Coming up with newsletter content ideas can sometimes tax even the most creative among us.
If you are like me, you have times when new ideas just seem to pop into your head unasked but, frustratingly, other times when you can rack your brains for hours and still not come up with anything very inspiring.
What’s even more frustrating is that those times when your creative neurons are working best is often the most awkward for recording ideas—with the result that most are forgotten.
This article, then, is written in the hope that it will lead you down a few new avenues for developing ideas and give you one or two creative prompts along the way.
The Common Interest
The first thing you need to consider is who your readers are. Once you have a picture of them firmly in your mind, the next step is easy—just step into their shoes. Then ask yourself what you would want to read about if you were one of them.
- Are they members of an organization such as a club?
- Or does the newsletter go to supporters of an organization, such as donors to a charity?
- What is the link (or links) that bind them; the thing that they all have in common?
One of the secrets to producing newsletter content that people want to read is broad coverage of the things that most interest them, including those outside the narrow focus of the obvious.
Of course parents expect to read about school activities in the school newsletter that carries the school’s logo and motto so prominently on its front page. But, because they’re parents, they are also interested in all those other topics that parents in general are interested in: education trends, child psychology as it relates to children of similar ages to their own, holiday activities, nutritious versus junk food, children’s entertainment etc.
It may be feasible to broaden the scope of your contents even more. Using the school newsletter again as an example, parents might very often all belong to a similar social group and have a common ideological viewpoint. This could lead to even more suitable material for inclusion.
Stepping outside the boundaries like this can be very fruitful in helping to spice up an otherwise stodgy newsletter. Be aware that it has its dangers, though. It is possible sometimes to stray into areas so far off topic that you start to lose readers instead of stimulate them. Equally easily, it is possible to unwittingly get involved in issues of controversy that you might otherwise have preferred to avoid.
Standard Topics For Inclusion
Most non-profit organization newsletters would probably have some or all the following information in their newsletter content:
- The newsletter’s contact information, format details, deadlines etc (usually all included in the masthead)
- The organization’s contact information, after-hours numbers etc
- Key staff details and contact information
- Committee members and other volunteers, their responsibilities, contact details etc.
- Financial updates, Treasurer’s report etc
- Statement from the Secretary, membership report etc
- News And information
The sort of news they would want in their newsletter content might also include:
- The organization’s coming events and activities, perhaps using an event calendar
- Updates and progress reports about planned and mooted projects
- Articles, together with pictures, covering recent events
- Reminders about membership benefits, discounts available and so on
- Recaps and analyses of past events, comparisons to current ones etc
- Requests for volunteers, subscriptions, donations, membership renewals etc
Stories, including pictures, about individual members, staff, volunteers, donors, people helped by the organization, local and visiting celebrities linked to the principal organization, corporate sponsors…
- ‘How-To’ Articles And Features
- Additional material that could be appropriate for many newsletters might include:
- Health, safety, fitness and weight-loss
- Home and garden improvement
- Recreation, sport and relaxation
- Travel and automobiles
- And many more…
Balancing Material
Last, but by no means least, nearly all newsletters would be better ‘balanced’ by use of some of the following in their newsletter content:
- Jokes, ditties, funny stories and other humorous text
- Cartoons, comic strips, caricatures and other graphical humor
- Amazing statistics and little-known facts
- Quotations, proverbs, and other ‘pearls of wisdom’
- Word games, puzzles and quizzes
- And much more…
Include a liberal amount of the above types of material into your not-for-profit newsletter and readers will actually look forward to each edition.
Newsletter Content Layout
One last word on layout, though. Don’t clutter your newsletter content pages with masses of tiny typefaces so that it looks as if you only just managed to squeeze it all in.
White space can be valuable and, if used wisely, can give your publication a clean and orderly appearance. Newsletter illustrations are also important.
For example, if you include statistical information of some sort, use a spreadsheet program to present the information in the form of a chart.