Five ways to produce a strategic publication

Steve Crescenzo spells out the difference between strategic employee publications and embarrassing ones

There is no middle ground. It can’t be strategic sometimes; you can’t write strategic stories occasionally. If you do, you’re not a strategic publication. You’re like the bachelor who rarely cleans his bathroom. Time after time, guests come over to the bachelor’s apartment, and every time they come they’re afraid to use the bathroom because of the different things growing in the toilet and the sink and the bathtub. Then, one day, the bachelor cleans the toilet. So the toilet is sparkling, but the rest of the bathroom still looks like a third-world outhouse.

Do you think anyone is going to notice the toilet?

It’s the same with employee publications. If you bombard people over and over and over again with photo contests, promotion announcements, vacuous CEO columns, features about employees who breed ferrets, and other garbage, do you think anyone is going to notice the occasional strategic story when you slip it in?

Of course not.