Boring Newsletters
While surfing the Web, I came across a very interesting article from BizCommunity.com titled “Do Any of You Actually Read Your Company Newsletter?” (http://www.biz-community.com/Article/196/18/12132.html) BizCommunity.com is South Africa’s leading daily advertising, marketing and media news resource for the industry. The article talks about how companies often include pages of information in their newsletters and pictures about things like an employee having a baby, an employee getting married and trips employees take. The article points out that while some of these things may be interesting to some and not to others, and even though some of these things do have a place in the newsletter, companies need to be careful with spending too much time and too much space on these types of stories.
The article suggests that in order to make company newsletters more interesting, someone should be responsible for coordinating it, specifically someone who can write. Additionally, the article mentions that it is just as important to get some feedback from employees as to what they would like to read about. Company newsletters are used to communicate news in a timely and targeted manner to a company’s internal publics—their employees. Newsletters are a very powerful tool and are used to update employees on what is happening in other departments, stock prices, management initiatives, philanthropic and social events, special seminars for employees, etc. When newsletters are not interesting enough to catch an employee’s attention, and therefore, thrown away or not even looked at, the organization loses the opportunity to successfully get their message out.
In Chapter 9 of Cutlip, Center and Broom, it says that newsletters are the most common form of periodical publication. Moreover, Paul Swift, managing editor of the Newsletter on Newsletters said that “Newsletters are a medium that is here to stay… and grow… There is more value being put on targeting communication with the corporate world and between associations and their members, as opposed to mass media” (p. 239).
Knowing that newsletters aren’t going anywhere, it is extremely important that companies figure out how to use them effectively. Besides making someone from the communications department who can write responsible for coordinating the newsletter, how can public relations practitioners make newsletters more interesting? What things can be included in newsletters that could spark the interest of employees?
posted by Anonymous @ 11/30/2006 03:59:00 PM
4 Comments:
We all know most Americans have no attention span (including myself), so I think that Jenine brings up a valid point that newsletters have become boring to company employees. Also, Hyun Ji is right in saying that a simple audience analysis can do wonders for the readership of newsletters. By analyzing the interests of the employees, public relations can make the newsletters content more appealing. Human interest articles are usually quite popular, as well as anything unusual the writer may be able to find going on in the organization with the employees lives.
Another audience to analyze could be the families of the employees, who may also be readers. Growing up, my Mom always read my Dad’s company newsletter, he never read it, but she was always interested. Because of my Mom, my Dad knew what was going on, even though he was much more interested in sales. I would imagine that my family is not the exception; this probably goes on in other homes as well.
Also, layout counts! If I pick up a newsletter that is just some black print on white paper, I am not as inspired to read the whole thing. But if there are interesting titles and article placement, and maybe even some color, I might just read the entire thing. Because, “most organizations rely on newsletters to communicate news in a timely and targeted fashion” (Cutlip, et al, p.239), they should be working hard to guarantee that they are being read.
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My father is the head of the External Affairs division of KARICO; Korea Agricultural & Rural Infrastructure Corporation, and his company’s newsletter is always found in our bathroom magazine stack. Our whole family, with the exception of my baby brother, really enjoys reading the company’s monthly newsletter. Reading Jenine’s post made me think about the qualities of the newsletter that made me enthusiastic to find the “Hulksarang mulsarang” (which interprets to be “love earth and water; I promise it sounds and makes so much more sense in Korean!) stuck in the mailbox every month.
First of all, the newsletter is well tied in with the corporation’s mission and character. As you can guess from the name of corporation, KARICO focus on improving the agricultural environment to a modern standard and developing infrastructure so that the agricultural business can still make profit and contribute to the nation as well. The major theme and contents consistently embrace this mission. We can find feature articles informing readers about current issues within the corporation and the agricultural business in whole.
There are updates on what’s going on in other branches and their people, heart-warming stories of families, reminiscent articles combining nature and childhood memories, and entertaining factors such as beautiful pictures of the countryside sceneries, poems and essays written by professional writers euphonizing the beauties of our country’s nature and kindness if our people. With all this rich content, it’s hard not to anticipate the newsletter. You always find at least one article, picture, or essay that interests you.
The layouts and designs are also attracting. As Catherine pointed out, layout really does count. The font for the title on the page is always same, and they designed it almost as a logo. The photos are in high definition, and the color pallets used inside the newsletters are also rich and earthy, which is again consistent with the whole concept of the newsletter.
There are sections were employee participations are evident. Starting from interviews to letters to the editor, various contents are included monthly under different topics. Reply mails with survey items are included within the newsletter, and giveaways to employees are provided every month.
Finally, the newsletter meets the initial purpose: to inform the employees of the corporation in-depth information on what’s going on in the company, and boost employee morale. There are short stories of achievements of the month, prizes awarded, and corporate financial information.
The response rate of the monthly surveys is a little above 28%, which can be considered successful. Employees are fond of the corporations’ newsletter, and if you take a look into it, it didn’t take a whole bunch of extraordinary contents to amuse the readers. Newsletters are an excellent source to reinforce the relationship with internal publics who will play as an influential model to the external publics. A good newsletter, as Jenine, Hyunji and Catherine pointed out, does go a long way.
In addition to Hyun Ji, Catherine, and Min's points about what readers are interested in, layout/ design, and content, it's important to remember the way in which the newsletter is delivered affects the number of people who will read it.
Is it sent out over e-mail, or are hard copies distributed to each employee? Is the delivery method a company is currently using the most effective for your audience? I.E., if many of your employees do not have regular access to e-mail and printers, e-newsletters might not be the most efficent way of circulating the information. Once the design and content is matched to the audience, the delivery method must ensure that the newsletter finds its way into the employees hands.
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