{"id":1650,"date":"2024-06-24T15:00:04","date_gmt":"2024-06-24T19:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/?p=1650"},"modified":"2024-06-24T12:05:00","modified_gmt":"2024-06-24T16:05:00","slug":"most-of-your-constituents-could-get-an-f-in-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/?p=1650","title":{"rendered":"Most of Your Constituents Could Get an “F” in Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ll admit this is a provocative title, but a more “disruptive” one would be, “Who Reads Your School’s Newsletter?”\u00a0 The answer to that question\u00a0may be, “Not as many people as you think.”<\/p>\n

When new articles are published or previous ones are republished with updates on the SchoolAdvancement.com Web site, members of the Facebooks group get a posting with the title of the article, and the ability to click and read.\u00a0 A new weekly eNewsletter is being crafted, which will include a “teaser” portion of the article, and a “continue reading” link.\u00a0 If recipients are interested in reading more, they can then visit the link to the Web site to continue with the article.<\/p>\n

Therefore, if you’re sending your school’s constituents an eNewsletter, article previews should be formatted in the same manner, with the complete articles posted to a news section of your school’s Web site.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

1) By offering a link to the complete article, you can track which articles generate the most interest from your school’s constituent groups;<\/p>\n

2) If you send someone a publication with a lot of text, chances are it will never be read.\u00a0 SO many people today look at something with a lot of words and thinks, “I don’t have time for this;” and<\/p>\n

2) eNewsletters received by email will be deleted.\u00a0 By posting the articles to your Web site, they’re always searchable there.<\/p>\n

But what about those people who want a paper newsletter?\u00a0 To be blunt, especially today, they’re a drain on your valuable time and resources.<\/p>\n

Back in the days of the newspaper, complete articles had to be written, formatted for the size of the newspaper, and were more than likely continued on another page.\u00a0 Newsletters were just smaller versions of newspapers.\u00a0 If there were many important items to be shared, but only room for a few, editing was a necessity – to the point that some articles may have had to be omitted.<\/p>\n

However, if you still want to provide a paper accommodation for these folks, you could take a cue from a non-profit organization I used to work with.\u00a0 Their articles would be posted to the organization’s Web site, the eNewsletter created and sent to the email subscribers, and then the text of the articles would be copied and pasted into a Word document which would only be provided to the family if they requested it AND were willing to pay for a “subscription” to it.\u00a0 Then it could be mailed to the family requesting a paper document.<\/p>\n

Isn’t it interesting that it’s taken about 5 years for banks to realize this when sending your monthly account statements, and today, credit card companies are following suit.\u00a0 We just received a notification that if we don’t agree to paperless billing, then we’ll be charged $1.99 a month for a paper bill.<\/p>\n

But why would your constituents\u00a0get an “F” in reading today?\u00a0 If you’re still publishing “complete article” newsletters, it’s not that your readers are receiving a letter\u00a0grade in comprehension.\u00a0 It’s how<\/em> they’re reading your articles – in the shape of an “F.”<\/p>\n

The following comes from David M. Mastovich<\/span>, MBA, President of MASSolutions, an integrated marketing firm focused on improving the bottom line for clients through creative selling, messaging and PR solutions.\u00a0 It’s a segment from his publication titled, “Light Reading,” published over 10 years ago, on February 21, 2014.\u00a0 It still has validity today, and was the basis for generating my “Top Rules to Remember Regarding Today’s Consumers:”<\/p>\n

How do we read today?\"\"<\/em><\/p>\n

We don\u2019t.<\/em><\/p>\n

Even though you might have found the question interesting, a third of you are already moving on to something else.<\/em><\/p>\n

Whether reading (or should I say skimming?) online or print, we rarely finish a story or article. And we don\u2019t move smoothly from left to right as we follow the words across the page.<\/em><\/p>\n

Eye tracking research from web guru Jakob Nielsen shows that we sweep our eyes across the page in a pattern that is shaped like an F, starting in the upper left corner. We tend to take two horizontal swipes across the page, then swipe vertically down the left.<\/em><\/p>\n

Uh oh. We are now past the point (around 100 words) where more than half the original readers are gone. Wish you were here.<\/em><\/p>\n

David’s online resource can be found at MASSolutions.\u00a0 DISCLAIMER\/WARNING<\/strong><\/em><\/span>:\u00a0 If you visit David’s online resource, you may be offended by the title.\u00a0 If you’re easily offended, please think twice about visiting his site at https:\/\/massolutions.biz.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Michael V. Ziemski, SchoolAdvancement, 2014-2024 (Original Publication Date: 20140623)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ll admit this is a provocative title, but a more “disruptive” one would be, “Who Reads Your School’s Newsletter?”\u00a0 The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8119,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/MM-Purple.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ggCS-qC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1650"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7384,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions\/7384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}