News and features are about content as much as style

Newsletters and magazines serve a number of purposes in the commercial world. Some are designed to establish a brand, others to reach a wider market, some to inform and educate employees, and others to cross-sell within the existing customer base.

All copywriting thrives on the availability of good content, but where some formats – such as press advertising or direct marketing – rely primarily on the style of communication and the immediate impact this can create with a reader, newsletter and magazine articles (even basic newsletter articles) have to be informative, stimulating, and interesting, and to achieve this you need good content. Simply because of the amount of information they have to convey, magazines and newsletters must have a strong seam of raw material to mine, and this mine must never be worked out.

Researching the content for news items, reviews, interviews, and articles will be a key part of your role, and this is where copywriting and journalism have many parallels. The two disciplines require similar skills and abilities, but they are also very different from each other. Journalism is all about reporting the story as objectively as possible, while copywriting requires the writer to tell the story on behalf of the client. This is usually an objective and unbiased stance (any over-promotion within an article will result in loss of credibility), but you are always in the service of the person briefing you and your editorial will therefore be biased toward the marketing objectives of the client.

Magazines and newsletters rely on informative writing

Many, if not most, organizations have identified a need or an opportunity to send out a regular communication to their employees or customers. These differ from one-off communications (an individual leaflet or brochure, for example) in that they aim to communicate regularly with the audience, and build a strong, ongoing relationship with them.

Some magazines are big-budget productions led from the most senior parts of the business, while at the other end of the scale, newsletters often evolve from the ground up, often as a collection of memos and updates. Any professional publication will employ the services of a copywriter, or more than one in many cases, either in a core editorial management role or as a regular contributor of content.

Whether editing or writing for a publication, your starting point is to understand the different natures of a magazine and a newsletter. They have many similarities. Both are published regularly, feature a mixture of editorial, carry the client company’s message, and aim to inform and motivate the audience to act favorably toward the client. They can use the same types of format and structure, but where a newsletter’s function is to keep the audience up-to-date in a practical way, the role of a company magazine is to communicate the client’s brand values and create a sense of lifestyle (even in business-to-business).

“Far more thought and care go into the composition of any prominent ad in a newspaper or magazine than go into the writing of their features and editorials.”

Marshall McLuhan, communications theorist

The key is in what they are called. A magazine is a themed collection of interesting material, and a newsletter is an update on what’s going on. A magazine is a focal point for stories, comment, updates, and features, and the style in which this is collated and presented is a vital part of its character. Much more time and effort goes into a magazine than into a newsletter. Although it does need to be smart and well presented, it is the content of the information in a newsletter, not its image or the lifestyle it portrays, that counts.

The internet and email are very cost-efficient and effective methods of communication, and many newsletters and magazines are now published online. Digital media offer low-cost distribution and very rapid speed of delivery, but readers may only view the message a single time, and are often distracted by incoming mail or other sites that become available. Print offers messages a longer shelf life and the chance to be read in greater detail, and the opportunity to be displayed and discovered. It’s all about the best way to reach the audience, and it is common for print publications also to appear online. As the writer, your goal is to communicate effectively with the readers and developing a clear, human voice is more important than worrying about the format being used.

Creating and writing a company newsletter

There are many types of newsletter – from a few sheets of paper photocopied at the office, or a round-robin email, to a sophisticated, full-color publication – and because they can be produced cheaply it’s not unusual to find “unofficial” ones thriving in larger organizations. These usually begin life as a series of memos, emails, or word-processed documents that someone collates and distributes to a group of people within their business. This is not such a bad way to begin because, if nothing else, it proves that there is enough content to support a regular communication (it can always be made more professional, but if there is no news there is no newsletter).

Many newsletters are digital, distributed through email and the internet rather than being printed. Blogs are simply personal newsletters. The process of creating the publication and its articles is the same, whether they are intended for print or online publication (except where the digital newsletter has to be written with the navigability of the text in mind – see chapter 7, page 159).

A basic editorial plan for a newsletter

The precise boundaries between a newsletter and a magazine are blurred. Usually, a newsletter will be a regular publication with up to 16 pages (black and white or color), usually A4- or letter-sized, that is distributed free of charge to a defined readership. Anything more substantial than this would fall into the category of a magazine, reflecting the amount of extra time, effort, and money required. A newsletter audience is characterized by their common interest, for example the company they work for or a club they’ve joined.

When planning the editorial content of a company newsletter, consider how many issues will be produced each year, and how this fits with the company’s calendar. For example, when is the conference, when is their busiest period, are there seasonal trends? Avoid monthly editions, if possible – it’s a relentless slog to hit these tight deadlines unless you are part of a highly motivated team – and if you do publish monthly stick to ten issues a year, doubling up issues for July/ August and December/January to give you time to catch up (and have a break!). If the publication is biannual, your content has to be fresh for up to six months, so be careful to avoid too many references to dates or specific events.

