This article reflects information as of 2020. For the latest details, please contact us.
How-to
For New Web Directors: On Today's Company Newsletters
2020.11.10
This article reflects information as of 2020. For the latest details, please contact us.
This article is about 2,794 characters long and takes about 10 minutes to read. Written by: Qian Yunwen, Director / PR, tentus inc.
Hello, everyone. Good evening!
Today I'd like to talk a bit about company newsletters. The company newsletter is closer to PR work than to a director's work, but for a web company newsletter, the director has a turn to shine too!
A company newsletter is a medium — such as a booklet, website, or video — produced as a tool for internal communications. Recently, with the spread of company intranets, web-based newsletters have increased, but the old-fashioned print medium is still the mainstream.
(From Wikipedia)
Concretely speaking, it's a medium used to share the company's philosophy and policies, share information company-wide, and energize communication.
Print company newsletters
Traditional company newsletters centered on the approach of sharing information by distributing print media to employees or posting them on bulletin boards. You can bring originality to the design and layout, making it easy to convey culture, but with a frequency of once a month to once every few months, it's hard to deliver fresh information. On top of that, editing, printing, distribution, and mailing take effort and cost, and readership is hard to gauge.
However, since print is easy to preserve for a long time, conveys a sense of properness, and can serve as an award trophy or certificate, there are surely no few companies that keep print newsletters, or that revived — or want to revive — a print newsletter.
[On Sanyo Shokai's company newsletter "High Touch"] Sanyo Shokai's company newsletter started in 1963 with the first issue, a mimeographed "Notice." "Notice" conveyed company information to office staff, but afterward "FA News," conveying sales know-how and fashion trends to store staff, was also launched. Two types of newsletters were issued thereafter, but in 2015 the two booklets were consolidated into one, and the renewed newsletter "High Touch" was born.
https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000330.000009154.html
-🗒-
Company newsletter "Mirukomi" Start date: October 2002 Distribution audience: Employees and part-timers, including domestic group companies Circulation: 1,450 copies Content: The concept is "conveying the 'real' Macromill." By delving deep into the stories behind the facts and the true feelings of each individual employee, it aims to give employees a chance to think about something or receive inspiration. Everything from planning, interviewing, and photography to editing and design is done in-house, and it's issued once every three months.
https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000517.000000624.html
-🗒-
A company newsletter where a venture design firm makes the most of print's strengths. Something I realized from personally producing a company newsletter is that, of course it's for the staff currently working and their families to read, but I felt it's also quite effective as a tool to hand to newly joining staff to help them learn about the company. On the web, content tends to be scattered, and accessing all of it takes effort, and it's hard to ask people… Having such information compiled and easy to read casually is a strength of the print medium.
(Partially reprinted from the article below)
https://www.buroki-design.com/design/graphic/graphic0010/
-🗒-
There are also plenty of print company newsletters that feel like the quintessential company newsletter.
https://www.nitorihd.co.jp/nitorimedia/culture/post-3217/
https://www.wantedly.com/companies/marketenterprise/post_articles/281215?auto_login_flag=true#_=_
https://mag.sendenkaigi.com/kouhou/201505/how-to-make-company-newsletter/004955.php
https://mag.sendenkaigi.com/kouhou/201507/how-to-make-company-newsletter/005633.php
Web company newsletters
And now, thanks to technological innovation, more and more companies are introducing web company newsletters that can be viewed on PCs or smartphones rather than in print. They're more expensive than print, of course, but there are many merits — you can update at your own timing and have immediacy, you can record and check readership, you can share content like links and videos, corrections are easy, and it's easy to have two-way communication through comments and so on — so there are surely no few companies making their newsletters web-based.
Also, so that anyone can view it, many companies deliberately make their newsletter publicly available on the web. Since you can clearly show the company atmosphere and what kind of employees work there to employees' families and people considering employment, you can expect effects like raising loyalty and boosting job-seekers' motivation to join.
-🗒-
Web Dentsu-ho is a news site that introduces, in addition to the latest trends and topics in the advertising industry, the Dentsu Group's advanced knowledge, services, and solutions related to the communications domain.
(From the Web Dentsu-ho site)
-🗒-
What is Toyota Times? Toyota independently set up an editorial department in-house and, in coordination with its website and YouTube, conveys deeper information about Toyota. The "Toyota Times" copy is by creative director Makoto Shinohara and Dentsu's Munemasa Fujimoto.
The content is divided into the "Editor-in-Chief Kagawa" series, in which actor Teruyuki Kagawa becomes editor-in-chief and heads to various sites to conduct coverage and interviews; "TOYOTA NEWS," which covers not only Toyota's initiatives but also earnings announcements, shareholder meetings, and even labor-management negotiations; and "Feature" articles such as the dialogue series with president Akio Toyoda. There's also a TV-commercial and radio-commercial series featuring Teruyuki Kagawa, but that is strictly "a summary of the content delivered on the owned media," and full-size versions of the coverage by Teruyuki Kagawa are released via YouTube.
(From Wikipedia)
-🗒-
ensoku! is a company newsletter where each employee delivers the exciting happenings inside En Japan every day. What's a little different from an ordinary "company newsletter" is that it's fully open to people outside the company too. It was born from employees' voices: "It's a waste to let exciting information stay buried inside the company." For example, if the friends and families of employees working at En Japan see it and get to learn about the company, nothing could make us happier. From little everyday things to internal events and even recruitment information, we deliver it joyfully, in an outing-like mood. If you'd like, won't you set out to ensoku! together with us too?
(From the ensoku! site)
-🗒-
If you want to go web-based, I think using a web-company-newsletter service or tool is easier than building a site. But you have to compare carefully!
Open company newsletters
Do internal blogs also count as company newsletters?
Looking at the definition — a medium used to share the company's philosophy and policies, share information company-wide, and energize communication — there are parts that apply. Even without the capacity to make a full company newsletter, there are surely no few small and midsize companies actively sharing information using note.
Summary
How was it?
Especially for the communication that's lacking under telework, companies are emerging that use the "company newsletter" as an unexpected move. Whether in print or on the web, isn't it good as long as you can keep firmly sharing information both internally and externally? For those who want to learn more about company newsletters, I hope the articles below can also be helpful.
https://www.itmedia.co.jp/business/articles/2007/13/news027_2.html
https://shanaiho-navi.jp/download/
If you'd like to consult about a web company newsletter, please get in touch below.