Many coaches are not yet sure if a newsletter helps their business grow. After all, the initial investment is an email program (Eudora or Outlook) and your time in writing a topic of interest (hopefully) to your target audience. There are certain Do’s and Don’ts about writing a newsletter which I will discuss in this month’s article.

Do’s

1. Pick a target audience. If you’re a business coach you’d better know something about coaching business owners or executives. You can’t “fake” an academic description on how to run a business if you’ve not been in the trenches of running a business or have been given a great deal of responsibility and authority at the corporate level.

2. Take an executive coaching course. Anne Durand, Ellen Ostrow, and Randi Smith of MentorCoach, LLC have excellent executive individual, strategic career design, and group coaching courses that will give you basic information on how to work with executives—that is, speak their language including corporate branding, culture, assessment tools, process group leading, corporate climate and change processes, leadership styles, emotional intelligence, corporate communications, strategic career profiling, work identity, types of questions for a process group leader with knowledge of group dynamics when working with management teams and Boards of Directors.

3. Keep your newsletter to no more than 700 words. Briefer is better; be laser-like in your presentation; use bullets, indentation, italics, bold facing, and Verdana style, #10 font if presenting your newsletter on your website, and notepad if you’re sending your newsletter by email to your subscriber list.

4. Do have a subscribe and unsubscribe statement. Remember, no spamming.

5. Allow your newsletter to be reprinted in its entirety. This gives you maximum exposure and perhaps may win you a new coaching client.

6. Have a mission statement for your newsletter: target audience, what you hope to accomplish in sharing your newsletter with others.

7. Keep track and own your data base of subscribers; do not let a third-party do this for you; there are many free services out there but these vendors have control over your subscriber list and if their service goes down, you’re stuck.

8. Keep your margins to 66-70 characters so that it’s easier to read and print.

9. Entertain guest editorials to save you time in your search for new ideas.

10. Include a brief bio on yourself.

11. Write what you know; if you don’t know it, then read and become knowledgeable about your subject matter; if you’re writing a weight loss newsletter, talk to gym owners and survey people who use a gym as to what’s important to them.

12. Provide an executive summary at the beginning of your newsletter to let your readers know what will be coming.

13. Introduce a series of topics that can easily be formatted for multiple issues; this gives your newsletter a sense of continuity and purpose.

14. Be sure to get permission or credit to any quotes or lifted material from other sources.

Don’ts

1. Don’t regurgitate from other newsletters (your own included).

2. Don’t be condescending to your audience. You are not a college professor lecturing poorly educated folk.

3. Don’t go over the 700 word limit; instead write a series of monthly articles that tie together; try not to go over six articles (months).

4. Don’t use a word programming format for those few folks who may not have access to word (there may still be a few).

5. Don’t use graphics, tables, and graphs; this is not a scientific article.

6. Don’t miss a deadline; your readers are expecting fresh material monthly or weekly, however often your newsletter comes out.

7. Don’t write in the first person; this serves to distance the reader in your role as “expert” and can be a turnoff. Instead use second person and keep the dialogue more informal.

8. Don’t use words that people have to look up. This is not a creative writing course.

9. Don’t waste time and money subscribing to magazines unless you truly enjoy them and wish to use them as supporting material for your articles—e.g. Men’s Fitness, Fortune, Small Business Fortune, AARP, Writer’s Digest.

10. Don’t omit contact information for your readers to get a hold of you.

11. Don’t single space between paragraphs or sections.

12. Don’t forget to use ezines to get your newsletter out.

13. Don’t use banners and other “gimmicky” ads in your newsletter.

14. Don’t forget to copyright your newsletter. A Signature Mark (SM) is also permissible.

Sorry, I went over the 700-word limit (753); please forgive me. I would also be interested in sharing newsletters with other coaches who might be thinking about writing their own newsletters.

Helpful Hints:

1. Think of your target audience and write a newsletter that informs and entertains.

2. Get with two other coaches and think about sharing the editorial responsibilities within your given niches.

3. Interview someone in the community who is newsworthy.