N EWSLETTER T ITLE

Company Name, Street Address, City, ST ZIP Code Web site address E-mail address Phone number

Newsletter Date Volume 1, Issue 1

Getting Started
By Author Name The purpose of a newsletter is to provide specialized information to a targeted audience. To help you achieve this goal, this template offers suggestions that you can also find in the article in the Task Pane titled Creating a Newsletter. You may also be interested in reading Printing a Newsletter, which describes different printing options, such as using large paper to print your newsletter as a folded booklet. In addition to these template Help articles, the Task Pane contains links to Help topics related to the Microsoft Word features used in this template, such as text boxes. As an added help, before you begin replacing this content with your own, you may want to print this template to have the benefit of its instructions. Inside This Issue lists articles designed to help you write an effective newsletter. When you create a newsletter, first determine the

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Getting Started Writing Great Newsletter Articles Inserting Your Own Art Drawing Readers to Other Articles An Article for Everyone Fitting an Article into a Tight Space The Elements of a Newsletter 1 1 2 2 3 3 5

audience. This could be anyone who might benefit from it, such as those interested in a product. You can compile a mailing list from business reply cards, customer information sheets, business cards collected at trade shows, or membership lists. You might consider purchasing a mailing list from a company that serves your target customer. Next, establish how much time and money you can spend on your newsletter. These factors help determine the length of your newsletter and how frequently you will publish it.

Writing Great Newsletter Articles

By Author Name You can transform your life and business in just seven minutes a day. If that statement makes you want to read on, consider yourself hooked. A newsletter is competing against a lot of distractions for the readers attention, so its important that the first one or two sentences of an article hook the reader. And since that hook creates an expectation, the article needs to justify the use of the hook, or the reader will feel manipulated. Newsletters are short on space and their readers are short on time, so the articles must be well focused, aiming to make one major point. The making of this point can be achieved through two to five (or so) sub-points. These points must have Please see Great Articles on page 4 Along with the hook, the article needs a headline that is brief, active, and clear in its purpose. Beyond these essential characteristics, a headline attracts attention if it is highly relevant, inspires curiosity, or has some other irresistible quality.

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Newsletter Title

Inserting Your Own Art

By Author Name You can replace the pictures in this template with your companys art. To do so, click where you want to insert the picture. On the Insert menu, point to Picture, and then click From File. Locate the picture you want to insert, and then click it. Next, click the arrow to the right of the Insert button, and then click either Insert to place a copy of the picture into the newsletter, Link to File to display the picture without actually inserting a copy, or Insert and Link. Since Insert embeds a copy, the picture is always visible, but it may greatly increase the size (in bytes) of your newsletter depending on how large the picture is.
A caption is a sentence describing a picture or graphic.

In contrast, Link to File does not increase the size, and if you make changes to the original picture, they automatically show up in the newsletter. But the picture wont be displayed if viewed from a computer that cant link to the original. Insert and Link inserts a copy so that the image is always available, and also automatically updates changes to the original.

Drawing Readers to Other Articles

By Author Name If you take the time to create a newsletter, you certainly want your readers to read as much of it as possible. You can help achieve this by drawing readers to other articles. One way to do this is with the table of contents. A table of contents that has descriptive and enticing headlines will go a long way toward getting the reader beyond the articles on the front page. You can also draw readers into your newsletter by placing an interesting article with broad appeal on You can have an article go from one page to another by using linked text boxes. Everything in this newsletter template is contained in a series of text boxes. These words are contained in a text box, as is the graphic on this page, with its caption in yet another. A text box Please see Drawing Readers on page 5 the front page, and then continuing that story on another page, where yet another article awaits the reader once he or she finishes. This can also be an effective way to lead the reader to a sales pitch or an order form.

To catch the readers attention, place an interesting sentence or quote from the story here.

A caption describes the picture or graphic.

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Page 3

An Article for Everyone

By Author Name Who reads your newsletters, and what are their responsibilities? What segments of your industry are they concerned about? And do you have evidence to back up your assumptions? Being able to answer these questions is critical, because only then will you be able to provide the kind of content that readers will be drawn to. Not everyone within a business or industry is concerned with the same issues. By understanding readers and their concerns, you can ensure that every issue of your newsletter has something to interest as many types of people as possible. A newsletter about technology in education may have articles relevant to administrators and what they need to know logistically to get technology into their schools, to teachers and how they can integrate technology into their classrooms, to parents and how they can The danger, of course, is that if you try to appeal to every type of audience you may make the focus of your newsletter too broad. In our example, we would not want the newsletter to include articles about how to develop software for the education market. When you write articles for an audience Please see Everyone on page 4
A caption is a sentence describing a picture or graphic.

introduce technology at home, and to the students themselves and how they can use technology to aid their learning.

