Normally when we look at content creation, we're looking at individual blog posts, splashy announcements or short team updates are the majority of posts in the Igloo platform. But there's another option, a format rewarded for both completeness and consistency. Your blog can be a newsletter, collecting content from around your digital workplace and providing focused updates that reach all of your members. Today we'll look at how to implement a newsletter blog in your Igloo. 

Newsletter blogs are a great way to showcase people and work from all over your digital workplace, and can offer curated updates on what's happening in your Igloo and your organization. Consistent publishing creates an opportunity for people to come together with feedback, see additional action items, and to respond to calls to action. 

Layout

Your digital workplace offers a straightforward way to create a consistent look and feel for your newsletter, through Channel Templates. Channel Templates are automatically loaded when creating content in a Channel, so loading a sample newsletter there will provide a style guide for your newsletter, and make it easy to add new items. The channel template can accept images as well, letting you brand your newsletter as you like. 

It's tempting to use a table to organize articles and images, but it's worth resisting. Tables are largely designed for small datasets, and can cause issues with members' view on mobile devices or in nonstandard resolutions. The biggest advantage of your newsletter is that it reaches everyone, and misused tables can interfere with that. Instead, lay images next to text using the Inline setting on the image control options for a result that displays cleanly in all browsers. 

Notifications

Your notification strategy is a key part of your newsletters. Broadcasting your newsletter will draw members into your digital workplace from their email, giving them a chance to interact with calls to action directly, see other comments, and follow the article for updates. When broadcasting, we recommend including a short summary, or even a teaser image in the Broadcast box. 

Subscriptions have their own advantages. They'll send the full text of your newsletter to members, letting them read it directly in their inbox, but won't include any of the images. When sending newsletters through subscriptions, we recommend breaking up content with other html elements, like headers and horizontal lines, to make the notification easier to read. Members can also reply to the notification directly to add a comment to the newsletter itself, but won't be able to see other comments going directly to your content. 

Follow through

Newsletters can do much more than inform. You can use calls to action to drive members to other areas of the digital workplace or to participate in other initiatives. Coordinate with people in comments, and use Social Tasks to assign specific action items from relating to the content, providing transparency into what's been done, and what still needs to be done, while adding additional context when the article is consulted historically. Members can look up old newsletters and see what action items were completed and which are still pending. 

Creating a newsletter blog can provide a unified voice within your organization, and help drive engagement by ensuring members are always made a ware of activities relevant to them. 

If you have questions about the Igloo platform, workflows, or best practices, you can leave a comment here, or ask a question in the Community area.