case studies

First thing is to consider your target audience and ask the key question "What do we want to tell them?".  Remember that most organisations do a rotten job of telling their network about what's going on; who's new, who's left, what's new?   

This should result in a discussion about what kind of updates need to be written and these should be short and simple (no need for long analyses).  Your network just want to know what's been happening.  Focus on personal stories (of your staff for example) as well as any new project you have been working on, or are planning.  

Many organisations make the mistake of assuming that newsletters write themselves, based on the reality that "everyone can write".  Closer to reality is that nobody writes, because writing articles is a lot harder than it seems.  If you find that it doesn't write itself then you should get professional help and the best way of doing this is to find a local journalist who wants to earn a few bucks on the side, or do a bit of voluntary work.  Considering that most journalists everywhere are really badly paid, anything you can offer them should be welcome.

Then work our if you need design.  As mentioned above, if you have good written material you could just issue an email, but if you feel the need to do a design and insert photos then you should get professional help as there is nothing worse than home-made graphic design. 

The main thing to consider regarding design is knowing what to avoid.  Avoid complicated graphics and layout that you would use in a report (avoid bullet points). Another newsletter killer is too-small-font and too many small pictures (one big picture is better than many small ones).  Please don't put any colour or images behind text as it makes it unreadable.  And coloured fonts are often really hard to read. Remember Henry Ford who said "you can have any colour as long as it's black".  Avoid the kind of “magazine” design which results in people flicking through the newsletter and discarding it in a few seconds.

Do a Better Newsletter by Taking the Following Steps:

Take a “book” type approach rather than a “magazine” one. 

Most graphic designers tend to treat articles as a graphic element and make them seem more interesting by adding boxes, font colours and images behind the text. They often make font size absurdly small, because on the internet and smart phones that's normal. If you have a great designer this can work and flicking through magazines, and reading bits of text, can be satisfying, but I think you want people to actually read your articles!

Although the principles of book design seem simple – establish one text style for each page and use images and “graphic design” elements sparingly – there are very few book designers around. A book designer would give the text priority while a magazine designer would always prioritise images. I'm not saying you should publish a book, or a booklet, but I suggest you take something of the approach of book designers and give the text more priority, make it easier to read.

Do personalised articles of the people and organizations which are close to yours 

Find interesting people and interview them. Once you’ve earned their initial trust, ask them to tell you a story: why they are involved in their organisation (usually there is a personal motivation); why they decided to support your organisation; a story of someone helped by your organization; a story of a staff members motivation etc. Profile your people. The most interesting (and original) thing about any publication is people and their stories. 

Consider getting a local journalist to help you edit the newsletter. Journalists everywhere are paid peanuts and some of them are good people who want to “change the world”. You should identify good journalists from the local papers (find good articles and note down the author's name), contact them and ask if they can help you edit future editions of the newsletter. If you start to trust him/her you could allow them access to your partners or clients, and their projects, thus giving him/her a great new source of material.

Take the above objective as your main editorial guide: edit material that will encourage your target audience to get involved (positive and negative experiences, lessons learned, pitfalls, short statements from partner  directors / staff, advice for new NGOs, reasons why they should support a specific issue...etc). And write the articles in a way that ordinary people can understand. No jargon or acronyms.

Avoid company logos, they make the newsletter look like other magazines of the Zile si Nopti format (just to give you an example). I'm sure the partner companies and organizations would be more impressed to see quotes and photos of their staff rather than logos.

Improve your titles. One of the most important things in a publication are the titles. You must avoid titles that are not clear for ordinary people and use titles that draw people in, that make people want to read the article and find out more. When doing the titles ask : is it informing/attracting my target audience? And make it as attractive/risque as possible. And make the font bigger. Don’t make the font so small it's almost as if they are ashamed of themselves. Titles must be big.

Avoid jargon, acronyms and any technical terms that are used in proposals, correspondence with public sector organisations or professional colleagues. Most publications of this nature feel the need to impress their peers about their understanding of the language of the profession and thus use language that they all understand. This is fine if you're writing to the city hall or to a business partner but if you want to communicate with business people or the public you need to use ordinary words that everyone can understand 

If you want advice on this you should see Why I Write and the other essays by George Orwell on www.orwell.ru. Using the language of the profession is a way of excluding ordinary people from the dialogue and what's really bad about it is that it can make outsiders feel stupid because they don't understand your jargon (the same effect can be had by using English words in Romanian dialogue).

Acronyms in particular should be avoided as there is no way that most people can know what they mean, and one sight of an acronym is enough to turn most people right off an article. The only acronyms that are acceptable to use are EU, UN, WHO and the like, but even then you shouldn't assume that everyone knows what they mean.

Test your articles out on ordinary people. Ask your family, friends, children and business partners what they think (they are more representative of your target audience than your work colleague are). If someone doesn't understand something then simplify it. All of this is in fact is one big lesson in simplification; make the newsletter more simple and more personal. You can do the same with the layout: if your kids like it there's a good chance that the public will too. And watch how people look at the layouts; how do they flick through it and which sections attract the most attention.

Develop messages. Develop the core of your activity into a really clear message that should be all over the newsletter, and also promoted in the media. Find your slogan. Organize a brainstorm with your staff and start playing with words and sentences till you find a slogan that is relevant to your activity, but also short and punchy. Test it out a bit till you reach the final format you are happy with.

Use the Local Media. Get organised and keep the local media supplied with social stories  – and the easiest way to ensure that each article is original is to write about the individuals involved (starting with the question “What's interesting about the people we work with?”). If you recruit a local journalist you could develop a strategy to realise this (but you need to make sure the journo doesn't patronise the subjects, be ironical, generalise or be sentimental – in other words you need to stop him/her behaving like a typical journalist).

Use Statistics. A good editor can use statistics to devastating effect. Your target audience would most likely want to see some stats about your work – how many products have you sold?  How many people have you helped? (ofr NGOs) How many staff? How many projects/products/offices? How many companies/schools/individuals are involved? How much money do you turn over? A good graphic designer can perform miracles with this kind of information. You should aim to have a mixture of articles in “book format” that people can read later, and stats and arresting images that people can relate to when they flick through it.

And last, but not least, have a look at other successful newsletters, from similar organizations, but not only. Here is the link to a yearly newsletter that we have published for a British equine charity called World Horse Welfare. They worked in Romania from 2005 to 2011 and their main target audience was comprised of vets and horse owners. The newsletters were distributed at veterinary seminars organized by World Horse Welfare in Romania.