Fitting an Article into a Tight Space

By Author Name So you have space for one more article in your newsletter, and one of your experts out in the field is writing the article. How can you determine how long the article should be? As in newspapers, the length of a newsletter article can be thought of in terms of how many column inches are available for the article. A column inch is a measure of space, namely an area on a page 1 column wide and 1 inch deep, used to measure the amount of type that would fill that space. This will vary from newsletter to newsletter depending on the font you are using, its size, the column width, and the amount of space between lines and between paragraphs. By knowing how many words on average fit into a column inch in your newsletter, and then by measuring how many column inches are available for the article, you can tell the writer how many words an article can have. Lets take this scenario one step at a time. 1. Fill up at least 10 inches of column with actual article text, then print the page and use a ruler to measure how many inches of column your text takes up. 2. Count the number of words in the text. 3. Divide the number of words in the article by the number of inches the text takes up. For example, lets say you have 456 words in 12 inches of column: 456 12 = 38. Thats your magic number for how many words fit in an Please see Tight Space on page 4

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Newsletter Title

Great Articles from page 1 2 Drawing Readers from page

as their primary aim the benefit of the reader, who offers a flexible way of displaying text and should be able to point out this benefit. It can be graphics; its basically a container. You can move a new knowledge or insight, an idea about how to text box around, positioning it just where you want improve business, or better, how your business it; you can resize it into a tall narrow column or can improve the reader. The article should clarify, into a short wide column, or even rotate it so that inspire, encourage, enthuse, provoke thought, the text reads sideways. By linking a text box on satisfyit should elicit a positive response. And one page with a text box on another, you make the best response of all, of course, is that the your article flow from one page to another. For reader decides that your products or services information on how to link text boxes, click provide the solutions he or she needs. Continue a story elsewhere with linked text boxes in the Task Pane. To sum it up, grab the readers attention through an appears on this page and begins with the text, To effective headline and hook, and then reward the catch the readers attention. The text of a pull reader for following through by giving something the quote comes from the article and should be reader didnt have before. In addition, keep the article engaging and irresistible. When a reader flips brief and well focused, and if appropriate, demonstrate through your newsletter looking for a reason to read how your products and services address the issues an article, a pull quote can provide that reason. raised in the article. By doing so, you stand a good chance of keeping the readers you have and gaining You probably wont be able to get all your readers to new readers with every issue. read all your articles. But by using these journalistic devices, you can draw more readers into your newsletter.

Tight Space from page 3 You can also draw readers into reading other inch of column in your newsletter. But youre articles by using whats called a pull quote. A pull not finished yet. quote is a phrase or sentence taken from the article
that large letters on the page, often 4. appears Measure in how many column inches you have within a box to it apart from article. One available foset r the article. For the example, well say its 7 inches. 5. Multiply your magic number by the number of column inches available for the article, which

6. To give yourself some room for error, tell the writer to write an article between 250 and 260 words. Once you get the article back and edit it, you can add or remove words here and there to get the article to the right length. Over time, youll get used to this practice, and it wont be long before you become a pro at writing and editing articles that are not only helpful to your readers, but perfect in length as well.
A caption is a sentence describing a picture or graphic.

The of a Newsletter the Eeents maximum length that the article can be.
By Author Name In the course of adapting this template to suit your needs, you will see a number of newsletter elements. The following is a list of many of them, accompanied by brief

in this case would be: 38 x 7 = 266. This is

obvious. It should also add to the Everyone from page 3 readers understanding of the photo by, for example, explaining other than the newsletters core readership, or articles prominent or unusual that are objects. too broad in their intent, readers are not able

To catch the to quickly determine whether the newsletter is of use to To catch the readers Continued from line. Athey line lose of text definitions. them, and interest. readers attention, attention, place an indicating the page an article is place an sentence Body text. interesting The text of your articles. or continuing from. So the issue is of balance: Within the scope of your interesting business and industry, you want to provide something quote from the story here. quote line of text Byline. A line of text listing the name Continued on inline. eachA newsletter that will be of sentence interest to or all the indicating the major page on which an of the author of the article. players in your audience. By from doing the so, you will story article will be continued. ensure that all your readers will continue to return to here.
Caption text. Text that describes a but descriptive full sentence. For photos, it ought to explain whats happening without being insultingly Please see Elements on page 6 graphic. A caption should be a short your newsletter, issue after issue, to find that relevant Date. Either the datethat of publication article they know is waiting for them. or the date you expect the newsletter to be at the height of its circulation.

Elements from page 5

Company Name Street Address City, ST ZIP Code Phone: Phone number Fax: Fax number E-Mail: E-mail address

Graphic. A photograph, piece of art, chart, diagram, or other visual element. Header. Text at the top of each page indicating the name of the newsletter and the page number. Headline. The title of an article. A headline needs to be clear in its purpose, brief, and active, and should attract attention by being relevant, inspiring curiosity, or having some other irresistible quality. Newsletter title. The title of the newsletter. Pull quote. A phrase or sentence taken from an article that appears in large letters on the page, often within a box to set it apart from the article.

Motto

Were on the Web! Visit us at:

Web site address

Volume and issue. Volume refers to the number of years a newsletter has been in circulation. Issue refers to the number of newsletters published so far in the year. The ninth newsletter in its fifth year of circulation would be Volume 5, Issue 9.

Company Name Street Address City, ST ZIP Code

Customer Name Street Address City, ST ZIP Code