From the earliest stage, try to work closely with the graphic designers to create a page plan. The designer should welcome your input, as you will be helping to shape the most successful approach to the brief. The main things to consider include whether there will be a full-bleed (to the edges of the page) photographic image or text-based news stories on the cover, whether you’re including an editorial comment and, if so, from whom, how the content will be split between short news items and more in-depth articles, and what these will look like. It is always a good idea to start with some lighter material (news in brief, for example) and to include a detailed feature article in the center.

Your newsletter ought to have a strong title and properly designed masthead and an editorial style sheet. The best way to create the overall publication title is to brainstorm words associated with the client’s business, avoiding anything that is a cliché or bad pun. It is better to play it safe than risk undermining the credibility of the publication by giving it a daft name. “Company News” is perfectly acceptable. Get the content right as a priority, and experiment with the style only if you are sure it suits the brand and your audience.

Next, create your schedule and the accompanying editorial calendar, based on the time available and the amount of copy required. You may want to leave some of your articles until the very end, adding them in just before the print deadline, so that your news is fresh and newsworthy. If necessary you can then quote for your time based on this schedule. It can take a surprising amount of time to gather information, conduct interviews, process and collate the raw material, and draft copy for your newsletter, so get off to a quick start and include some contingency time if you can. You’ll need as much time as you can get – and don’t leave the writing until the last minute, as this type of writing, unlike pure creative copywriting such as advertising or direct marketing, does not lend itself well to burning the midnight oil.

Creating and writing a company magazine

A carefully thought-through, well-written, and well-designed company magazine is a very powerful brand communications tool that can play a leading role in ensuring that a client’s employees and customers think favorably about their organization. As the writer, it is essential that you take the time to understand the context of your story fully, research the background, and present your information credibly to an informed audience.

Company magazines are far less common than newsletters, and are far weightier projects in every sense. Some are designed for customers, to encourage their loyalty and raise their awareness of the client’s full range of products or services, while others are created to carry internal communications in a highly professional manner. In both cases, company magazines are printed on high-spec paper, and make good use of quality photography and graphic design. Too often they are let down by poor editorial content. Gone are the days when pictures of staff handing over charity cheques, getting married, or showing off their hobbies can hold the audience’s interest.

A typical editorial plan for a company magazine

The cover and front sections should be designed to win attention, while the middle to back sections should present material for regular readers.

Cover and front sections

Middle to back sections

The process for creating a company magazine is similar to that for a newsletter, but there are significant differences. A magazine will have bigger budgets, larger circulation, and a higher profile than a newsletter. Because of this, every element of a magazine carries greater importance than the equivalent in a newsletter.

An article for the employees of a company that explains a new strategic initiative would be written differently depending on the type of publication for which it is intended. If it was for a newsletter it could have the following header: “Moving some manufacturing to China allows us to compete globally.” This is fact-based, clear, and unambiguous. The same material could be shaped for a more in-depth magazine, perhaps aimed at shareholders or investors: “Tackling the competition head-on: our new initiative opens up lucrative new markets.” This is more intriguing and thought-provoking, and draws in the reader to the body of the article.

As the writer you have to invest more time and energy in magazine articles and features than you would for a newsletter, and so does the designer. A newsletter is usually set to a fixed house style, but a magazine will include a lot more original design. When there’s enough freedom to develop design concepts and enough budget for quality imagery (photography and illustration are not cheap) a magazine is one of the most exciting environments for a graphic designer, and it is up to you to help the designer to achieve his or her best work by working with the words as the design ideas are being developed.

The tone of voice of the magazine is a major part of its style and impact. This will be the voice of the client organization, but it must be relevant to the audience. Throughout a company magazine the copy has to speak in a consistent and appropriate tone of voice, which can be easier said than done. Work closely with the client or the magazine’s editor to determine content, and with the designer to ensure that the words and imagery complement one another and that the designer understands the messages you’ve written and helps to highlight these.

Keep the magazine reader to the forefront of your mind. If it’s a loyalty magazine mailed out three times a year to a bank’s teenage savings account holders, it should be written with a teenage style, not a corporate bank style (taking care to avoid anything that might compromise the bank’s brand). The audience must be able to identify with the messages and feel that they relate to their lifestyle, so be careful to select the content carefully and be sure to shape it with them in mind.

“At a magazine, everything you do is edited by a bunch of people, by committee, and a lot of them are, were, or think of themselves as writers. Part of that is because magazines worry about their voice.”

Chuck Klosterman

A good way to maintain consistency is to create a word bank and copy style sheet (see page 18) for reference. Create and share these with those leading the project and signing it off, as this consultation process will enable you to explain your approach and incorporate their direction and guidance from the start (which is far better than doing it at the end).

Plan the main editorial content for your magazine six to twelve months in advance. This will help if it is intended that advertising space (which suppliers are often keen to buy) is to be made available within the magazine, as the advertiser will want to appear alongside relevant articles. There will be a number of articles, including feature articles, which you can compile well before the issue deadline, leaving yourself free to focus on the last-minute hot news just as the publication is being put to bed.