Newsletters: Folds create snakes

If your newsletter uses vertical folds, it probably snakes text from the bottom of one column (or page) to the top of the next -- across the fold. While that's not bad for a printed publication, it's horrible for viewing electronically.

If you offer your newsletter to members by email or at your web site, avoid using a fold format. You will certainly fold the newsletter for mailing. That's not the issue here. It's the vertical fold built into a publication design that makes it hard to read online.

Below are two types of basic formats pulled from an actual newsletter (the tri-fold one) and a more user friendly one (no column snakes).

Vertical fold format

A vertical multi-fold format uses columns in which text must snake from one column to the next. Imagine the frustrating up-and-down scrolling you have to do to read that online. In the actual newsletter tri-fold example below, you also have to scroll horizontally to read the newsletter.

To make matters even worse for on-screen viewing, multi-fold publications, such as the one below, do not read properly from left-to-right. The numbers on the image show the actual publication page sequence.

Tri-fold format (reduced size pages from an actual newsletter):

A no-snakes format

You can use columns and avoid the snaking text and out-of-sequence on-screen viewing if you adopt a different format. The example below uses a two-column design but each column always reads straight down the page -- no snakes. You scroll back up to the top -- once -- to read the second column, but that's it.

This format also means that pages are never out-of-sequence for on-screen viewing.

No-snakes format:
The blue "bars" in the sample below indicate article headline text. The orange ones show placement of section heads. This design uses the wider left column for main articles and the narrower right column for standard sections (message from the Pastor, Calendar items, announcements, birthdays and anniversaries, etc.) Remember -- do not put complete birth or anniversary dates or members' full names online -- protect your members' personal data.

Be nice to your electronic friends ... use a format that has no column snakes. Avoid the vertical fold format whenever possible. You could, of course, convert a vertical fold format to a one-column one that reads straight down and use that for electronic viewing. But that takes time that you could save if the format were one without snaking column text. And that may result in an very wide column of text that's harder (slower) to read.

Podcasting trend goes down

The trend in podcasting is downward, when compared to video and blogs, says the "Will Podcasting Survive?" article at the Alex Iskold Technology Blog. Podcasting was an evolution of radio that never made it into our daily lives.

Sure, some "Pod people" downloaded podcasts so they could listen to music (or sermons) while they worked or played, and the idea of being able to subscribe to the audio files just like a blog was neat, but use of Podcasts never reached critical mass.

So you could download a thousand songs into a music player and listen to them anytime. But how often did anyone listen to all those songs? Did they become more like a partially ignored collection? Where was the interaction that a blog provides (assuming you want to comment on a posting)?

And yes, anyone with a computer microphone could create a podcast, but how many did so? Perhaps the average person didn't look at creating podcasts as all that easy. By comparison, commenting on a blog posting is very easy, though many people still just read and do not add comments. some reasons podcasting is on the decline:

• Multimedia videos are cooler than podcasts.
• You can scan a blog for what interests you, but not a podcast.
• You can interact with a blog posting.
• It's easier to jump to what you are looking for in a blog or video. Not so with a podcast.
• Reading a blog is more likely than listening all the way through a podcast.
• The content of a podcast is nearly always music or news. Blogs or video can be anything.
• Competition from commercial media. National Public Radio has podcasts. So does National Geographic, Comedy Central, ESPN, and many others. If you want to listen to streaming audio, you'd be more likely to stay with well-known content providers. On the other hand, many people enjoy reading the journaling and commentary by bloggers and video creators.

Podcasting has been "going out of fashion", Alex says. Today's "in" fad is "out" tomorrow. What impact does that have on church web sites?

• If you have limited resources, don't be too eager to adopt the latest "hot" new web gizmo. Instead, give it a hard look. Ask whether it looks like a fad or a long-term hit. Avoid the fads when you have limited resources.
• Carefully check what resources a new web feature would need -- people, equipment, time, expertise, and money. If you can't afford all the resources, don't adopt the new feature.
• If you really want to give a new feature a try, even with limited resources, look for ways to lessen the resource impact. Perhaps there is a way to "start small" that you can try out before deciding whether to jump in feet first.