletters this
relationship works well.
There are lots of places to get in
touch with these authors and download their free articles, such as WWIO
and EZineArticles.com.
Formatting
your Newsletter
Take a look at any newsletters you may
have clogging up your Inbox. Once you've scanned through a few of them you'll
see they usually fit a similar format to each other. Of course, there are variations
since not every newsletter has the same direction or audience and requires something
a little different.
Let's take a simplified look at the typical
newsletter..
[Title of Newsletter Goes Here]
Issue
1 - 5th Jan 2034
-- Contents --
1. Editorial
2. An Article
3. Quick Tips
4. Links
-- Editorial --
[message to readers, latest events and any chatter goes here]
-- Article [Title of Article goes here] --
[article ends up here]
-- Tips --
[tips end up here]
-- Links
--
[links end up here]
To unsubscribe
send a blank e-mail to whatever@everamen.com
Okay,
so that's taking things to a highly simplistic level, but formatting a newsletter
isn't really hard. As long as you can use a program such as Notepad or Wordpad
(remember to save in .txt format!) you'll be able to put together a newsletter.
Just make sure that it has a structure and doesn't just ramble on and on from
one subject to another.
If you're going to carry advertising
in your newsletter then you could place an ad at the top of the newsletter and
more between each article or feature, depending on the demand for advertising
space. Do not put more than one advert in any one place those because if advertising
takes up too much space, people will scroll past and avoid those large chunks
of the newsletter. Make sure advertising is strategically place throughout
your newsletter to get the best response.
Another consideration
is that you don't create your newsletter in a program which can't save as raw
ASCII text (.txt). In fact, I would advise against using Microsoft Word or a similar
program altogether, since you don't really need the extra features they offer.
Many people use the basic Notepad application that comes with their computers!
If your newsletter is particularly large (which isn't desirable) then you could
use WordPad which comes with Windows too. I've also found that the best application
to use on the Apple Mac is SimpleText.
If you're uncertain
about your completed newsletter layout, then let some other people see it! Feel
free to get in touch with me with any
queries you might have over formatting your newsletter. However, most newsletter
publishers find formatting to be an enjoyable task and often spend time tweaking
it to see if they get a better reaction from their subscribers.
Considering
AOL Users
There's millions of AOL users and it's quite
likely some of them will become subscribers to your newsletter. However, there
is one small problem with the AOL client in the way it displays links. Thankfully
there is a workaround.
Most links in your newsletter will be
laid out in text in their bare fashion, like http://www.whatever.com/gohere/.
Most e-mail clients will see this and convert it into a link for readers to click.
The AOL e-mail client doesn't so you need to give it a helping hand.
To
make the link appear correctly in the AOL e-mail client, simply format the link
as an HTML link, like so: <a href="http://www.whatever.com/gohere/">Click
here for whatever!</a> . See how simple it is? The best option is
to have both types of link, have the plain URL on one line and then the AOL link
on the next line, like so:
http://www.whatever.com/gohere/
<a href="http://www.whatever.com/gohere/">Click here for whatever!</a>
Do
note that this isn't a mandatory requirement, but if you want to make your newsletter
easier to use for AOL users, then this method comes highly recommended by many
existing newsletter publishers.
Conclusion
So,
now you've got your content, decided on a format and started to build it into
a useful document, you need to work out a way to send it to the masses. We're
going to cover that in our next installment, 'Sending your Newsletter'.
