Despite company guidelines that encourage lively and clear writing, the pieces I edited were full of reader turn-offs:

• The passive voice:  “The session was facilitated” or “responses were received.”
• Unnecessarily big words: “Facilitate” a session vs. “lead” a session; “utilize” vs. “use”; “precipitation” vs. “rain and snow.”
• Unnecessary extra words: “In order to” and “as a result of.”
• Buried leads: Taking too long to get to the point by including a lot of details about location, time or who was involved, for instance, instead of giving some idea of what was important about the article and why the reader should care.

In fairness, I think some of the articles were submitted by people who weren’t in communications. All the more reason it made sense to hire a professional to tweak the articles before publication.

Photo credit: Daryll Jann Bumanlag via Flickr and Creative Commons.

My first reaction was dismay. No matter what the format, print or electronic, twice a year is just too little to engage employees.

It’s possible employees were getting all the information they needed online or in person. If that was the case, you could certainly reduce the frequency. And in that case, you might as well just go with once and make it an employee annual report. But it didn’t sound like that was the situation, especially when it appeared employee engagement was an issue.

Like many areas of communications, the answer to newsletter frequency appears to be the not-so-helpful “it depends.”

• You want your publication to be seen often enough that it’s familiar, maybe even expected or anticipated, but not so often that it’s annoying.
• You want the content to be timely enough to be useful, but not so infrequent that it’s out of date.
• You want it to complement the information available elsewhere (online in the case of print), providing the background and perspective, rather than rehashing the once fast-breaking news that has become old news.

To answer the “how often” question more precisely, go back to your strategy and the reason for the publication. And notice I am talking here about any kind of publication, print or online. How often do you need to publish to serve your purpose?

• Once is fine for an annual report, but few purposes would be served by twice a year.
• Monthly is a nice regular way to keep employees informed and to encourage a connection to the company. Update:  E-newsletter expert Michael J. Katz says, “I prefer monthly because it’s frequent enough to give you a presence in the minds of your readers, but not so much that the effort will overwhelm you.”
• Quarterly isn’t bad if you have lots of regular content online.
• Short, weekly or even daily updates might work, too, if your company is undergoing major upheaval.
• Update: Respected strategic communications expert Les Potter, ABC, says this: “Communicate frequently. A more frequent and cheaper production value publication is always better than a more expensive, less frequent publication. If you can afford it, you could have a frequent newspaper-style employee publication plus a quarterly magazine.”

And don’t worry that employees are drowning in information. Sure, their in-boxes are overflowing. But you know yourself that when you get something of value, you’ll read it no matter how much else is in your in-box. And that’s the other key — VALUE.

Please weigh in. What do you think is the best frequency?

Image: graur razvan ionut and FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Jason wanted to convey the power of a blog and compared it to a newsletter.  I agree with him that blogs are accessible, cost less to produce than a print newsletter and are easy to update.  Where I disagree (and pointed out in a comment) is his unfair comparison to content that sounded like it came from the 1956 newsletter he used as illustration. Not many newsletters these days include “pictures of new hires, company softball team news” and “a list of birthdays”!

Today’s newsletter has much to offer, whether it’s in print or as an e-newsletter. Sent frequently enough, it can contain fresh news; less frequently, it should provide updates, analysis and perspective. A corporate newsletter can shine a spotlight on employee innovations and ingenuity, or provide the reasoning behind company decisions. Newsletters can and should explain how employees can support best practices or show how and why they’re providing solid customer service.

E-newsletters can do the same, with the added advantage of speed and links to other online content. Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen says few promotional efforts can claim the degree of “customer buy-in” enjoyed by e-newsletters. Readers he surveyed in 2010 appreciated that they were timely, informative and convenient. He encourages looking at newsletters as a long-term investment, saying that “they work their magic over time.”

Another newsletter fan is Michael Katz, who says a newsletter:

“…has the ability to position you as an expert, provides an opportunity to make an authentic connection and keeps you in front of prospects, referral sources and clients.”

As I told Jason, it’s not an either/or choice. I see a blog as a nice complement to an interesting, well-written newsletter. The blog can be all about current, fast-breaking news, while the newsletter provides a more in-depth explanation. But then, that’s my newsletter-loving bias showing.

Jason replied to my comment that:

“…like many corporate blogs, many corporate newsletters just plain suck. It is those I’m speaking to. Certainly a newsletter can be awesome. But those are rare birds.”

