The Basics of the Newsletter

Whether you’re writing a newsletter, an article or copy for a web site, you are communicating something to your audience. Your audience has chosen to read your words – either because they want to learn something or because they want to be entertained – so you need to live up to their expectation. That means communicating well.

Here are some points to remember:

Good communication is relevant, focused, timely and readable.

Identify your target audience: consumer press, trade press, professional journals or specialist press for articles; internal, trade or special interest newsletters; paying or ‘free’ audience for web sites. Look at their age, gender, socio-economic group and lifestyle factors.

Look at what your audience wants – news, information or entertainment.

Use the five Ws and an H to focus your work – what (subject), who (audience, case study and expert), where (tone and angle),when (topical, up to date), why (what’s in it for the audience), how (your approach).

Your language (tone and vocabulary) needs to be consistent with that of the publication where it appears.

Keep it simple and relevant.

Avoid bias and stereotypes.

Check your spelling and grammar.

Remember that editors, publications and web sites change – widen your fields of interest to avoid becoming too reliant on particular publications by finding new angles on regular topics and finding new topics that interest you.

Unless you’re an acknowledged expert in your field, you’ll need to contact the editor for the first time. Look at what sort of article you want to write, the sort of subjects you can write about, which publications cover that sort of topic and whether they use freelancers.

Look at your target publication’s style – length, use of case studies and experts, layout, length of paragraphs and sentences, tone and vocabulary. Identify the topics that haven’t been covered (and remember how far in advance the publication works!)

Ring the features department to find out if they accept freelance contributions and, if so, who to send your ideas to, how much detail they want, whether they’d prefer email or post, which issue they’re planning next, which categories they want to cover (broad terms).

Prepare your submissions package – a covering letter, your CV (contact details and list of articles published), cuttings, ideas, (brief paragraph or longer outlines) and SAE (or, for email, a truncated CV and a couple of web site article URLs).

If you haven’t heard within a month, assume a rejection – send in more ideas and don’t pester. If an editor asks you to write something, stick to the deadline and discuss any problems straightaway – it’s OK to refuse a commission but come up with an alternative!

The commissioning form will tell you your brief, fee, payment details, appearance date and deadline. Don’t take rejection personally – the topic’s either not right at that point or may have been covered by someone else (remember lead time!). Try the idea elsewhere and come up with new ones for the editor who rejected you.

Recycle topics by changing your angle or combining elements from several articles.

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