Producing a Newsletter in an Hour a Week

June 06, 2017

Here at DesignHammer we’ve been looking at ways to efficiently generate content and distribute it. You may have seen the Reader’s Corner and Monthly Update blog posts over the past few months; these are the products of this effort.

The Process

We’ve put into place a new process in which we share the burden of content creation. Each staff member puts in about 15-30 minutes of time a week between the Reader’s Corner and Monthly Update content. This information is coordinated by using a variety tools including Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Forms.

The Products

Once the content is collected, Jeanette Larsen organizes it into complete blog posts which are hosted on this site. The Reader’s Corner blogs are added weekly, and the Updates blogs are added monthly.

 

Updates April 2017

The Distribution

In addition to posting the Monthly Updates as a blog, we’ve also been using MailChimp to mail the Updates out to our subscriber list. You can join that list by signing up for DesignHammer Updates. We’ll be sending out updates on new clients, new and ongoing projects, tools, our adventures around town, and more.

We’re also promoting the posts on our social media accounts. In order to make this process a bit less laborious, we’ve been using HootSuite to help manage it.

The Outcome

Well, actually, we’re not done yet. While we’re happy with the progress we’ve made, we’re also still committed to improving the quality of the content we produce and the process we use to produce it. As always, your feedback is a critical part of our work to improve our content.

NCTech4Good Presentation

We had the chance to share information about our monthly Updates at the 2017 NC Tech for Good conference presented by NCTech4Good. The conference is focused on advancing the mission of nonprofit organizations through technology, and was hosted at The Solution Center in Durham.

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