This scenario may sound familiar to you: You’re sitting around your office’s conference table, brainstorming topics to put in your organization’s newsletter. You’re coming up with nothing. Nothing seems newsworthy. After a substantial pause in conversation, someone chimes in and says,
“We should only issue a newsletter when we have something important to share.”
On the surface, it seems like an appealing thought. We don’t have meetings unless there’s something to meet about, right? Why write when there’s nothing to write about?
The answer is consistency.
Nonprofit communications expert Kivi Leroux Miller explains, “You want people to remember you and look forward to receiving your newsletter.” The key phrase here is look forward to. They can’t look forward to reading your newsletter if they don’t know when it’s coming. Even if it’s infrequent (Miller suggests you can go as long as once every six weeks), you want to be consistent. Consistency also shows your audience that you are an awesomely organized and reliable organization, and you don’t do things willy-nilly. Added bonus!
Your next question may be: How do we get them to remember us, then, if we don’t have good content? You do have good content, you just have to find it.
There’s tons of advice available online and elsewhere about how to write engaging content. A quick Google search will show you that. But any writer will tell you, when you’re stuck on what to write, you just need to sit down and start writing. You have a lot hidden in your subconscious that doesn’t come out until you sit down and start typing. This technique is known as steam of consciousness. Type whatever comes into your head and don’t stop typing. You’ll end up with some nonsense, but I bet anything you’ll also come up with some great ideas.
If need some extra motivation, use this fun tool called WrittenKitten. For every 100 words you write, you get rewarded with a cute cat picture. It may seem silly, but it works. It’s actually addicting; I finding myself writing more just to see what the next cute little furball will look like. And when I’m done, I’m rewarded again with paragraphs of text filled with ideas.
So give it a try – you have nothing to lose and some extreme adorableness to gain.
