EXTERNAL NEWSLETTERS
These are for your customers and potential customers. What are they interested in? Do you think they’d like to hear about who in your company got married, had a baby or celebrated a birthday, or about how your new product or service can save them time and money and make their businesses more efficient?

Give your readers useful information:

* A few ideas they can implement immediately to make their businesses more profitable.

* Updates on trends in your industry which may affect them.

* “How to” information so they can do things themselves (you can’t expect your customers to buy EVERYTHING from you).

* General articles that help them save time and money and make their business and personal lives more meaningful.

BONUS: A great way to honor a customer is to highlight them in your newsletter. This not only creates good will between you and the customer you’re writing about, but shows others that you value your business relationships.

INTERNAL NEWSLETTERS
What do employees want to know? A survey conducted by the International Association of Business Communicators yielded the following results:

* Organizational plans for the future - company goals, expansion, etc.

* Job advancement opportunities.

* Job related “how to” information.

* How local, state, world events or changes in the business climate affect their job, their company and their customers.

* Productivity improvement.

* Human Resources policies and practices.

* Staff changes and promotions.

* Benefits information.

* How we’re doing vs. the competition.

* Recognition of employees for achievements.

* Human interest stories about employees/customers.

* Personal news (birthdays, marriages, anniversaries, births, etc.).

* News of what’s going on in departments/divisions.

* Financial results.

* How profits are used.

* Advertising and promotional plans.

* Company’s community involvement.

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Jeff Rubin, a former newspaper reporter and editor and instructor at The Learning Annex in San Francisco, is The Newsletter Guy, owner of the Pinole, California-based newsletter publishing firm of the same name (http://www.thenewsletterguy.com). He’s written and designed more than 1,800 company newsletters since starting his business in 1981. He may be reached via e-mail at jeff@thenewsletterguy.com or by phone at (877) 588-1212. Jeff is also a professional speaker http://www.jeffrubinspeaks.com. His programs for companies, organizations, and professional associations concentrate on effective writing and marketing techniques, customer delight, and integrity for owners of small businesses.

In today’s service-based economy, we are reaching out to cultivate not only new customers, but the ones we already have. We are stressing service and customer appreciation more than ever. We are sending newsletters, e-zines, sales letters, post cards and personal notes - all in an effort to position ourselves as experts, and friends.

No matter what you are writing, your words must be several things. They must be powerful, dynamic, enticing, irresistible, and leave a very positive impression of you and your business.

Here are some tips to help you transform your writing from mundane to memorable:

- Have a strong lead. Your first paragraph must grip the reader, or they will toss it.

- Mention the benefits. Your customers and prospects aren’t looking for a description of your services. They’re looking for solutions to their problems. Tell them how your firm can solve their problems in a cost-effective way.

- Keep your message short, simple and clean. You may have a lot to offer, but don’t get carried away, Your readers are busy. Make it easy for them to understand what you’re selling or offering and how it benefits them. Avoid hyperbole.

- Avoid cliches. If it is “needless to say,” then why say it?

- Use adjectives, metaphors and similes. These will spice up your writing and keep your readers interested.

- Do adequate research. Meaningless rhetoric is a turn-off. It results from too much hype and too few facts and numbers to support your statements.

- Use your spell checker, and a dictionary! Nothing - absolutely nothing - is more damaging than a marketing piece full of spelling errors. Bad writing is offensive. A nicely written piece may not only get you attention - but business, as well.

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Jeff Rubin, a former newspaper reporter and editor and instructor at The Learning Annex in San Francisco, is The Newsletter Guy, owner of the Pinole, California-based newsletter publishing firm of the same name (http://www.thenewsletterguy.com). He’s written and designed more than 1,800 company newsletters since starting his business in 1981. He may be reached via e-mail at jeff@thenewsletterguy.com or by phone at (877) 588-1212. Jeff is also a professional speaker http://www.jeffrubinspeaks.com. His programs for companies, organizations, and professional associations concentrate on effective writing and marketing techniques, customer delight, and integrity for owners of small businesses.

Knowing what articles to put in your newsletter is crucial to its success. Don’t send the same newsletter to your employees and customers. Here are some general content guidelines - and this applies to in-house  newsletters and those targeted for customer, both print and electronic:

* Your employees want information about (1) company issues and news that affects them and (2) other people in their company.

* Your customers want (1) information about new services and products that will make their companies more efficient and (2) information which tells them how to make their businesses more profitable.
Get the mix right - and design it attractively - and you’ll have a successful newsletter.

Planning is essential to a successful newsletter

One of the recurring problems companies have in putting together a newsletter is lack of organization.
Frequently, the task of getting it done is assigned to an already overworked employee with no expertise and even less interest.

Consistently publishing a good newsletter - on time, every time - requires a commitment from your top management and a committee of people with specific assignments.

Use these tips to help you with planning your publication:

* Draft a publishing schedule for the entire year, showing meeting times, copy deadlines and publish dates for each issue.

* Have a one-hour meeting with your committee before each issue to plan all articles and artwork needed and to delegate assignments.

* Make changes to your proof only once, or you won’t get it out on time.

* Find a printer or web person who understands what you’re trying to accomplish with your newsletter and is willing to help you learn how to improve it.

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Jeff Rubin, a former newspaper reporter and editor and instructor at The Learning Annex in San Francisco, is The Newsletter Guy, owner of the Pinole, California-based newsletter publishing firm of the same name (http://www.thenewsletterguy.com). He’s written and designed more than 1,800 company newsletters since starting his business in 1981. He may be reached via e-mail at jeff@thenewsletterguy.com or by phone at (877) 588-1212. Jeff is also a professional speaker http://www.jeffrubinspeaks.com. His programs for companies, organizations, and professional associations concentrate on effective writing and marketing techniques, customer delight, and integrity for owners of small businesses.

It’s Tom Del Beccaro, Chairman of the Contra Costa County Republican Central Committee, who, for all intents and purposes, has hijacked the party apparatus for his own self-aggrandizement.

The most recent e-mail blast from the Contra Costa Republican Party presents another sad illustration of what happens when a weak non-profit board and constituency that does not know how—or care— to provide appropriate organizational leadership, governance, or oversight, can be commandeered by an unchecked, enterprising chairperson bent on appropriating the organization’s resources willy-nilly to benefit personal agenda.

This newsletter isn’t at all about CCRP news. The first thing you see is Tom’s photo, not the picture of the new temporary and part-time Executive Director. The top news is not about upcoming events, but an appeal to leave the site and click through to the Chairperson’s personal website that hawks highly questionable predictions about the 2008 presidential campaign (he predicts Hillary is too formidable and will be the inevitable Democrat nominee) and his book that is still not available on Amazon despite the claims of his toadies in November that it would become a best seller overnight.

This is worse than sad. It is embarrassing. It’s time Tom’s Mickey-Mouse Club, doing business as the CCRP, find some weaker constituency to prey on. Hopefully, it will not be the California Republican Party.