We have all received newsletters in our email, sometimes we don’t even realise we have signed up to receive them until they arrive.
They can be monthly, quarterly, bi-annual or annual. A recap of everything that happened within that time frame.
But let’s imagine if newspapers adopted this model. Instead of a daily or weekly edition, you get all your news stories every three months instead.
Or, instead of uploading news as and when it happens on their website, they wait until the end of the month to publish everything all at once.
“But what’s recent here? This happened weeks ago. Hmm, I don’t really care about this now.”
Exactly.
This is why newsletters are problematic, especially when every individual website on UL.ie has its own news and events feed which can be updated as and when things happen.
UL’s website users really don’t want to download a document to find information, they want to see a webpage.
This is because they are on a website, if they wanted a document they would be on Sharepoint.
PDFs lead to issues around inaccessible font use, colour combinations, and just general frustration (ever tried to read a document on your phone? Nightmare.)
Relying on PDFs also harms the environment.
Downloading a PDF increases a user’s carbon footprint. When newsletters are attached to emails it also multiplies the carbon footprint of that email. When news updates are on a webpage no download is necessary which decreases the environmental impact. If you want to learn more about this we have written about how Digital sustainability matters for the future of our planet.
This article goes into more detail on why PDFs need to be avoided on the UL website, and this piece lists some general alternatives to using PDFs.
There are plenty of other issues that all point to one solution: create news and events items as the updates happen - not months or weeks later.
Here is what we recommend instead of creating newsletter PDFs
- If you have an upcoming event, use the event content type to promote it.
- Share this on your social channels.
- Once it happens, create a news story to show people what happened at the event. You can also just create a news story whenever you have an update, it doesn’t need to be about a particular event.
- Here’s some guidance on writing a good news story for your website.
- Once again, share this on your social channels to drive users to your website.
Now instead of spending time every month or few months creating a newsletter, you have an active news feed that you can simply share a link to if people want to see what you have been up to.
Chances are, you are already keeping a log of what’s happening in a document somewhere. This way, instead of hiding inside that document for weeks, the world can know about your event or news when it’s most relevant.
If you’re adamant that a newsletter format is needed, try Microsoft Sway. A customisable drag and drop template that doesn’t rely on the user needing to download anything.
It is also a lot more user-friendly for editors than editing a Microsoft Word document.
Here are some fantastic examples of active news and events feeds on UL.ie for inspiration:
Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Graduate and Professional Studies
Long story short: Newsletter PDFs are old news.