I’m not sure it’s all that rare, but I’ll agree that there’s work to be done in every form of communications to make sure the intended audience gets the message. That’s how to harness the power of these tools.

Illustration: jscreationzs and FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

It’s true there are occasions where the passive voice is appropriate. Use it when you don’t know who did the action or when you want to put the emphasis on the receiver rather than the performer of an action. But what often happens in the corporate world is promising action without committing a specific person to performing it, or admitting something without accepting responsibility. Thus when a company fires an executive, it may announce “Changes are being made to the executive team” (by whom?) and “[NAME] has been appointed” (by whom?).

Ann Wylie shared a great trick for finding the passive voice in her December 6 Wylie’s Writing Tips newsletter (which she attributes to Tim Burnett at FedEx): If you can add “by my grandma” to the end of the sentence and it makes sense, it’s passive. For instance, “Changes are being made to the executive team by my grandma” and “[NAME] has been appointed by my grandma” both make sense; both are passive.

To fix the passive, make sure the subject (my grandma) is doing the action: “My grandma has made changes to the executive team” and “My grandma has appointed [NAME].” If my grandma didn’t do it, well, maybe it was “the board” or “the company.”

“The positive emotional aspect of newsletters is that they can create much more of a bond between user and company than a website can.”

Very few promotional efforts can claim the degree of “customer buy-in” enjoyed by newsletters, Nielsen says, noting that 69% of users “said they look forward to receiving at least one newsletter, and most users said a newsletter had become part of their routine.” Asked why they liked email newsletters, more than one-third highlighted these benefits:

1. They are informative and keep users up-to-date.
2. They are convenient and delivered straight to the in-box, needing just a click to open them.
3. They have timely information and real-time delivery.

Nielsen encourages looking at newsletters as a long-term investment, noting that “they work their magic over time.” Be sure what you publish has value to grow or keep your reputation and maintain a relationship.

I love newsletters, print and electronic. The best ones, as I’ve said before, are warm and friendly, and contain interesting and/or useful information. They arrive often enough to be familiar and welcome, but not so often that they seem TOO frequent. (Nielsen says one of the most frequent complaints he hears is that some newsletters arrive too often; readers also want them brief.)

Nielsen says e-newsletters are a better way to stay in touch with customers than updates to Facebook or Twitter, because they go to the reader’s in-box and stay there. On a social network, new postings continually replace the old, and your comment just gets pushed out of the way. Plus, people use social networks more to keep in touch with friends than to go looking for corporate content.

As always, Nielsen shares great advice in the executive summary of his newest report on email newsletters, and of course even more in the 586-page report ($497 US), such as:

• Facebook is good for one-line updates; use your newsletter to convey more detailed information.
• Be sure to send out news through your newsletter BEFORE tweeting or posting about it elsewhere.
• The volume of email is increasing (300% higher than just four years ago!), so make sure to use clear subject lines with key content from the issue to encourage readers to open it.
• Lead the content with your most important information. This is especially important when many of your readers will be looking at a preview on a mobile device.

One of the things I like about Nielsen is his generous sharing of content. I also appreciate that he compares the various editions of his newsletter reports to help you decide if you need the newest edition or not! Thanks, Jakob.

I was already juggling a number of projects, but this is a long-time, valued client and I thought it could be done relatively quickly. So I met my other deadlines and then worked late on the “rabbit.”

The very first thing I did was change the lead sentence. By remarkable coincidence, Ragan.com CEO Mark Ragan today posted a link on Twitter on this very topic, pointing to a classic Steve Crescenzo column called “Dumping C.R.A.P. on reporters.”

In it, Steve rants that the “trained monkeys” who write most news releases follow this formula for the lead sentence:

Name of company + everything great about this company that nobody really cares about + bad verb + bad quote by a guy with too many titles.

My client’s release originally began with “Name of company + something great about this company that nobody really cares about” plus that other classic: “today announced” (as if the “announcing” is the news). And took 42 words to say it. The actual news event was in paragraph two.

I rewrote the lead to start with “Employees of [Company]” and link to their involvement in the event that was the “news.” It took only 18 words, and I was able to work in “polar bears,” which you have to admit is pretty awesome. I pushed the “something great about the company” to paragraph three, and included some facts that were relevant to the event.

My client was happy with the result, but I was worried some of the executives might have changed it back. She just called, however, and said they went with the revision. And she appreciated the link to Steve’s column, which gave her a laugh.

The bottom line: With news releases, as with newsletter articles, look for the news and put it up front. Your readers will be more likely to read it, whether they are employees or journalists.