In this blog post, I will share how we plan, create and send our weekly newsletter that has helped us improve cooperation, communication and responsibility within the team.
##Why a newsletter? The idea emerged when we were discussing the importance of having a constant engagement with our community. And since we are constantly sharing interesting articles, videos or tutorials among us on Slack, we decided to use this content to create the Subvisual Weekly.
Then, every Friday we gather the best links about development, design and business and send them to our subscribers. We do not limit the content to one topic. Instead, we cover all the ones that are part of our core competencies. Also, we decided to have no more than seven links, which makes us have to carefully choose the most relevant and interesting ones of the week.
##Our Process We wanted a simple process that wouldn’t significantly change our work habits so we could manage to build our newsletter each week without too much stress.
1st Step – Share links in a Slack channel with a small description, explaining why they are relevant.
2nd Step – Each team member can vote in the one he/she likes the most, using Slack Emoji Reactions.
3rd Step – Each week a different team member has the responsibility of writing an introduction message, reviewing and rewriting the description of the most voted links and sending the newsletter.
##Wrap up Although we have a different person responsible for it each week, we all feel accountable. That is perceivable when everyone wants to give his/hers contribution and, even if it wasn’t the goal, this process is helping us to improve the way we work together.
After some editions, our newsletter turns out to be, not only a way to communicate and share relevant links with our community, but also a way of gathering the team around a product we are proud to deliver at the end of each week.
If you’re a regular reader of the Subvisual Weekly, we hope to have some feedback from you on how to improve. If you’re not, what are you waiting for? Sign up for Subvisual Weekly here. :)