Recently, a new client proposed breaking their employee newsletter into sections – basically, placing all the corporate news and information in one part of the newsletter and all the human interest pieces in another. It is a common thought and makes logical sense from an organizational standpoint. However, it is a mistake. Why? Because it virtually guarantees lower overall readership of your employee newsletter.
Think about the daily newspaper. Whether it’s the print or the online version, it is sectioned off into sports, business, entertainment, and so on. The average person goes right to the section he or she is most interested in and devours that. And in most cases they completely skip over many of the other sections. Well, when it comes to employee newsletters, the popular sections are the human interest stories – people naturally want to read about other employees and see photos of them.
The danger with creating separate sections is that your readers will simply skip right over it to get to the “good stuff.” The average reader is much more interested in reading about how a fellow employee saved a turtle in front of a school bus full of children than they are about changes to the company’s dental plan.
To avoid having employees miss the “boring” but important and often critical corporate information, don’t section if off and make it easy to skip. Instead, scatter this important information among all the human interest pieces that readers tend to focus on. So rather than burying that benefits update with several other “dry” pieces, put it across from the story about the family that was helped by several employee volunteers.
By mixing the “fun stuff” with the less interesting but important information, you force readers to take a look at ALL of the articles in your employee newsletter. The result? Readership is increased as employees end up reading pieces they may have skipped had they been cordoned off to the “boring” section.
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