Community
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September 28, 2022

8 Tips for The Perfect Community Newsletter

A complete guide to create a newsletter for your community

Rishika Shidling
Community

8 Tips for The Perfect Community Newsletter

A community is a social group where members of the same interests come together as a team and share their thoughts, ideas and interact with each other. Communities are a pillar to building a successful business today. Having an online community can help your brand grow its reach and sales. They play a crucial role in creating a link between customers and real people at the organization. 

Brands use online communities to build meaningful relationships with customers which translates into greater brand loyalty and increase opportunities. By creating an online community, you get people driven into your products which will eventually make them visit the website. They get attached to other members and these connections that are built throughout the years contribute to retaining your most loyal customers. 

Businesses and organizations are always looking for opportunities to increase their revenue. And what could be a better solution than building an online community? To take the fullest advantage of online communities you must keep your community engaged. The best way to keep your community continually engaged and active is a “newsletter”. 

A newsletter is a report containing the activities of a business or organization in a given period. Most of the newsletters are sent via emails or another online outlet. Newsletters can give the community members a perfect schedule of the community and help them track the upcoming events in which they can participate. 

Contents:

  1. Why do communities need a newsletter?
  2. 8 tips for the perfect community newsletter.
  3. Conclusion 

Why do communities need a newsletter? 

One of the many benefits of newsletters is that they keep your community members informed about every event which is going to take place. They are a professional way to communicate with everyone at once. 

Newsletters make a great addition to your existing marketing communication. They are also a great way to help you schedule your community plans daily, monthly, or twice a month. 

Newsletters can educate readers about new products, new launches, share successes and announce upcoming events or promotions. They are also easy to produce and can be sent to everyone on the company's email list. 

Newsletters are also inexpensive to produce as compared to the costs of advertising and marketing campaigns. 

    8 tips for the perfect community newsletter

1. Add pictures to the community newsletter!

This may sound silly! But trust me, adding pictures to your community’s newsletter can drive people’s attention. With creativity in your everyday life, you free your mind up to think in new and exciting ways. 

In a text-heavy timeline, users will pay more attention to a post that includes an image. People indeed see a picture over reading a heavy text. Use an image for an important fact, or take another approach, putting a few important words on a graphic is an effective way to increase engagement. 

2. Create the right content that your community needs

Note down the things that are principles for you to add to your community newsletter. How do you know what are your community members’ interests to be added to your community newsletter? You can do so by engaging and keeping strong communication with your community members. 

Make sure you ask questions, respond to people, share your thoughts and give people a chance to speak. Keep your newsletter short and understandable. Also, make sure you add links to the events so that people could join in. 

Refer to other community newsletters to get an idea of what the game is about. Take your time in building the best newsletter your organization needs. Newsletters are usually done every month, so you will have enough time to figure out the content your newsletter needs. 

3. Make your newsletter sharable

Making your content shareable means that your newsletter gets a good chance of being seen by an audience outside your community. This will make people aware of your community and even eager to become a part of it. 

The goal of a newsletter can be to help readers understand what's going on in your community. Sharing your newsletter online on other platforms can be a good way to get more people to join your online community. 

4. Keep your community newsletter short and sweet

If you flood your newsletter with unnecessary information, you might lose the reader’s interest and if the necessary things are not added the newsletter might not be clear enough. Make sure you stay in between, your newsletter should not to too long or too short. 

Check out below for the perfect newsletter example. 

5. Use the best tools for your email newsletter 

Try using email templates to make your work easy. An email template is a prewritten email that you can use to replace with your content so that you can quickly and easily write and create emails. 

However, there are other qualities and functions we must look for in a template. These can include HTML, image alt design, etc. 

HTML email is a very powerful and effective marketing tool when used the right way. They help combine the coding element of web pages with email. It also allows you to use more fonts, styles, and images. 

An image alt text is a special HTML code that gives an image description for those who cannot load images. This is what it looks like 

ALT text is accessed by screen reader users to provide them with text that describes an image in a short sentence. The main purpose of alt text is to improve accessibility by describing what an image is showing to visitors who cannot see them. 

6. Use paid templates (if required)

In case, you are lack newsletter template ideas, you can always consider using paid templates that will help you in creating the perfect newsletter for your community. 

There are a few websites that also provide free templates. Try exploring different newsletter websites that offer free or paid templates. Another great way to search for ideas other than using websites is Pinterest. 

Pinterest is a visual discovery engine just with images and videos for finding ideas like recipes, fashion, home decors, and much more! 

7. Use social media as a teaser 

The power of social media is incredible in today’s world. Sharing your newsletter to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter can help you reach out to the outside world. Finding a close-knit community can help us feel valued and accepted. 

Social media can make it easy to find groups of like-minded people and will make them curious to be a part of your community. Sharing your newsletter can get people to know about the products you sell and the community you built so far. As a new business that wants to get the word out about your impressive offerings, you can use social media to build an interested audience.

8. Make your newsletter scannable

Having a newsletter that draws people’s attention with images and fun stuff is not enough! You need to make sure that your newsletter is scannable. What do you mean by scannable?

Well, scannable content is content that is optimized for internet readers. It is necessary because people consume content differently online. Check the image below to know what a scannable newsletter would look like

Which one would you prefer reading? Of course, we all would prefer reading the one on the right!

Scannable content is short, sweet, and to the point. Sentences and paragraphs are brief. Bold text and bullet points highlight key points.

Winding up!

Interaction is a key role for an online community. Interacting with people in the group not only helps your community get stronger but also encourages people to participate and share their opinions on a topic. 

An active and engaged community leads to increased brand awareness of your business and also makes your business a trusted source. Newsletters are one option that can help you keep your community engaged. 

Want to learn more about online communities? Check out our ultimate guide 

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