Writing newsletters

NEWSLETTERS ARE ISSUED periodically, and can be powerful advocacy tools for connecting with LKS users, promoting new services or marketing activities. It is also worthwhile exploring whether any internal newsletters are published within your organization and submitting articles about your service to these. Organizational newsletters or bulletins often have a wider reach than the traditional LKS newsletter and can be useful to get your messages out; the communications or media teams will be able to advise you about the internal publication routes available and the processes involved.

For staff who want to develop their experience of writing for an LKS audience, recommend that they look at special-interest groups, as these often provide opportunities to submit short articles. It could be just the opportunity that your team member is looking for! The CILIP Health Libraries Group Newsletter (CILIP, 2016) is one such newsletter, which encourages health librarians to submit article and book reviews, or share reports from meetings with its readership. There may be other opportunities for staff to submit articles to LKS professional newsletters, where they can report on conference attendance or share their work-based experience with their peers.

Target audience

Whichever type of newsletter your staff are writing for, it is important that articles consider the target audience. To some extent, the structure, format and style of the article will be dictated by the editor, so for external newsletters it is worth getting in touch prior to submitting your content. Articles within your LKS newsletter should be linked to your marketing plan as an extension of your promotional activity and be written in an engaging and less formal style than a journal article, for example. Spend some time thinking of catchy titles for newsletter articles to draw the reader in and ensure that articles are short, clear, informal and accompanied by images or photographs.

This approach will make content more engaging and keep your audience interested. A range of articles on different topics by different authors will serve a wider audience. With publishing tools being widely accessible, and including a range of pre-set templates, the e-mail newsletter has taken over from the printed version to some extent. Electronic newsletters are easy to create as a simple pdf file and disseminate to a wide range of users; archives can simply be stored on the library website or VLE.