ChatGPT prompts for employee newsletters
We’ve all seen those endless lists of ChatGPT prompts (for just about every type of work). But let’s be honest – those lists are exhausting! You could spend more time sifting through prompts than finishing the task yourself. Today, we’re narrowing the focus to something practical for internal communications pros: ChatGPT prompts for employee newsletters.
If you’re in charge of a weekly employee newsletter, you’re taking on a lot! You’re juggling inputs from around the company, writing for different employee audiences, and producing a lot of content. That’s one place where ChatGPT can help!
In this guide, we’ll cover two topics to help make using ChatGPT for employee newsletter writing easier:
(1) How to start writing more detailed AI prompts
(2) A few time-saving tricks to optimize AI prompts for your newsletter
Once you’ve got these underfoot, you can explore even more ways to incorporate AI into internal communications work. But first… prompts!
How to think about writing AI prompts
Before diving into prompts for employee newsletters, remember how ChatGPT works. ChatGPT (and competitors like Jasper, Copilot, or Gemini) is a chatbot… but that name doesn’t really describe everything it can do. AI chatbots are built on “large language models (LLMs),” which are basically super-powerful algorithms that have analyzed gajillions of pages of the world’s content to predict how to generate new answers to your questions.
AI chatbots like ChatGPT can help communicators…
- Generate ideas and brainstorm on just about any topic
- Write text for any type of message or publication
- Analyze and summarize lots of information (like survey results)
- Create strategic plans based on your needs
(If you aren’t sure about the AI policy at your company, grab our free AI policy template to start one!)
Going beyond ChatGPT prompt basics
A ChatGPT prompt is the question or request that you enter into the the chatbot to get a response. A basic prompt would look something like this:
“Write a post for an employee newsletter welcoming a new sales associate, Jane Doe”
ChatGPT will quickly spin up something like this post for you:
It’s a good place to start, and it’s better than nothing, but it’s generic and it’ll take a lot of editing to be usable. The AI will fill in assumptions and irrelevant details about Jane and the company.
To start prompting more effectively, think of your questions as an instruction manual for your AI assistant. Let’s dive into how to craft more specific prompts.
How to write ChatGPT prompts for employee newsletters
Be specific about what you need
The more detail you provide, the better ChatGPT will understand what you want. The chatbot can create engaging, action-oriented, on-brand writing that fits exactly what you’re trying to do. But only if you tell it what you want! Add detail to your prompt about format to get more results.
Instead of saying “Write a post introducing Justin to the company,” try
“Write a post for an all-company employee newsletter introducing Justin to the sales team. Two paragraphs long and 200 words total. Include information from his Linkedin bio: [paste bio].”
Define your audience(s)
The more ChatGPT knows about your internal communications audiences, the more relevant and usable copy and ideas you’ll get. You can give information like demographics, motivations, or what the audience might be expecting to hear. If you have multiple audiences, list them out in your prompt!
Instead of saying “Write a post introducing Justin to the sales team,” try
“Write a post introducing Justin to the sales team. The audience includes 10 of Justin’s new team members, who are results-oriented and frequently collaborate to achieve their goals. Include information from his Linkedin bio: [paste bio].”
Include examples or style references
You don’t have to come up with all the background information yourself! You can add entire articles, websites, or social media profiles to your ChatGPT requests and have it create outputs that mimic that. Use your company style guide if you have it! That would mean adding this to your prompt:
“Analyze this newsletter post for style and tone of voice [paste example]. Using that style and tone, write a new post introducing Justin to the sales team. The audience includes 10 of Justin’s new team members, who are results-oriented and frequently collaborate together.”
See the difference from the original Jane Doe prompt:
Role-play for a more unique voice
“I want you to act as a [person],” is a surprisingly powerful addition to your prompts! ChatGPT will take on a tone of voice, more context, and draw from more specific sources. You can try adding things like
- Act as an internal communications person at a large company,
- Act as a writer following this style guide [paste style guide],
- Act as an IT expert,
- Act as a CEO,
- Act as a motivational coach,
- Act as a career counselor,
- Act as Leslie Knope from Parks and Recreation,
Iterations, iterations, iterations!
Your new internal communications friend, ChatGPT, never gets tired! After getting your first draft, ask for another version or specific tweaks. Use these tips over and over again, and always try something new! You don’t have to re-type and re-paste your prompts and information every time, either. You can simply reference the last section of your chat and tell the AI chatbot to create a new iteration! Try:
“Rewrite this message but make it more concise and casual.”
