Company newsletter - will it also be useful in your company?

A company newsletter can be a great internal communication tool in many companies and significantly improve cooperation between individual departments. Still, a well-integrated team can bring many benefits to a company. However, how to create a company newsletter that will prove to be an effective tool in internal communication of the company? We'll tell you what you need to know before choosing a brochure like this one.

Company newsletter - will it work in every business?

At the beginning, it is worth asking yourself whether the company really needs it. A company newsletter is, above all, a very good communication tool in large companies where employees of individual departments have little contact with each other. In small companies - a few, a dozen or even several dozen people, the bulletin seems to be a surplus, because most often everyone knows each other well and the transfer of information about the company or other employees is not significantly hindered in any way. However, when your company consists of quite hermetic departments, focused on their own work and rarely communicating with others, a corporate newsletter can be an effective form of integration.

Who should edit the corporate newsletter?

When considering introducing an internal newsletter in your company, you also need to consider the costs it will entail. It may not only be about the funds that you spend on the company newsletter, but also about the number of tasks that will be added to the employees. You have three solutions:

• You can outsource the editing and issuing of the form to an external agency that will cooperate (usually) with the PR department of your company.

• Editing can be done by your company's employees, and publishing can be outsourced to an external agency.

• Editing and publishing will rest on the shoulders of your company's employees.

The first solution is associated with higher costs, but your employees will not be burdened with a large number of additional tasks. In the second and third solutions, you reduce costs, but the employees will have a lot of more responsibilities. However, a company newsletter may not have a printed version at all - limiting yourself only to the electronic version made available to employees via the intranet allows you to generate significant savings.

What goals does the company newsletter pursue?

We mentioned at the beginning that the internal bulletin is an excellent tool for internal communication and that is how it is used in almost all companies. Therefore, they are facing two overarching goals: integration and education.

Integration tasks are fulfilled by the company newsletter by building relations between the company (management) and its employees, as well as relations between the employees themselves. Its educational value consists primarily in the possibility of informing all employees of the company about what is currently happening in the company and what selected departments are working on. In addition, you can also use it to educate employees in specific areas, especially those that require fairly frequent updating of knowledge.

Assemble the editorial team to write your corporate newsletter

Let's assume that you decide to edit the newsletter internally - the basis is therefore to complete the editorial team. Most often, the task of keeping an internal brochure is assigned to employees of the department dealing with internal communication, sometimes to PR specialists or advertising specialists. When completing the team, it is worth considering employees who have editorial or related experience. It is good to join the team of people who have extensive contacts in the company, which will allow them to acquire interesting information. If you publish a newsletter in-house, put someone on the team who has experience in using programs such as InDesign and graphics programs.

However, if you use an external agency to some extent to issue your newsletter, make sure that it cooperates well with your employees. In the case of commissioning the editorial office and issuing the agency's corporate newsletter, arrange a meeting with your PR department - let the frequency of information flow to the agency, its scope, etc. . As in press editorial offices, convene editorial boards, during which proposals for topics for upcoming issues will be discussed within the team and the latest newsletter will be analyzed.

What to write about in the company newsletter?

The range of topics that you can cover in the company newsletter is really quite big. At the beginning, remember about two basic issues - the company newsletter should follow the strategy set by the company, and should not contain content that would in any way be detrimental to the company or potentially detrimental to it. The newsletter can be sent both to people who are not directly related to the company and to the competition.

Before deciding what content to include in the newsletter, analyze what would be most interesting to the company's employees and what their information needs are. In the beginning, an interview or a poll will be best. In addition, be sure to ask employees for feedback on especially the first issues of the newsletter - this will make it easier for you to create a brochure that will attract a lot of interest in the company.

A company newsletter should not be the mouthpiece of management, although unfortunately this is often the case. The management board should have its own column, but it cannot dominate the entire journal. When selecting the rubrics, pay attention to the variety of topics - texts do not have to be relevant strictly companies, but they can also talk about interesting passions of employees, about industry news, etc.

When creating texts, try to establish a network of contacts with people from different departments of your company. Thanks to this, you will gain a variety of company information in each of the newsletter issues, although it can also be a foundation for the cycle - in each subsequent issue there will be a presentation of a different section. Also, encourage the company's employees to tell an interesting story from their lives - maybe one of them will find its way to the newspaper? The company newsletter can also be used to distinguish certain employees for their successes - it is always a pleasant feeling to read about yourself in a positive context. Such a distinction will positively influence the motivation of employees.

How often should the company newsletter be published?

First of all - it should be published systematically, in equal frequency. It depends on many factors, but it should be assumed that a company newsletter should be published not more frequently than every month and not less frequently than every quarter. As for the length, it depends on the possibilities of the editorial team and the number of diverse and interesting texts - most often it does not exceed a dozen or so pages, although there are newsletters of several dozen pages.

A company newsletter is an excellent solution for large companies, where it will be an important bridge between different departments of the company. You've learned principles that we hope will help you create a great in-house brochure. Every year, the Company Newsletter Competition is organized in Poland - we hope that you will also triumph in the next editions!