Below are the guidelines for submitting items for the VIU Digest – our weekly employee enewsletter. Follow these steps to ensure your item is accepted and runs as you would like it to.
1) Submissions should be short – a couple of sentences – with the five Ws addressed: Who, What, When, Where, Why, as well as How if it applies. Here is a great example:
No Access to Student Records During Finance Cutover
Students will not be able to access their records or add or drop a course from June 30 – July 5, 2021 while the Finance Cutover is underway. Students have been notified and a banner will be on the website during this time to remind them. If you get questions, please let them know.
2) The VIU Digest is not an events listing (we ran some events during the pandemic but are returning to our pre-pandemic approach). We are developing an events listing email that will be sent out once a week and all events featured in it will be pulled from the events page. We do not have a launch date for this yet, but it will be early Fall 2022. For now, if you have an event you want published, please add it to the events page. We are promoting this page through the Digest and through our social media channels, as well as through the Student Pulse – our student enewsletter. The exceptions to this rule are large scale, institutional events such as the Indigenous Speakers Series.
3) Date/Time structure: Please use the following structures for dates and times:
Ex: Monday, August 23, 2021, from 11 am – 12 pm
Ex: Monday, August 23, 2021, from 11 am – 12:30 pm
4) Links: Please include any links within the copy as hyperlinks to relevant text:
Do: Find more information about VIU’s return to campus for Fall 2021.
Don’t: Find more information about VIU’s return to campus for Fall 2021 at https://adm.viu.ca/health-and-safety/covid-19.
5) Audience: The VIU Digest is for employees, not students. If you have an item for students, please submit it to students@viu.ca and it will run in the Student Pulse. This enewletter is sent out every two weeks and has a very high open rate. If the item you submit is for our student audience, it will be sent to the Pulse.
- A link to the Pulse is shared every two weeks in the Digest in the FYI section, so you can see what people are communicating to our students.
6) Reruns: The Digest team reserves discretion on how many times an item can run in a row. The general rule is two to three times at most. This to keep the content fresh and ensure issues do not get too long. For best results, we suggest considering how far in advance you want to get information to employees.
7) Have any questions? We are happy to work with you to help you get the best results from your post. We always want to hear from you! VIUDigest@viu.ca