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This article was published in the March/April 2003 issue of Association
Publishing magazine (SNAP)
9 Ways to Motivate Contributors About the author
By David M. Freedman
About the author
Professional service firms and consultancies publish newsletters mainly to showcase their professional staff's expertise. Contributing articles to periodicals, along with giving speeches and participating in seminars and panel discussions, is an excellent way for professionals to prove that they know what they're talking about and can solve clients' problems.
But getting professionals to pause long enough to write an article for your newsletter, and do it on deadline, can be maddening. You, the newsletter editor, typically haven't the authority to make demands of busy professionals, especially those partners and superstars who add the most prestige to your publication's pages. They perceive that billable projects take priority over non-revenue-producing trivialities like marketing newsletters. They seem to have an endless stream of urgent matters, and whenever you try to ascertain whether they've made any progress on their assigned article, they're rushing to catch a flight.
If this is the kind of working environment you operate in, and you feel powerless to change it, you may as well go back to school and study to be a dentist
– they get paid well to pull teeth.
On the other hand, with a little creativity and a lot of moxie you can change the environment and acquire the power and support you need to produce your newsletter on deadline, without having to beg, cajole, or pester your contributing authors. Here are some tips:
1 Get support from the very top. First and foremost, you and/or your marketing director should ask the head of the firm for assurances that (a) he or she takes the newsletter's mission seriously, (b) the professional staff must regularly contribute articles to it, (c) the time that the professional staff devotes to writing articles is worthwhile for the firm and for the individual authors, and (d) their job performance evaluations depend partly on their fulfillment of their newsletter assignments. The head of the firm should convey these assurances explicitly to the professional staff, not just tell you, "Yah, yah, you have my support." If you do not get that kind of total commitment from the firm's leader, your newsletter will fail.
2 Meet personally with each author to explain or discuss the assignment. Before the meeting, conduct your due diligence: become familiar with the topic so you can offer editorial guidance. Help the author narrow the focus and identify the concerns of the target audience. Focus on what the audience needs to know (and articulate the benefits of the story), not on what the author wants to say.
3 Give the author a series of deadlines, not just one final, drop-dead date. The first deadline, for example, would be for completing an outline and/or summary; the next deadline would be for the first draft; next is a meeting with you to discuss necessary revisions; and finally the actual copy deadline. Have the author sign off on the deadline schedule, to make it "official." If you give just one drop-dead deadline, the author will wait until the last minute to write a first draft without the benefit of preliminary outlines, summaries or feedback.
4 Give the author sample articles, if possible. The author can use the samples as a model for style, length, or substantive approach.
5 Assure the author that you will, if necessary, edit the manuscript for clarity, style, grammar, punctuation, and spelling. But promise to let him or her review your revisions or corrections before publication.
6 If the author gets writer's block, offer to sit down and interview him or her on tape, then transcribe the tape and revise the transcript into article form. Then the author can further edit the transcript, which will save him or her the trouble of composing from scratch. This is especially comforting for first-time authors.
7 Use a subtle threat. If Superstar Expert keeps putting you off, ask him or her to recommend someone else who is a foremost expert on the subject, who might be able to write the article. Superstar Expert's ego will rally, and you'll see marked progress.
8 Ask for progress reports often. Remind author of deadlines. Let author know you're available to assist with research, transcribing, organizing, editing, interviewing, etc.
9 In your newsletter, make the author's byline and bio prominent. Use photos of the authors. Urge the head of your firm to congratulate each author publicly (at least within the firm) after each newsletter is published. In other words, give authors superstar status
– an incentive to write well.