 |
Determine what you what to accomplish with your newsletter (your goals and objectives) and who you want to reach (your target audiences). |
|
Include valuable information that readers could not easily find elsewhere, and make the text personalized and timely. |
|
Provide readers opportunities to have their voices heard, such as through letters to the editor and question-and-answer sections. |
|
Make the text brisk and informal, reflect natural speaking, and avoid big words and jargon: simpler is better. |
|
Keep paragraphs and stories brief, and try not to use “jumps” (stories that continue from one page to another). |
|
Use headlines with an active verb to grab your readers’ attention. |
|
Think of captions as an opportunity: use them to get your key point across, because they’re the first text on a page most people read. |
|
Limit the number of fonts in your newsletter: one or two work great, and still give you variety when you use bold-faced and italicized text for various items. |
|
Use graphics elements like subheads (a small heading within a story) and pull quotes (key words/quote from an article, printed in large type and put on the page like an illustration) to break up long blocks of text and otherwise more effectively present your information. |
|
Remember that white space (an area of the page with no text or graphics) helps make your newsletter more reader-friendly. |
