Top Internal Newsletter Ideas to Inspire Corporate Communicators

There is no denying that a company newsletter is one of the most frequently utilized internal communication channels. It can serve multiple purposes, from communicating business goals, breaking down silos within an organization by sharing news and activities, reducing email overload, and reinforcing messages and information shared in other communication channels like email or intranet.

However, it can be quite a challenge for the PR or marketing department to create an engaging newsletter especially if it is their first time to publish one. Even internal communicators who have been in charge of the publication of a company newsletter can run out of ideas in making their newsletter engaging and appealing to their target readers.

If you’re looking for ways to spice up the content of your company newsletter, you might want to consider the following internal newsletter ideas:

1. Create A Section Exclusively About Employees

The best and fastest way to get the attention of employees is to publish articles about them. You can create a spotlight section that will focus on the staff. The stories could be about their interests and hobbies outside of the workplace. This should work because employees would likely read a story about a familiar face, or is “one of them.”

2. Incorporate Images and Graphics

Executives and rank-and-file employees are too busy to read a kilometric article about the latest HR policy, or a new program that the IT department is rolling out.

One of the best internal newsletter ideas is to incorporate images and graphics into the articles. Think of an eye-catching graphic that can summarize the thoughts of an article, like an infographic that shows the number of new hires and from which parts of the world, country or state they came from.

If you have an internal e-newsletter, you can look into the possibility of including videos and graphics that can capture the attention of your target readers, and make them spend a few minutes in reading the article.

3. Tips and Hints

Another of the practical internal newsletter ideas that you may want to try is giving tips and hints. Offer some free advice in each issue, like giving tips on how to be more social media savvy, how to achieve work-life balance, and staying healthy at work.

One good way to present these tips is to come up with a top ten or top five list, which would make it easier for the busy worker to digest the information.

4. Engage the Readers

Aside from devoting a section that is exclusively about the lives of employees, you can make them more involved in the newsletter by accepting letters to the editor or feedback on previous articles. You can also run a competition to name the newsletter, if you’re still in the process of putting up one.

You can also have quizzes with small prizes like restaurant vouchers and movie tickets. Or have a roving reporter to ask trivial questions like “which superhero would you like to be?”
You can also share some personal stories of employees, like engagements, marriages, and retirements, all geared at helping your audience to connect with your newsletter.

5. Change the Way the E-Newsletter Is Delivered

An employee newsletter could still end up buried and unread in the inbox. You can change the way how it is delivered to ensure that your readers will open it, and read the fruits of your hard work.

You can ask the IT department to run an interactive screensaver on employees’ desktop PCs to promote the latest edition of the newsletter. Or you can have scrolling headlines on their desktops.

6. KISS- Keep It Short and Sweet

Employees don’t have all the time in the world to read long articles. Plus, the fact that they’re at work means they will be probably interrupted when reading a company newsletter, or that they have shorter attention spans while in the office. All these contribute to them more likely skipping kilometric articles.

Keep your articles concise and direct to the point. Using more photos and graphics should also serve you well.

7. Make Layout Easy to Navigate

People are not only too busy to read long articles; they’re also too busy to deal with very complex navigation, or cluttered layout. Whether you’re running an e-newsletter or the traditional, printed newsletter, you must help your reader become more interested in your work by making the layout easier to navigate.

You should also pay attention to the use of colors, image-to-text ratio, and boxes that can make your newsletter more pleasant to the eyes.

In today’s fast-paced lifestyle, you can’t expect employees to spend an hour or so reading the company newsletter. But you can make them more interested in your work by following the aforementioned internal newsletter ideas. In the end, you can fulfill your role as a communicator in a much better manner.