Company newsletters have come a long way – from serving as the ‘corporate voice’ for employees and to highlighting the culture and conscience of an organization. In a world where the boundaries between what gets communicated internally and externally have blurred significantly, there are opportunities and challenges to curate a narrative that is authentic, engaging, and relevant for a diverse group of audiences that seek insights about organizations. Therefore, the Linkedin ‘Article’ feature is a good option to tap what already exists for professionals networking on Linkedin. It is way to showcase thought leadership, make a commitment to engage, build a community and inspire conversations.
From a company’s standpoint, it is an opportunity to highlight culture, people, programs and practices – most of these are harder to surface though one-off social media posts. Giving followers the option of signing up to the periodic updates, allows them the ability to get content on demand and gain active followers.
Not just that, the newsletter allows the firm to cross-sell services, products and content that may have been lost in the clutter or missed by the audience.
By tagging staff who are your strongest brand advocates, you are also providing them the ability to share and propagate the company’s messages in a consistent and consolidated manner. Just a word of caution – tagging needs to be preceded with education about social media guidelines and the implications of data protection as well as privacy.
Other advantages include recognizing staff, encouraging dialogue, gauging perceptions about the company’s image and increasing followers and membership.
Tips to get your newsletter right.
- While creating a list of topics, have a balance of business content and user-generated content.
- Use the banner image creatively to spotlight key events, causes that organization values, and supports. Likewise, rope in employees who have a strong presence on Linkedin to support as content curators and advocates
- Do a test run with a group of employees to gauge relevance and curate content that matters. You will be amazed at the brilliant ideas and inputs you can get just by crowdsourcing suggestions for improvement
- Review the top stories and which are most suitable for your audiences. On Linkedin, the audiences are broader, so appealing to everyone will be much harder. Focus on key constituents that matter.
- Review the dashboard and analytics to understand how the newsletter is faring. Are you getting more likes than ‘celebrates’ or is the CTR above average compared to your regular posts? Which audiences are viewing the content most?
Adding the company newsletter on Linkedin to your organization’s existing portfolio of channels is an avenue to build connection, engagement and conversations, which in turn builds stronger communities and associations with the brand.
Have other ideas? Interested to know what you think.
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- Learn: Internal Communications Fundamentals Course on Thinkific
- Internal Communications Series: https://forms.gle/KcqmPzLwq7NQi5Km6
- Chat with Aniisu – Internal Communications: https://www.instamojo.com/intraskope/connect-with-aniisu-60-minute-personalized-d/?ref=store
- Internal Communications workshops: https://bit.ly/2zdBRl1
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