Creating a Newsletter

Write the content for the weekly newsletter. Try to write 2-3 different subjects and test them out on your team.

• Company updates
• A list of the companies blog posts
• Any special promotions we are running for the week

How to Start Writing the Content

Consider your audience. Before deciding on what content you need for your newsletter printing, take a moment to define your audience; gather demographics, and decide what topics will interest them. For instance, an audience of mostly middle-aged women probably won't be interested in a detailed article explaining a product. Instead, choose a topic that will connect with them, specifically on a personal level.

Choose your topic. Include a variety of topics and sections that will make your newsletter more interesting to a variety of audience. Just as a newspaper contains different sections, your newsletter should incorporate similar sections such as a response section, letters to the editor, industry news, and featured articles. Include tips or customer reviews within boxes to break up the layout.

Ask questions. Keep all information accurate. Use the six questions to give your newsletter a versatility: who, what, when, where, why and how. The best articles incorporate all six of these questions and answers, if applicable. This may require some research such as interviewing, but it is worth it if you want to make an effective newsletter with your audience's opinions expressed.

Research your topic. Writing subjectively can severely harm your credibility. Without proper research, you risk presenting incorrect or inaccurate information, which may offend or confuse your audience. Provide information such as statistics, expert opinions, and quotes to prove the validity of your research. Make sure to give the source (e.g., magazine, website, book) credit where credit is due.

Make it understandable. Use concise and comprehensible vocabulary to ensure readability. Avoid verbose language. For instance, rather than using an adverb/verb combo, use a verb that denotes the same meaning.

Use interesting headlines. Write dynamic headlines by using action verbs that evoke curiosity. Without an interesting headline, readers may skim over your articles, because they find it uninteresting. Headlines are one of the keys to creating loyal readers, since a well-written headline means a well-read article means a well-read newsletter. Also, if any of your articles are more than a few paragraphs long, use subheadings to break up the text.

Source: http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Good-Newsletter

Microsoft Word, Corel WordPerfect and OpenOffice have the ability to spell check a document.

There are several online solutions that users can use to spell check their documents online as well as add-ons that enable you to spell check in-browser.

Read your work again. Double check all newsletters. Quality is of the utmost importance as it goes out to thousands of customers.

Proofreading the Content

Print off the text and proofread on paper – it is much easier to spot errors on paper than on-screen. Before you do this, however, it is a good idea to run the spell check on the computer to catch any obvious errors. Don’t rely on this alone to detect spelling and typographical errors, though, as it cannot always be completely accurate. The grammar check is not worth using at all, as a computer cannot cope with all the complexities of grammar and sentence structure, and often ends up being more confusing than helpful.

Use ink that is a different colour from the print so that your corrections stand out and can be easily spotted. Beware of using red if proofreading for your colleagues, though, as it may remind them of the dreaded red pen wielded mercilessly by their teachers back at school!

Read slowly and deliberately using a ruler so that your eyes focus on only one line at a time. Go through the text several times, each time working on a different aspect. This will help you to retain your focus and concentration.

1. On the first read, it is a good idea to focus only on reading rather than on correcting, to get an idea of the overall content and meaning, and to spot anything missed at the editing stage.
2. Then, on subsequent reads, focus on correcting different types of errors each time.
3. To spot typographical errors, you may wish to do one read backwards, to disconnect your mind from the content and focus fully on the text word by word. This will not help for grammar, punctuation or some spelling errors, though, which can only be spotted in the context of the sentence.

Have another member of your team check your work. Always get an external proof from someone else. 

Another pair of eyes is bound to catch any errors that you may have overlooked. Also try reading your paper backwards, word by word. This forces your brain to comprehend each individual word, allowing you to catch more typos and grammatical errors.

Once checked by another team member, check it again yourself. It is important that there are no mistakes in the company newsletter.

Here are some of the most common mistakes with grammar and language use that you should look out for when proofreading:

• tense agreement: mixing past and present tenses throughout a piece of text
• subject/verb agreement: using plural verb conjugations with single subjects (e.g. ‘one in ten people are …’ instead of ‘one in ten people is …’)
• pronoun/case agreement: confusing the subject and object of the sentence (e.g. ‘He sat between Bob and I’ instead of ‘He sat between Bob and me’, or ‘Me and John are working on that project’ instead of ‘John and I are working on that project’)
• confusing similar words, such as the verbs ‘imply’ and ‘infer’, which describe different angles (‘imply’ is when the speaker/writer suggests something without explicitly stating it, and ‘infer’ is when the listener/reader logically deduces something from the information given by the speaker/writer) – another example is ‘affect’ and ‘effect’ (‘affect’ is normally used as a verb meaning ‘to make a difference to’, and ‘effect’ is used as both a noun and a verb – as a noun, it means ‘a change that results from an action or cause’, and as a verb it means ‘to cause or bring about something’)
• misuse of apostrophe before ‘s’ at the end of a word, which is often incorrectly added before the ‘s’ in plural words, e.g. ‘The report’s are finished’ instead of ‘The reports are finished’ – an apostrophe should only be used before ‘s’ to indicate possession (genitive case), e.g. ‘The minister’s cat is black’ or ‘My friend’s desk is tidy’. However, in the case of the pronoun ‘it’, the possessive form is ‘its’ without an apostrophe. Adding an apostrophe and ‘s’ to ‘it’ indicates the abbreviated form of ‘it is’ or ‘it has’. Look at the difference between ‘The dog has lost its collar’ (possessive form, i.e. the collar belongs to the dog) and ‘Look over there – it’s the dog without the collar’ (it is). Apostrophes follow the added ‘s’ when indicating possession by more than one person, e.g. Gents’ toilet, the pupils’ classroom.
• incorrect conjugation of modal verbs, such as ‘should of’ or ‘would of’ instead of ‘should have’ or ‘would have’
• words with similar spelling or pronunciation but different meanings, which cannot always be detected by automatic spelling and grammar checks, such as ‘they’re/‘their’/‘there’, or ‘where’/‘were’/‘we’re’/‘wear’. 

Make sure you remove the formatting of your text. If you are editing in Microsoft Word or Evernote, they can add extra formatting which can be copied when you move the content to Mailchimp. To remove this formatting, open notepad and paste all the text into Notepad then copy it back out again, adding just the raw text to your clipboard. You may need to manually add the images and links into Mailchimp as Notepad will also remove these. 

URL: http://mailchimp.com

USER: COMPANYLOGIN

PASS: COMPANYPASS

At the top right, you'll see a menu that says "Create Campaign" 

Once you click on it, it will display a drop-down menu with a list of different types of campaigns. 

Click on the one that best fits the type of campaign you're creating.

That's it! 

Select "Send to entire list"

Name your campaign "Newsletter MMDDYYY"

Enter the subject line you created when writing the newsletter. 

Copy the content from Notepad to Mailchimp. Remember to add images and links again. 

Add text content and raw links to the plain text email template.

The Weekly Newsletter is sent on Tuesday Morning at 8am.