Teaching ChatGPT your employer brand voice
You even teach ChatGPT your company’s unique employer brand voice. If you have a paid ChatGPT account, you can save it more permanently to the tool and skip iterating the prompts every time. It’s a many-step process (grab it in detail from The Marketing Hustle here). But basically, you need to
- Understand your employer brand tone of voice. You’ll need to know what you’re trying to sound like, and make sure it’s consistent with your company’s goals and values.
- Create a training dataset by gathering lots of examples of the voice. Blog posts, web pages, social media posts, emails… the more you feed ChatGPT, the more specifically it will learn.
- Train ChatGPT on your voice using the “fine-tune” button in the tool. You can upload all your training data there and ask it to learn a brand voice. Then, that information is saved and you can simply reference it for future projects!
- Test it and refine. As with all things AI, it probably won’t be 100% right the first time. Within the “fine-tune” you’ve built, you can add prompts like “use less jargon” to get even closer to perfection
More examples of ChatGPT prompts for your company newsletter
Company-wide announcements
All-company announcements come with a lot of pressure! So many eyes on your words. Plus, there are LOTS of stakeholders and affected employees. It’s a must-succeed moment.
Your message needs to consider all of that, the needs of many different audiences, and watch for the nuances of how every word is said. That makes all-company announcements a great candidate for help from AI. Try a prompt with the structure:
“Draft a company-wide email announcing the new remote work policy. The message should emphasize the flexibility it provides while reinforcing the importance of maintaining productivity. Highlight any required training or changes to current workflows. Use a voice that is empathetic, helpful, and conversational, and don’t include extra jargon.”
Once you look at the results, try these refinements to perfect your newsletter prompt:
- Add all key details like deadlines, links to resources, or required actions
- Indicate if there are any particular departments or groups that require specific attention
- Watch the tone of voice and try different adjectives if you don’t like the copy
Follow-up comms for employee feedback
With any employee engagement survey, listening tour, or other feedback initiative, the communications surrounding it are really, really important. You can use ChatGPT in a few helpful ways for your survey communications:
- Use AI to summarize your survey results more quickly and spot trends and key themes
- Segment your audiences and customize your comms to them using ChatGPT voices
- You can use it to check your tone and make sure all the details are included
Example:
“Draft a follow-up communication after our company-wide survey on the hybrid work model. Summarize the feedback, acknowledge concerns, and outline the steps we will take to address those issues.”
Try these points of refinement based on what you get from the chatbot:
- Mention specific actions the company will take based on the feedback
- Tweak the information included so that it’s relevant to each specific group
Creating drafts of complex or tough-news comms
We wouldn’t recommend using ChatGPT or another AI writer to send difficult or sensitive communications without serious editing. But when something is challenging or emotional to write, these tools can help you get started. The LLM model that ChatGPT uses has lots of different ways difficult news has been shared before, so it can write a solid first draft that you can perfect.
Examples:
“I need to draft a message that managers can use to inform their teams about an upcoming restructuring. The tone should be reassuring, and the message should focus on transparency while outlining the next steps.”
“Write a message for department heads to share with their teams regarding an organizational shift in leadership. Emphasize continuity in operations and the timeline for further updates.”
Some refinements to try on your second draft:
- Include instructions for managers on how to answer questions and escalate concerns
- Specify if the message should be adapted for different departments or teams
Other ideas for ChatGPT prompts in internal communications
Once you’re comfortable using ChatGPT for your employee newsletters, go ahead and try other things! Some ideas for where AI can help internal communications roles:
- Company culture comms
- Strategy planning and communication cascades
- Creating templates for crisis communications
- Analyzing employee engagement survey results
- Drafting or tweaking leadership communications
- Create data-heavy weekly summary emails
- And more!
Get an AI policy adopted at your organization
If you’re not sure of the rules around AI use at your company, you can lead the charge. You’re not the only one wondering, and a clear-language AI policy will go a long way in getting the ChatGPT and other tools adopted in a responsible, strategic way. Grab this AI policy template or share it with your IT department to get started!
Discover how Workshop can make employee newsletters easier and more engaging
Ready to take all your internal comms a step further? Workshop’s email and SMS platform can power your strategy and help you create meaningful engagement in employee newsletters, HR communications, sign-up drives, and SO much more. Check out how Workshop can transform the way you connect with your team (this 2-minute video is a great place to start)!
