Tips for Improving Newsletters and Press Releases
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| Keywords | Newsletters, Press Releases |
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Three brief articles from Bike Action 2000:
Three Ways to Multiply the Impact of Your Newsletter
Writing and designing your newsletter, and printing and mailing enough copies to send to your members, can be one of the biggest expenses your group faces every year. Once you’ve committed the money, however, printing and mailing a few extra copies is very cheap and you can put the newsletter to good work in simple ways.
- Send your newsletter to newspapers, radio and TV stations in town. Make sure you send copies to the calendar editor and any journalists who have covered your activities in the past.
- Add every member of city council to your mailing list. Regular contact with elected officials will help remind them you are active and interested in local issues — especially transportation issues.
- Don’t wait for your local planners and traffic engineers to join before you send them your newletter. Whether they want to hear from you or not, they should know what you are doing. The worst they can do is throw it away and they might just read it to find out what you’re doing and what you think about things.
Seven Strategies for Increasing Interest in Your Newsletter
(From Newsletter Solutions, Editorial Resources Inc.)
- Determine what you want your reader to take away from your publication. Deliver this in each and every issue.
- Keep the newsletter simple to read through good editing and layout.
- Make the newsletter attractive. Use the best paper stock you can afford to give the publication the look and feel of a first-rate newsletter.
- Match editorial content to readers. If you are writing for a broad audience, provide a diverse range of subjects so that everyone will find something of interest.
- Use plenty of photos. Readers love to see themselves, their freinds and associates in the newsletter.
- Use spot color to add to the overall attractiveness of the publication.
- Print and deliver the issue on time and make sure all the articles are current.
Five Surefire Ways to Getting Your Press Release Used
A simple rule is to make the life of the journalist you want to use your press release as easy as possible. Here’s five ways to achieve that:
- Contact names. Make sure you give a daytime and evening contact number for the journalist to call and follow-up. Put the number in a prominent place.
- Be up front. A journalist must be able to grasp the story you have by reading the first paragraph. Don’t bury the lead story in the fourth or fifth paragraph. Include the basics of Who, what, why, where and when in the opening sentence or two.
- Be brief. Try to stay within one side of paper (without reducing the type to miniscule proportions!). Otherwise, the second page might get separated from the first, or the reader may give up because of the level of detail. You can attach further information, but keep the general release simple.
- Be timely. Give the journalist enough time to use the story— check the deadlines the newspaper or magazine uses — but don’t send your release so far ahead that it gets lost in the paper mountain.
- Headline. Your headline should be descriptive —just like a newspaper headline! The reader should be able to grasp the story just by skimming the headline.
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