Quick Summary: A print or email newsletter can be an ideal way to explain your organization’s initiatives and impart valuable insight to employees. With a little planning and creativity, yours can be on target.
The internal newsletter is an ideal way to communicate with employees about health, wellness and benefits issues. Problem is, many of these publications are produced arbitrarily (“Do we have enough content this month?”) and unsystematically (“See if HR will give us an article on health benefits!”).
The best newsletters function much like quality city newspapers, filled with perspective that recipients use to make informed decisions. If you’re considering launching or enhancing an internal newsletter to better communicate with employees, follow these strategies:
- Set your goals prior to publishing. Even if you’ve been producing a newsletter for a long time, reassess its purpose. What do you hope to gain from producing it? “Newsletters should communicate information about the organization, its programs, services, and plans, but it should also solicit action,” says Norwin Merens, managing director of NM Marketing Communications Inc., Glenview, Ill. “Know what you want staff to accomplish as a result of reading.”
- Survey employees. Treat employees like a valuable trade magazine views its readership. Find out what topics are most likely to resonate with them, and tailor your messaging and content to accommodate those needs, wants, and interests.
- Consider your organization’s culture. “If you’re a straight-laced suit-and-tie-on-a-Friday company, you don’t want the newsletter written in a hey-dude style,” says Michael Katz, president of Blue Penguin Development, Hopkinton, Mass. “Imagine you are on a two-day company retreat. How would employees interact? Is the environment formal or casual? Match the voice of your newsletter to that style.”
- Develop a content outline. This will help you stay on track in each issue and keep your strategy in mind. Each issue should have familiar features or sections; think of them as magazine departments. “Companies are always surprised and ask, ‘Why aren’t employees reading this?’” Katz says. “The truth is, employees won’t read [a newsletter] if it won’t help them.” He suggests printing employee contributions in sections designed for reader feedback. “This lets employees see that you want the newsletter to be interactive,” he says.
*********************************************************************************************
Content ideas
- A short Q&A with an employee who exemplifies a positive aspect of your health care insurance plan.
- A report on an upcoming service/program launch, event, or staff activity that can drive participation in your health programs.
- A message from your president, giving employees an inside view of your organization’s vision.
*********************************************************************************************
- Entice readers with compelling “blurbs.” Placing a punchy Table of Contents on the cover page (of a printed newsletter) or at the top (of an emailed newsletter) helps to increase the number of pages and stories your staff reads.
- Include short, meaningful articles. Your employees most likely will only scan snippets and brief articles that catch their attention. If you do include longer stories (more than 350 words), break them up with graphics, white space, pull quotes, and short paragraphs.
- Organize an idea file. The best time to plan future issues (other than right after sending the current one) is when you’re not thinking about your newsletter at all. “You may be responding to email, looking for information online, speaking to a colleague on the phone, etc. If a URL on another site sparks an idea, immediately cut and paste it into a ‘running ideas’ file on your hard drive,” suggests Debbie Weil, an online marketing and corporate blogging consultant based in Washington, D.C.
- Make design a priority. Collect as many newsletters as you can and lay them out on a conference table. Separate them into piles (great, good, ugh), and gather a representative group of employees to examine what they like and don’t like about the designs. Make a list of the graphic treatments that work well, and the font styles the group finds most easy to read. (If your organization has existing brand colors, using these throughout your piece will reinforce your message.)
- Think of the reader when choosing a font. In print newsletters, use sans serif fonts (for example, Arial) for headlines, and serif fonts (such as Times New Roman) for body copy. Serif fonts are easier to read in body copy. For e-newsletters, fonts are sans serif for reading on screen. Body copy is best at 10-point and up to 12-point, depending on the age of your audience. Larger fonts are easier to read for anyone who needs glasses for reading.
- Decide whether your print edition should be in two or four colors. With today’s print technology, the cost to print in full color is about the same as two colors once you reach a certain quantity (typically a few thousand). Ask your print supplier for a quote based on your quantities to see where your threshold lies.
- Publish regularly and set deadlines. Although other responsibilities may take precedence—and you can’t plan for the unexpected—develop a regular production schedule. Printed newsletters can be produced monthly, every other month or quarterly. To stay on course, set firm deadlines for collecting article ideas, turning those into drafts, dropping the copy into your design template, fact-checking and printing a hard copy for final proofing.
- Consider outsourcing the project. If you have an internal marketing or communications team, you may have ample resources for producing the newsletter’s content and design. But many small to midsize businesses and nonprofits assign the project to clerical staff and receive unprofessional results. If you don’t outsource currently but seek options, ask colleagues for referrals to freelance writers or marketing agencies familiar with your industry. Don’t hire one until you review portfolios and check references. Pick a partner who’s willing to commit to a year’s worth of issues and ensure that you have an agreement on deadlines and commitments.
Next steps:
- Question your goals in producing a newsletter. Is your current publication meeting those goals? If not, rethink your newsletter.
- Ask a representative group of employees to help develop or revise your internal newsletter.
- Consider working with a company that creates corporate newsletters. Then you can customize as you wish and leave the content and production to the experts.
Hope Health, All Rights Reserved
