| Home |
| About Us |
| Services |
| News & Events |
| Newsletter |
| Office |
| Articles |
| Contact Us |
|
Compton Communications"An Internet Communications Agency"
|
Articles
PDF may be your best bet for online newsletterPosted Saturday, August 10, 2002 When I put together my first seminar presentation on newsletters, I assumed most companies had a printed newsletter. Thus, the easiest way to get online is to produce a Portable Document Format using Adobe. Most major publishing programs such as PageMaker easily produce PDF versions. PDFs can be placed on the Website and readily emailed. Even better is to email the PDF hyperlink with a little introductory text about content or features. A PDF newsletter may be the best practice given a starting point of already having a print newsletter and a Web site. Make splashy intro page with PDF You can make the PDFnewsletter even splashier by bookmarking the index or creating hotspot links in the introductory graphic. If your newsletter is in magazine format, you can use the bookmarking tools either in your publishing program or Adobe Acrobat to create hyperlinks from the front page graphic to the articles inside. See example PDF. Advantages of PDF Adobe PDF format newsletters offer the benefits of exacting layout and design without having to use a complicated HTML editor program to make the newsletter into a Web page. One of the hardest tasks for most news editors is to produce the newsletter for printing and then have to redo the newsletter in HTML for the Web. The real strength of PDF is in producing newsletter that print well. Thus the reader is encouraged to print out your PDF newsletter and read it later. Adobe PDF newsletters are quick and easy method for use on the Web or in e-mail. PDF weaknesses on the Web PDF newsletters are made from publishing programs that are optimized for the printed page. This is a major weakness since on the computer screen text is hard to read. PDF copies of newsletters produced from PageMaker or Quark may have grayscale photographs rather than color, lack bookmarks or hyperlinks, and require page jumps or multicolumn scrolling. Many of these weaknesses can be overcome by optimizing the PDF newsletter before placing it on the Web. Since many print newsletters do not use full color photographs or color illustrations, you may have to rework your online newsletter. Where possible before producing the Web copy from your publishing program insert color photographs, add bookmarks from the article indexes and page jumps, add hyperlinks to URL addresses in the text. Once you select the option to create the PDF file for the Web, make sure you use Distiller so that the bookmarks and hyperlinks will be transferred. You should also select the option to optimize for the screen. If you do not produce the PDF file, you can add these touchups using Adobe Acrobat 5.0 to modify the PDFfile. Adobe Acrobat 5.0 allows you to add a number of interactive elements such as movies, sounds and forms that might not have been in the original printed verstion. Unfortunately, Acrobat allows you to make touchup changes to headlines and single lines of text. For major changes or editing you will need to go back to the original publishing program. Here is an example of an attractive newsletter done in PDF on the Web. Nibbles & Bits (Orange County) Preparing PDF for email If you optimize the newsletter and keep it relatively small (less than 500K) you can attach a copy to your email for those users that do not have ready access to the Internet. For all others, PDF files are easiest to send via email using simple text formats that link back to the PDF file on the Web site. Tip: Save two copies of the most recent newsletter on the Web site. Title one by the date/year (i.e. April2002.pdf and another by currentnl.pdf. Each month you overwrite the currentnl.pdf with the most current issue. Thus you will not have to change the frontpage or index hyperlink to keep the current newsletter available. But you will need to add a few items. Since the email will contain the link to the PDF file you will need to introduce the information to the readers. I usually do this by either copying the newsletter index from the PDF file with the bookmarks or creating a new listing of what is in the PDF file. Below is a sample PDF index for an text e-mail newsletter. -------------------------------------------- Compton Communications Newsletter Pioneers in Online Campaigning http://www.comptond.com -------------------------------------------- In this issue - April 2002 + About the newsletter Compton Communications presents newsletter tips + PDF may be your best bet for online newsletter If you have print version, PDF is just click away + Subscribe to Newsletter Tips Fill out the online form to subscribe ------------ View or print newsletter: http://www.comptond.com/pdfs/enewsApr02.pdf ----------- In order to view this newsletter you will need the Adobe Reader software. It is available free from Adobe. http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html ----------- If your viewer does not show links as clickable, then copy the URL address into your browser window. Notice that the lines are less than 65 characters long and that characters such as + and - are used to give structure. Admin instructions should be given in each email. A PDF newsletter is a Pretty Darn Friendly method of quickly assembling a newsletter when you producing a print version already. Other Links: Presentation on Newsletters |