Do you want your employee newsletter to be eagerly read—or thrown in the trash? Find out what content is necessary to make your company newsletter a success.
#1. Highlight employees.
This may seem pretty basic, but companies often get so focused on conveying information they forget that by making employees the stars of the company newsletter, it will become an incredibly potent communications tool.
#2. Encourage feedback/submissions.
Encouraging feedback makes employees feel like they have a voice. Requesting submissions will make the design and layout a lot easier by consistently providing content for your employee newsletter.
#3. Use lots of photos.
A picture tells a thousands words—and it also makes your newsletters more engaging. Filling your employee newsletter with photos creates two benefits: 1) readers love to see their fellow employees, as well as themselves in print and 2) it makes your newsletter much more “friendly” to the employee (large blocks of text are intimidating and often skipped).
#4. Include “fun” content.
Time and time again, humor, cartoons, puzzles and the like are found to be among the favorite attractions of an employee newsletter. Even items for the kids will entice workers to take the newsletter home with them. If you can engage and entertain your audience, you will have a much better chance of communicating the “important” stuff.
#5. Include as many employees as possible.
Because seeing themselves and their coworkers in the company newsletter has such a positive effect on employees, always go for quantity. Whether it’s an in-depth employee profile or just a short mention of what may seem a rather insignificant (to you) achievement, by including as many employees in your corporate newsletter, you are maximizing employee goodwill with each issue.
#6. Publish your newsletter consistently.
Once you start your employee newsletter, be sure to stick to a regular production schedule. Employees will begin to look forward to the next issue and haphazard distribution will diminish the newsletter’s power.
#7. Provide a print newsletter.
An email newsletter may cost nothing to disseminate, but it is far less effective then a printed company newsletter that can held in the employee’s hands and taken home to show the family. People are deluged with emails these days and it’s just too easy to hit the delete button. Why spend the time and effort on a newsletter that does not get read?
Bonus Tip. While you can’t force your employees to read the company newsletter, a simple way to improve readership is to offer a contest in each issue. Readers can qualify to be entered into a drawing by answering a question or two—that will necessitate reading the company newsletter.
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