Five Internal Newsletter Ideas to Spice Up Your Company Publication

With so many email messages to read and respond to, as well as a lot of internal memos to read and understand, not to mention the tasks they have to accomplish on a daily basis, employees are always short on time. If you’re part of an internal communications team, you should realize how busy your colleagues are and how their schedule prevents them from reading your internal newsletter from start to finish.

So are there any internal newsletter ideas that you can try in an effort to increase your paper’s readership? Or will you just accept the fact that your colleagues are too busy to find time and read your newsletter?

The following five internal newsletter ideas you can consider for your company newsletter:

1. Keep it simple. As mentioned earlier, employees are pressed for time that they won’t likely read a kilometric essay. The articles should have short sentences and paragraphs. If you break down the articles into short sentences and paragraphs, the easier it is for the readers to digest the information.

2. Be less formal. Unless there’s a company policy that forbids conversational writing in the internal newsletter then it is more advisable to use a casual tone instead of formal writing. This way, the newsletter will be more engaging to read. It’s as if an employee is just conversing with another colleague.

3. Make it more humorous. Another reason why employees aren’t exactly fond of reading newsletters is because they see it as a very formal form of communication, not unlike an annual report. Make things more interesting by the way you present news.

For example, a recently held manager’s meeting is usually reported in a straight news article. But why don’t you add humor-laced comments along with candid shots taken during the event? This would make it more interesting for employees to read the entire article, instead of just scanning it.

4. Use more photos and visuals. Speaking of photos, your team should consider putting more photos and images whenever applicable to make the newsletter more interesting and visually appealing. Just put yourself in the shoes of your readers. Would you even spend time reading something that appears as lengthy blocks of text on a white background?

But by adding more photos, stock illustrations, and infographics, your pages will become more engaging. Your readers won’t be bored reading corporate updates or have difficulty understanding your company’s financial figures if you can include graphics or charts in the pages.

5. Include more employee stories. One proven way to engage your readers and make them more interested in your newsletter is to come up with more employee stories. There are surely more interested in learning about the exploits of their colleagues outside the office. With the number of employees in your office, there should surely be a lot of stories to share.

Focus on human interest stories. Like, a story about a second or third generation employee, or someone whose parent or grandparent used to work in the same firm. Perhaps there’s an employee who has a unique hobby he or she pursues during the weekends? Or stories about how employees spend their weekends—teaching kids, serving as volunteers, and the like.
The employees’ stories section should be made a regular section so that your readers will look forward to each and every issue of your publication.

You can be sure that your readers will be more interested in what you have to share with them if you employ any of these internal newsletter ideas.