Pinterest. If you haven’t heard of it yet, you will soon (well now actually seen as you’re reading this…but you get my point).

Users of Pinterest can ‘organise’ the things they ‘love’ and ‘share all the beautiful things they find on the web’. A virtual pinboard.

Par exemple, I have a ‘Memories’ board on my Pinterest presence, my first memory is being in a lift on the Eiffel Tower, so I’ve pinned a picture of it to that board. One of my favourite albums of all time is Hotel California, so I might find a picture of the album cover, or find a youtube video of the title song and pin that to my ‘Music I love’…

My first taste of Slater came from a work experience placement – I must have enjoyed it. It’s great when you see real potential in a student. Our most recent visitor, Ferheen Karbhari, had been with us for a week a few months ago, and wanted another go. She was a great addition to the team, seemed to cope with our sometimes strange office humour and did worthwhile work while she was here. Here’s what Ferheen thought (and we didn’t make her say nice things, honest!)…

I have returned once again to Slater for some more work experience and to learn new skills with the challenging tasks provided by the great staff! Whilst being here for another week, I have taken on new tasks including, writing media releases, collating information…

One of the tools in the PR armoury has the potential to blow the opposition out of the water, but is often left in the file marked ‘afterthought’. It’s the humble but effective newsletter.

And whether you’re a voluntary body, sports club, school, SME or multinational, the thinking behind a newsletter is broadly the same.

Newsletters come in all shapes and sizes. Some are printed, some are emailed, some are left hanging on websites to be downloaded. Incidentally, all research points towards the combination approach of print and electronic as being the most effective in terms of response.

But what they generally share – or should share – is that they are communicating with a known audience: the people who receive your newsletter should really have some prior knowledge or understanding of…