Practical tips to ensure that
your target audience read
your newsletters
and magazines

An attention grabbing title

You should not underestimate the importance of a title for your Newsletter or Magazine.

Far too often, editors decide to focus their Newsletter or Magazine title on their company's name rather than something that might draw in more readers.  

Write your articles objectively

Although a Newsletter or Magazine is an excellent vehicle for promoting your company's products and services, it shouldn't read like a sales brochure.

By its nature, a Newsletter or Magazine should be a "soft" sell and provide useful information to readers. Potential readers will quickly throw away a Newsletter or Magazine that's full of sales hype and propaganda.

Use a third party writing style

Base your articles on factual information and write them as if you were an impartial third party. Instead of writing a headline that screams "Our revolutionary dishwasher is the best of its kind in the world," try a more factual, third person approach. A better headline would be: "Brewer now produces the best-selling dishwasher in the world."

Also, when you insert opinions into your stories, make them into quotes and attribute them to the proper people in your company, as would a newspaper.

Avoid the use of jargon

The purpose of a Newsletter or Magazine is to communicate, not to see how many times you can send readers scrambling to find a dictionary.

Avoid using long words and jargon when smaller words will do. Keep your writing casual, non-technical and conversational.

Use headline news

Everyone has come across the saying that you can't judge a book by its cover. But prospective readers DO judge a Newsletter or Magazine by its cover.

If the front page doesn't contain interesting, useful articles, most people will glance at it, classify it as junk mail and throw it away without even reading one story.

The same principals apply as they do with Tabloids, your front page should feature the issue's best articles that will draw in readers and stimulates their interest.

And remember, articles that are important to your company aren't necessarily important to the average reader!

Use at least one graphic per page

Graphics are important for two reasons.

First of all, people are more likely to read an article if it contains a graphic such as a photograph. That's because graphics, along with headlines, are the first things that readers' eyes are drawn to when they turn to a new page.

Secondly, graphics within a story are important because they provide much-needed visual breaks from solid blocks of text. A page containing nothing but row after row of endless text does not look inviting to read. However, a story that contains strategically placed graphics, such as illustrations and graphs, and break up the text into smaller, less-imposing portions looks more visually pleasing and will attract more readers.

Use software to improve your photographs

Few photographs are printed with perfect contrast, colour and brightness levels.

If you scan photos for your Newsletter or Magazine, be sure to electronically touch them up before you insert them into the layout. Otherwise, they'll probably look "muddy" in the final printed product.

Most image-editing software programs, such as Adobe Photoshop, will allow you to adjust the contrast, colour and brightness levels of a scanned photograph.

Use of colour and tints

Remember, your Newsletter or Magazine will be competing with other publications for your readers' time.

A splash of colour on your pages will make your Newsletter or Magazine much more visible to prospective readers.

Also, by using tints, you can give an impression of using more colours at no additional cost.