So you've recently launched an internal newsletter? Congrats! This is a great way to improve your team's workflow and keep co-workers motivated. Although you've taken the first step to create your newsletter, the hard work doesn't stop after you've built your first issue!
In order to really keep your team engaged, it's important you maintain your newsletter and keep it relevant and interesting for them. Here are some easy ideas on how to achieve this without breaking a sweat...
Introduce new content
One way to make sure that your company newsletter remains interesting is by regularly introducing new content and sections to the newsletter layout. This prevents your newsletter from becoming boring and monotonous and encourages your team to keep opening it when they see it in their inbox.
Ideas
There are countless examples of content which you could be including in your newsletters each week/month/etc. Fun and engaging content such as quizzes, competitions, thought of the day segments, employee of the month, book/film recommendations, recipe ideas, etc. Get creative!
Keep things relevant
Following on from this, one useful tip is to try and keep your newsletter content relevant. Don't just recycle old stories or features you've used in the past, try and actively search out content which you know is relevant to the time of year or what's going on in the news.
Ideas
You could start polls or a discussion board based on controversial news stories, or, if there is a holiday coming up (e.g. Christmas or Easter), try and incorporate that into the theme of your newsletter. Even the smallest mention of something seasonal will be enough to keep your team interested in the content and get the office talking.
Include topical and seasonal themes into your newsletter to make it more relevant.
Include a mix of content
Another important thing to consider is the balance between work-related information and lighthearted content. Too much of one or the other can make your newsletter seem either too boring or not informative enough. You need to try and find the perfect balance to make sure your co-workers are benefitting from the newsletter.
Ideas
Start your newsletter off with the most important, work-related information (e.g. upcoming meetings, events, new protocols, new employees.) When those things have been covered, you can get started on the more lighthearted, social aspects of the newsletter. This way you're clearly prioritising work matters without compromising on fun!
Play with the style
Although we recommend you try and stick to a trusted format in order to make the editing process easier, there's no harm in trying to spice things up a bit if you feel your newsletter layout or color scheme needs to be updated. A small refresh every now and again might be all your newsletter needs to remain interesting.
Ideas
You could try adapting your theme to the different seasons in order to make your newsletter as relevant as possible. Mail Designer 365 has tonnes of creative tools which you can explore to make this happen. Try including a seasonal mood picture for each newsletter - you can find all you need in the Unsplash library in the app.
To keep things interesting, update your design with imagery which reflects the seasons.
Find out what your team is interested in
Of course the most effective way of finding newsletter content which your team is interested in is to directly ask them what they want to hear about. Once you know the type of content your co-workers enjoy and don't enjoy, it will be much easier for you to refine your newsletters to their taste.
Ideas
There are many websites like Google Forms which allow you to quickly create a survey or questionnaire for free. Use this to send to your co-workers to find out more about their interests. The key to this is to keep the survey as brief as possible so staff are more willing to give up their time to fill it in.
Send a survey out to your team to get their feedback on your newsletter.
We hope you'll test out some of these ideas when you're putting together your next internal newsletter. The more you try to keep things interesting, the more of a success your newsletter should be with your co-workers!
Give Mail Designer 365 a try today for free...
