The copywriting stage is intended to jazz-up the raw articles and turn them into polished stories with grammatical perfection that reflects well on your business.  It is important to note that this is our expertise – not the subject matter expertise that created the raw content described earlier.  We eliminate (in consultation if necessary) jargon and asides, identify concepts that may need clarification and expansion, and other quirks that seem natural to the person contributing but a complete mystery to the person reading that in the final newsletter.  We like to think of copywriting as making the inside information to reflect the clarity that is required for outside information consumption.

This stage consists of taking the draft descriptions of selected topics and transforming the material into stories that your customers will find interesting reading.  We also build a draft newsletter that illustrates the stories with stock images (where appropriate) or even with product display photographs taken at your business.  The goal is to deliver the stories in a format as will be seen by your customers so that you can judge if the results are consistent with the communications objectives you had in mind.  The idea is to have the materials ready for a “cut-and-paste” into the final newsletter when it comes time to publish the next issue, so we usually recommend working well ahead of a publication date with the theme chosen for that publication.

Copywriting can also produce ready-to-publish single-topic flyers.  For almost no added effort we can establish a template for producing individual articles that you can keep on hand for future publication, or as handouts for an individual product promotion.  It will differ from a brochure mainly because of the customer perspective (news perspective) as opposed to the technical perspective (nothing but the facts).  This is a fine line that is often crossed both ways – much depends on the focus of your newsletter as compared to the focus of other marketing materials.  You can use references to PDF files for single products or services to provide supplemental information on product web pages.

The objective of your website is to provide newsletters electronically.  Rather than to distribute new issues via E-mail, we can create simple E-mail content with a link to your directory of published newsletters.  This way the newsletters can stay in circulation and never expire: if people want hard-copy they can print the information on demand.  Your distribution costs will be minimal compared to traditionally mailing printed material, as well as the production costs will be substantially less.

Mailing lists must be carefully managed to make sure you do not overuse the privilege of reaching out to readers: there has to be an opt-out provision when people no longer wish to receive your notifications.  Remember, though, that they still have access to the newsletter archives if you provide a featured link on your landing page: instead of using a “push” publication and distribution strategy you use a “pull” strategy to let them find and retrieve the publications.   To keep people interested in the “push” strategy you will typically have to include a special offer with each announcement, one that people get only if they remain part of your mailing list, as a simple but effective incentive.

Pick a distribution interval that works for you.  Collecting meaningful information to fill a newsletter may be easy or painful – each business manager has different talents – and if you outsource the writing to the point of developing topics to talk about it can quickly become an expensive communications strategy.  Most newsletters are monthly issues or even quarterly: sustaining a higher frequency may be too much to consider unless the creation of that newsletter is central to your mail-order business, for example.

The first step in publishing a newsletter is to create a publication format that most likely is a mirror of your website: same logo - same general structure - same recognition.  For most clients we establish a newsletter section on their website, so that people can read back issues by clicking on, and opening, the generated PDF files.  It is easy to expand the publication index by adding new issues to the list as required.  PDF files can be read with almost any device that accepts externally sourced information.

Most newsletters use the letter format (portrait on 8.5”x11” paper) even if you do not print them for your readers – it makes life easier if they want to print their own physical newsletters.  For that reason, always link the newsletter back to your site with the URL prominently displayed, if only in a copyright notice:

                ©2012 Johnson’s Drugs www.Johnsonpills.com

We will normally produce a MS-Word “template” that represents the standards for your newsletter, so that it reflects a consistent format from issue to issue.  This increases the level of acceptance – it shows that your business stands behind the publication, even as you may include opinion pieces that are clearly marked as not provided by the company.  For business reasons you want to make sure you control the information content so that anything contributed by outsiders that you find unacceptable can be rejected, like some recipes for turning bath salts into drugs – that violated Johnson’s Drugs standards.

This stage consists of interlacing selected stories and transposing them into a newsletter that your customers will find interesting. The key advantage of an electronic publishing strategy is that you don’t deal with physical paper dimensions that dictate how many pages to fill.  As stated earlier, you simply focus on 8.5”x11” letter paper and, while you structure the front-page for appearance, the information following on subsequent pages can pretty well flow one after the other until you have at least 4 pages completed (that makes it look like a respectable newsletter).

The final newsletter will be published only in electronic format, converted into a PDF file that your customers can read on-line, download, or print.  The intent is to load that PDF file onto the website, so that it is available on-demand, and you can keep back-issues as long as you want because the overhead is negligible.  As always, you get to review and approve any newsletter that is being readied for publication, before we add the issue to the website and update the index of available issues: until it gets your approval that newsletter is not going anywhere.

Obviously this form of publishing takes much less effort than to publish your traditional newsletters that rely on physical paper.  As people take to E-readers of different kinds in most cases there is a PDF presentation tool incorporated – customers can download the issue to their reader and peruse the information while in transit, and they can access all your back issues that otherwise would be long out of print.  You get much more value by publishing in this lasting PDF format.

Finding topics to write about can often seem like a daunting challenge, but collecting all kinds of information can be as simple as forwarding E-mail to an inbox reserved for potential news items.  Sometimes people may forward relevant information, or they ask questions that trigger in your mind the potential for reaching out to a broader audience.  There may be news items that somehow dovetail with what your business is about.  As you collect items remember that you don’t have to publish everything at once – you can establish a “theme” for a specific edition of your newsletter that make it more relevant for future reference purposes.

It is important to emphasize that you do not have to be an exceptional writer to be able to create a newsletter that provides valuable information to customers.  If you want, we can take your professional input from a “raw” state to a publication-ready state: so long as you can express yourself in writing to make sure the information is accurate you have conquered 70% of the challenge.  We can do the 30% of polishing and structuring as we produce the actual newsletter for you.

You can use the expressions and reflections that you normally use when advising people in person: most businesses don’t last long unless the owners can establish rapport with their customers, so we are quite confident that you will have no problem.  We can show you how to use your “I-Phone” to explain information as you normally would and have it turned into a memo that provides the raw ingredients for future articles.  You can Email that to your own “idea submissions mailbox” and you will find that you can take real life interactions that you can then turn into newsletter content for general publication.

If you decide on “themes” for your newsletters, you will select relevant contributions from a collection box to assemble materials that can be turned into articles.  Selection is just that: you may not turn every input into an article – you may want to group items for a collective treatment into a more comprehensive article.  Many submissions are based on quick notes you collected in the course of business, or copied responses to enquiries from customers: information that will have to be “generalized” to there is no obvious tie to existing individuals that could take exception to being featured in an article on gout.

Once you have the raw materials the next stage is to do some editing and writing to turn the raw materials into drafts for future copywriting.  You are the master of your domain and the subject matter expert – we cannot begin to do any work on an article until the material has been structured to some extent.  It does not take long to get the feel for it, how to order the raw materials (and sometimes duplicate parts) in order to clear-up the relevant material by transforming that into your own description of what is meaningful content for an article.

We normally suggest 3 – 5 meaningful articles that provide the meat for the newsletter, as well as 3 – 5 special offers that can be interlaced throughout the newsletter contents, to draw prospective customers to read the information.  That should not be too onerous to produce – our role will be to turn these facts into easy-to-read materials that people will be drawn to.  We will remind you when a publication date is approaching, and when we should get your draft materials for copywriting.