Getting customers is far from easy, but retaining them is even trickier. A good newsletter, on paper or screen, can be very useful. Mike Fuller, UK marketing manager at IT integration program specialist Intersystems, is a firm advocate. "It's useful to be able to share news when it's good, or put a particular perspective onto other news," he says, shying away from the term "bad news".

In fact, Fuller has worked for two companies that did not produce an internal newsletter. "They just arrived anyway, forming organically like underground newsletters," he says. "It is really important for staff to be kept informed."

Staff generally want to know about the company they are working for. The difficulty is that so many people assume it is going to be simple to communicate. Fuller uses a PR company, WhiteOaks, to write his newsletter. "A third party is useful, as they'll often see opportunities and things that are of interest more clearly than you do yourself," he says.

Some handle the task internally in the belief that it is easier than it actually is. Hazel Butters, proprietor of communications business Prompt PR, says she has seen too many newsletters go out to staff and clients that are "knocked together by semi-literate marketing executives with scant regard for design, readability, interest and spelling/grammatical accuracy". But what are the problems with these outpourings?

"They just don't make them interesting enough. They're supposed to be newsletters, but people say they haven't got any news yet they want to put a newsletter out," Butters says. Tellingly, she believes, they don't look at what other people actually read.

"They don't try to make the style, pace or content anything like the newspapers or magazines people actually read. It looks like a piece of marketing collateral with an extra logo on the top. Then they say people aren't taking their newsletters seriously when they haven't taken them seriously themselves," she says.

Naturally any journalist is going to echo this and will lay it on a bit thick about just how difficult it is to craft a piece of prose that will look professional and accessible. But there are a number of rules that will help to make a publication readable:

· remember the "pyramid structure". The main meat of the article goes into the first paragraph, then the detail is expanded, then expanded more and so on until the end;

· be grammatical. This doesn't mean be starchy - it means make sure that everything is comprehensible. Starting the odd sentence with "and" won't hurt - nor will splitting the odd infinitive, but confuse the reader and you have a problem;

· consider whether you'd bother reading the piece you've just written in your own time. If you wouldn't, then rewrite it;

· bullet points are useful for clarity.

Outsourcing to someone whose job is in communication is a useful option. Here the brief is crucial. If you get it wrong, the publication is bound to come out badly. Nigel Penn Simkins is the director of design company Designation. He says the best results come to customers who are prepared to listen.

"One of our customers is a management consultant who will often write something and we'll tell them if it isn't working. They prefer that to us printing something dull," he says.

Companies should have an objective in mind. You will want to know whether your newsletter is working - and if you haven't determined what it should be doing, then you won't know.

Explore the software options

Chances are many readers from smaller companies won't want to invest significantly in software to make a newsletter look professional. Programs like Quark, PageMaker and InDesign are excellent, but like a camera that costs thousands, if you don't know how to use it, you can come out with some very expensive amateur holiday snaps.

It's probably better to focus on getting the content right first. Microsoft Publisher costs under £100 and enables you to perform basic page layouts. It also has some pre-loaded newsletter templates into which you can drop your logo if you have it on disk. Serif Page-Plus is even cheaper and has a number of similar options.

If you are keen to use graphics - and whatever they claim, the ones that come with cheap design packages can look a little low-budget - then a program specialising in that area like CorelDraw will give your newsletter a bit of a lift.

Don't forget, though, the "Kiss" principle: keep it simple and straightforward. You might be able to use 150 fonts in a single page, but the reader won't want to see more than one or two. Similarly, if you're using ClipArt, try to stick to a single style so the document has a sense of coherence.