If you're old enough to know your total cholesterol count off 
the top of your head (217), you may remember a man by the name 
of Jim Fixx. 

Fixx gained prominence in 1977 with the publication of his 
book, The Complete Book of Running, and is widely credited with 
single-handedly starting the jogging craze in this country. 
Unfortunately, Fixx died suddenly in 1984. 

Hearing what had happened, my Aunt Esther — a woman known for 
sometimes not quite getting her facts straight — gave me the 
news: "The guy who invented running died." 

Admittedly, a bit of an oversimplification. However, with those 
six simple words she had captured the essence — if not the 
absolute factual truth — of the story. Before Fixx's book came 
out, running around the neighborhood for exercise was not a 
common practice, and in many ways, he had "invented" running. 

I'm here to tell you that when it comes to effective 
communication with an audience, my Aunt Esther had it 
right — essence matters more than facts. 

How many times have you been forced to endure 85 slides worth 
of a speaker's Power Point presentation, getting to the point 
where you start looking for a way to unobtrusively take your 
own life? Invariably, the problem isn't that the data is wrong 
or even lacking in value, it's that it's delivered in a way that 
is too detailed and too convoluted for the average human being 
to digest. You arrive eager to learn something, but the delivery 
itself gets in the way. 


Many newsletters suffer from the same "good information; poor 
delivery" syndrome. The facts are there, but the reader is not 
able to — or not interested in — finding them. With that in 
mind, I offer some suggestions for being heard and appreciated: 

1. Pick one idea. I always find it kind of funny that the 
   biggest worry people have about producing a newsletter is 
   "running out of content," and yet the biggest problem I see 
   is "too much content in each issue." You don't need to 
   explain your entire field of expertise in each issue any 
   more than you need to review everything you know each time 
   you eat lunch with a client. Break it up into little pieces. 
   You'll have more content to choose from next time and your 
   readers will find it easier to hear your message. 

2. Boil it down. An E-Newsletter is really just a glorified 
   email, and mixed in with all the jokes, appointment 
   confirmations and pieces of information that fly into our 
   respective in-boxes every day, this is not a medium that 
   lends itself well to lots of detail. Be prepared to edit, 
   simplify and throw out information on your way to getting 
   to the heart of the matter. 

3. Speak like a human being. I don't know who started the rumor 
   that business communication must be formal to be valuable, but 
   it seems to have caught on nonetheless — that's an opportunity
   for you and me. Your readers will find it a breath of fresh 
   air to "hear" the people behind the newsletter. Nobody is 
   interested in reading one more "critical communication" from 
   a company that claims to be, "the leading provider of cross 
   platform broadband solutions" (or whatever). If you can't 
   read your newsletter out loud to your spouse without bursting 
   out laughing, you've got too much marketing-speak in there.


Bottom Line: You've got 800 words of opportunity each month to 
get your message across. Sure you've got to have something useful
to give your audience, but remember that these people are busy, 
tired and often just plain bored. Make your publication the one 
they wait for and you'll never again live in fear of the delete 
key. 

Michael J. Katz is Founder and Chief Penguin of Blue Penguin
Development, Inc., (http://www.BluePenguinDevelopment.com) a 
Boston area consulting firm that helps clients increase sales by 
showing them how to nurture  their existing relationships, and 
that specializes in the development of electronic newsletters.
He is the author of the book, E-Newsletters That Work.