Motorcycle Newsletter Help

[smokeFJR06]

Hello all! I ride with a group that has around 80 people on our mailing list. It was mentioned that it would be nice to resurect our newsletter. I was thinking of volunteering to put this together on a quarterly basis. We used to have a newsletter a few years ago, but I want to do something different. Previously, our topics consisted of, maintenance reports, upsoming events, bikes for sale, etc.

Here is where I need help. Does anyone else get newsletters from a bike group that you wouldn't mind sharing? I need some new fresh ideas please. And if you just have some suggestions for topics, or anything else, that would be greatly appreciated as well.

Also, I'm looking for suggestions on publishing software that does a nice professional looking job and has lots of tools to make creating a newsletter as simple as possible. The document would probably be sent via email in pdf format. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Smoke

 

[Warchild]

Would this be for a bike-specific email group, or a melting pot of all kinds of bikes?

 

[kulwen]

The fact they are reading the news letter leads me to believe the reader does not mind, or enjoys reading about motorcycle content. How about a single book review per news letter? It is not uncommon to see a gear review in magazines, why not have a reading material review?

 

[smokeFJR06]

Would this be for a bike-specific email group, or a melting pot of all kinds of bikes?

It's all kinds of bikes....men and women riders.

 

[FatNakedGuy]

even those little pit bikes?

 

[radman]

Put a naked wimmin review in it-bet you sell the hell out of it.

 

[Murph]

+1 on John's book review idea.

 

[Murph]

I'm running MS Office Word 2007 and there are a variety of newsletter formats available for free automatic download from Microsoft. For example, I just downloaded a slick-looking 6 page newsletter with 2 columns per page and was able to simply save it as a PDF. Don't know if you're running Office 2007 but, if so, this appears to be simple.

Good luck!

 

[TheAxeman]

Throw a little section in there with GPS files of favorite rides in the area, maybe with some links to eateries, "must see" places etc....

 

[luvtoride]

Take a look at this cycle e-news bulletin to possibly find some inspiration. It's a pretty popular & successful bike enews letter.

 

[FatNakedGuy]

and have a slot for guest LD Rider to share tips, etc

 

[BigOgre]

Just yesterday checked out Backroads which was profiled in the last American Motorcyclist. Probably will give them a try for a year. One idea I thought looked smart was what I think they called tear-offs or rip-outs or something like that. They reviewed a ride, maybe a day trip to a point of interest, and then dedicated one page for turn-by-turn directions, just like you'd write out to slip into the top of your tank-bag. Simple idea and I could see myself holding on to them for sometime in the future.

Never did the link thing but maybe this will work.

https://www.backroadsusa.com/Home.html/Home.html