It’s Time to Kill Your Newsletter (or at least rethink it)

Your Church Newsletter, Duty, Necessity or Waste of Time?
I remember staring at the blank screen of my laptop on many occasions struggling to figure out what I was going to write for the weekly church newsletter. I’d rack my brain, scan the web to see what other churches were putting out and then try to slam something together just to check the box on my to do list.

People Aren’t Reading it Anyway
I love and hate this quote from, Smart Brevity; “Most people read our headlines, and some read our first few paragraphs. But it was only friends and family who read the whole thing.” Yup, true and double true. (If you are still reading this you gotta be a friend, a family member or you’re still reading looking for justification to kill your newsletter.)

People Are Overwhelmed With Information
This isn’t a difficult case to make. My guess is that your inbox is pretty full, if not your work inbox at least your home or personal inbox is overflowing. I ignore so many messages, even one’s that I agreed to receive. Take into account texts, social media, podcasts, billboard advertisements and in person conversations and we’re full up with info. 

Less Might Be More
The book I referenced above states in short that we can win when we write a “tease” headline, say why it matters, add a few more words after bold headings and then give the reader a choice to go deeper or delete.

Write Differently Because People Read Differently
Most of us are not Lawyers, we’re not composing PhD. tomes nor are we writing instruction manuals-but we use SO MANY WORDS. Stop, stop it now. 

Try This Instead (this is smart brevity in brief)

• The Tease: - six words or less to capture someone’s attention.
• The Lede: - a  strong first sentence - tell them something memorable, something they don’t know
• Context: - Why this Matters, explain why what you are writing matters, why it’s worth their time to read on.
• Choice: give them the choice to bail or go deeper, it’s their decision, empower them to make it. 
• Space: make all the above fit on one screen, a phone screen.

Why I Broke The Above Rules
I had to, I couldn’t find a way to shrink it - at least not during the time I gave myself to put this post together. Writing less requires more time-economy of words is effective but it’s not efficient to you-at least not at first. After you develop some writing muscle memory you'll get the hang of it and your readers will reward you by - reading.

Questions for Reflection

1. Do you know how many people actually read your newsletter or other forms of communication? Is producing them worth the time required to put them together? 
2. Take your newsletter content and rewrite it, once, twice, three times (a lady) using less words each time. You’ll hate doing that as a practice, but eventually you won’t. 
3. Kill the newsletter - but give people information. On facebook, in person, announcement slides, figure out a way. If the internet got bombed, if all the computers of the world crashed how would you communicate news to your target audience? Try that for 30-60 days.

What do you think?