Planning, organization get newsletters out on time

The best newsletters are those that appear regularly and on schedule. While it may not always be easy to make that happen, there’s really no mystery to the process, say those involved.

Successful publishers recommend the following:

• Take charge of the process. “You have to be the driver of the newsletter,” says Elizabeth Roch, manager, publications and mass media for UAL Corp., United Airlines’ parent company in Elk Grove, Ill. “You can’t let the other people in the organization drive your timelines.”
• Create a schedule and inform everyone. “We complete six months of issue plans in January and then circulate them to department heads,” says Mary Viola, manager of corporate communications at Walgreen Co. in Deerfield, Ill. “Stories still get bumped and changed along the way, but preparation makes last-minute changes easier to contend with. A little bit of organization will go a long way for everyone.”
• Stick to your schedule. Viola knows the importance of deadlines. “We’re fanatics about our schedule,” she says. “Once the schedule is off track, the workload snowballs. Be realistic about the time the publication is going to take, and make sure that you are giving yourself enough time for all the stages.”
• Plan for interruptions. “It’s easy to get distracted,” says Valerie Sherman, communications manager for Terminix International in Memphis, Tenn. “Sometimes other things seem to take priority over an internal publication, and you may want to put it on the back burner. But you have to remember the importance of what you’re doing with a newsletter — you’re speaking to your people. That’s one of the most important things you can do.”
• Maintain control of approvals. The approval process is most often where things get bogged down. “Things can get away from you if you don’t establish a process where you’ll get timely turnarounds from sources,” says Brian Pinkerton, communications consultant for Allstate Corp. in Northbrook, Ill.
• Start approvals with the real decision-makers. “You don’t want to give the publication to people who are just going to pass it around to others within the company,” Pinkerton says.
• Streamline the approval process. “When you have to take a story or a publication through four levels of approval, you’ll never get it done on time,” says Joan Conrad, communication specialist at John Deere-Davenport Works in Davenport, Iowa. “The question is whether you trust the people who are getting your document out. If you’re truly operating in a team environment, then you will trust those people to do the right thing.”
• Set strict approval deadlines and expect all sources to comply. “It doesn’t matter what level of person you’re working with,” Roch says. “I suggest that you give them three days. After the three days, you get after them. You have to be relatively demanding on the sources.”
• Use multiple methods to deliver your message. While Roch uses e-mail and voice mail as tools to keep the publication process moving, she doesn’t depend on them to get her point across. “Sometimes you just need to talk in person with the people who are involved with your publication,” she says.

For more information about how The Simons Group can help your organization with print and electronic marketing projects, contact Lee Zoldan at lzoldan@thesimonsgroup.com.

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