How to successfully publish your print newsletter online
I work with a lot of associations and non-profits who are successfully using the web to communicate with their constituents. I love to see the great work they are doing and how technology helps further their missions.
Some of the work we do involves helping these organizations adapt legacy processes to an increasingly more digital world. For example, most associations and non-profits publish some sort of newsletter. Sometimes it's a big, colorful publication published multiple times per year. Other times, it's a simpler publication published less frequently. This print publication is sometimes well-received by many constituents despite the growing emphasis on digital formats. For this reason it makes sense to continue publishing a print version.
However, many people don't read things on paper anymore and prefer digital versions of information. Unfortunately, what I see most organizations doing is simply exporting the print newsletter as a PDF and then posting it online. It gets even worse when they use a flip-book service that simulates the flipping of pages online, like a magazine. A lot of organizations do this and then wonder why no one is reading their newsletters.
They key here is context.
In a print context, the reader is more focused on spending time with the publication. It's being read offline in an environment where attention spans are a bit longer than they are online. By contrast, attention spans online are much shorter. For this reason, it doesn't make much sense to force a print publication into an online context with no adaptation.
Instead of simply posting a PDF online, try extracting individual pieces of content and publishing them online in different formats. Create smaller units of content and schedule them in different ways. For example, articles can become blogs posts. Blogs can also be sent via email. Interviews can become podcasts or videos posted to your website. Photos can be published on your website and on social networks. Short quotes can become tweets. Try taking the content from your newsletter and dripping it out slowly and in smaller chunks online. This allows you to get the content out to your constituents while adapting it to an online context.
A nice side effect of this is that you now have ready-made content for your content marketing plan.
So remember, attention spans online are short. By adapting your print newsletter to an online context, you may increase the likelihood of it being noticed and read by your constituents.
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