Well, it finally happened – I have a real job! My temp job became permanent when the window manufacturer I’m working for liked me enough to place me in a marketing position – is a step up from the run-of-the-mill administrative positions I’ve had for the last eight years. So now I get to do fun stuff, like writing copy for marketing pieces and reviving the company newsletter! Yay!
I’ve worked on a newsletter before, but have never had a real say in what should be featured. I know that many people use their company newsletters as birdcage liner, and rightfully so. I’ve looked at back copies of the newsletter as it once was, and it was inconsistent at best – in design and in writing quality. Features that were on page 2 in the next issue were on page 4, etc. That really grated on me. Plus, like most newsletters I’ve read, the writers went waaaaay overboard on the exclamation points!!!
So…do you read your company newsletter? If not, why not? What would make you read it? If so, what do you like about it? What don’t you like? I’d really like to make mine kick-ass and worthwhile, so I thank you for your opinions.
Ok, I’ll admit that I will read the thing when it comes, but I am a compulsive reader. There is never anything worthwhile in them what so ever. The things that employees care about (Will my job still be here in 6 months? How about some raises? Which employee you would most like to see naked contests, etc) will never be there. Instead all you get is…blather. Pointless flattery pieces on people you’ve never met, pictures of some charity event, and a list of people who haven’t shot themselves after 10 years of employment. All in all, they are a waste.
The only thing I’d add, though, is: Learn AP style, Gundy. The content of the newsletter may be your basic hogwash (no offense to you, of course), but you at least can control how that hogwash comes across to the readers. Be as professional as possible-- like a newspaper. If it looks professional, at least people won’t point and laugh (as hard. ;))
Happy
Rule number one: Make it readable! This means grammatically simple - if you’re writing at a high-school level, dumb it down to about 8th grade, aka Executive Intelligence.
Also keep in mind that the newsletter will have approximately two seconds to make an impression upon potential readers. If something doesn’t grab them in two seconds, it’ll be dumped in the recycle bin.
Now’s the time to hammer out a graphic and stylistic format. I know this is hard when you’ve got 35 typefaces (aka fonts) available, but limit yourself to three typefaces. If you’re using the basic faces that come with Windows, yo can do well with Arial for headlines, Times New Roman for body text and Comic Sans for “artistic” uses. Other good header choices are Verdana, Tahoma and Trebuchet. Whatever you do, don’t use Arial here and Trebuchet there willy-nilly. It just winds up looking like you ran out of one and substituted with something “close enough” and looks bad.
If this will be distrbuted on-line as a Web page, stick to Arial and Times - anything else is apt to be substituted by the reader’s browser as Arial or Times if they don’t have that particular typeface.
I don’t read ours, but that’s becuase after working on it for a week or two I pretty much know what’s in it. I received the newletter responsibility about 5 months ago and so far have published 2 issues (it’s done quarterly). What I did to revamp it from the original design was to look in a variety of magazines & newspapers to get examples.
Things that I changed or added:
• Added accent lines along the left & right margins.
• Switched to a 3 column layout instead of a single column
• Placed feint lines between the columns
• Arial font for headlines, Times New Roman for everything else.
• Pictures are full columns instead of lying around on the page
• Switched from a cheap, fiber paper to a 100# gloss text paper
All of our employees found the new newsletter to be more professional looking, easier to read, and more timely (had a bad rep of being late). The general content is general news or happenings at our branches, customer letters, corporate news, all employment anniversaries, a list of all new employees, tidbits from our industry, anything else someone submits.
Our company just put out its first newsletter this month. It was okay. There was a spotlight on a certain department, which was kind of cool, since I don’t know everyone in the company.
I caught a glimpse of a newsletter for a company we just partnered with - man, it was like a real magazine! Personal stories of what employees do for fun, general corporate news, etc. It was pretty glossy looking.
Newsletters can be kind of kitschy, but I’ll still read 'em because they’re there.
Thanks everyone! (And thanks for the congrats, Zanshin!)
I know that I can’t do too much about the content – that is, it’s going to be mostly fluff and rah-rah. That’s okay, I think, as long is it’s written well, and I can write pretty well. One thing I know will be an issue is accepting submissions from other sources – I might have to re-write pieces, which will be a touchy subject, I’m sure.
The suggestions about keeping the overall look clean I will take to heart. I used to work for a neighborhood newspaper and the “editor” would go nuts with the fonts. It invariably looked like crap, and he wouldn’t change them despite my frequent attempts. Frank #2, do you find that a quarterly newsletter is frequent enough for your company? Timeliness has been an issue for the newsletter here, and I’m trying to find a balance between too-frequent and thus annoying, or too-infrequent and thus useless. Quarterly or bimonthly is what I’m leaning towards right now.
scout1222, that’s one of the features in the newsletter here too. I like it myself – this is a big enough company some departments are an utter mystery to me. I also like the announcement-type of features (births, marriages, etc.), but I hate hate hate the “guess who!” baby pictures of current employees. Yuck. That’s the kind of thing I’d like to get away from. It seems unprofessional to me.
Our newsletter will be both printed and distributed on the intranet, which presents some design challenges. Any suggestions there?
I can totally empathize with the compulsive readers. I’ll read anything put in front of me just to have something to do. Maybe I should start leaving the newsletters in the bathrooms or in the copier/fax rooms…hmm.
