The first issue of Otter was distributed on 12 June. We got some great feedback which will help us further develop Otter so it meets your needs.
We’d like to share it with you so you know what people are telling us, and hopefully to inspire you to drop us a line as well. We’re happy to hear from people who liked Otter; even more excited to get all your suggestions about what to include and what to improve.
On our Facebook page Linda said:
Your first newsletter is great – nice layout and content all around. I enjoyed reading it, thank you!
We had a couple of people click through to our 2 minute reader survey.
Congratulations to the team who has put this newsletter together, very interesting indeed!! A few comments, which I hope will be helpful.
With the interview, I wouldn’t have clicked through hadn’t I been so [keen] to read this first edition. I think you really need a strong purpose for it and a strong title, an interview that’s going to give the readers new information on a topic of interest (“experts interview” in specific areas/fields, academic & practisioners) – consumers opinions and inspiring people might be best kept for the blog or the readers tips section.
In the intro you say “sometimes it is hard to separate good advice from unhepful chatter” – in your “otters pick” section I felt something telling me why you thought this was “good advice” and not “chatter” would have been really helpful, maybe a bit of a synthesis telling the reader what sort of information I should be looking for and how this external link is going to address that, so that it is also Otter’s information and knowledge creation not just a repository of links.
Loved the ap [Seasons – ed] – downloaded and installed!). My very best wishes and looking forward to the next one!
Thanks for that – and you’ll be pleased to know we have some expert interviews in the pipeline as well as more from people trying to figure out how to do it right for themselves.
And Amelia from Melbourne got in touch by email
I thought Otter was fantastic by the way – the layout is really beautiful. I really enjoyed that there was an interview as well and lots of interesting features. Great work!
… as did Julia from Sydney
Congratulations on the first edition of Otter.
The design I think is excellent – great name, good look and feel.
I read the link about cheap kids clothing (really all our clothing is probably made in unsafe Asian sweatshops*). It was a shame that the link was to another site with stacks of advertising – though I still read the article and then wondered for a second where I was – of course linking to other sites makes sense, though you guys could have written a better article.
I would probably join ECA just because I think it is important to raise the issues. Time is against me looking at my personal email box & then to actually read – I would be more likely to follow posts to Otter on my FB page – this is strange because I resisted FB for so long.
Why not do an article on the new star food labelling system & encourage consumers to ask big food to reduce salt, sugar and saturated fat in their supermarket products? It would be great to see Otter encouraging consumers to demand their food was healthier – while it is good to choose fresh food etc, in reality eating out and buying biscuits etc is just part of a busy life, especially if you have to pack lunch for kids at school each day & have a billion snacks on hand for adolescents who are out there exercising constantly.”
We know that some people prefer their info by email, others on Facebook, yet others on Twitter etc. We’ll ensure most of our content gets on to Facebook. If you ‘like’ our page then it should show up in your time line, the Facebook gods willing, Or follow us on Twitter if that’s your thing.
*We’ll look into ethical kids clothing further in a few issues time. In the meantime shop ethical has a list of better clothing brands and outlets which include a couple of baby and childrens wear suppliers.
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