How to make your internal comms more exciting in 2024
Internal communications is an art that needs to be constantly tweaked and refined. What worked last year may not effectively work this year which is why so many people are left scratching their heads thinking ‘how can I make my internal comms more exciting.’ But it can’t be underestimated the value which effective internal comms can add to your business. According to The McKinsey Global Institute, employee productivity improves 20-25% when employees feel connected to the wider business. After deploying our internal communications platform Virgin Media saw that 75% of their employees wanted to progress into another role. We are going to discuss the top tactics which we know will make your internal comms more effective than ever, so read on.
You can’t ignore the power of videos
Did you know that people are much more susceptible to videos than text and 95% of viewers remember a video ad rather than a blog or text ad. Video is taking over social media in our personal lives and it’s not slowing down for employee comms either. To get your message across to your audience in a fun and exciting way, video is the way to do this. But I don’t have the resources to make tons of professional videos we hear you say? Not a problem, there are loads of free video creation sites out there, ready for you!
Here a few for you to try: Animoto, Headliner, Quik by GoPro.
Think beyond the traditional realms of communications
Gamification isn’t just for the learning and development department you know! To shake up your communications and really get the engagement from your teams, why not turn your message into a game.
By transforming your information into a quick 5 minute daily challenge your employees are much more likely to ingest and remember the information. Not only this, but it will make a change from continually having to read long pages of text. One of our customers used our gamification app with multiple choice questions which staff could play everyday. They had 3 daily challenges to complete which only took around 5 minutes but the results were impressive. 65% of employees were so engaged they were even playing the game in their own time.
The question format would look a little something like this: The Brighton store outperformed all other regions this week but in what area? A. cleanliness? B. sales? C. mystery shopper?
Encourage debates in the comments sections of your articles
First things first, if you don’t have a comments section for your internal comms then you are missing a vital trick. Comments allow for feedback and give your employees a voice in a format where they can feel confident to share their opinion.
Secondly, what is the point of having a comments box if you are not encouraging people to use it? You want to create conversations and buzz around your articles, not only is this great for increasing engagement and improving real-life discussions around the topic. It also makes people more invested in what you are saying.
An example of how you could do this:
Next month welcomes our Easter Bonanza once again! Due to increasing popularity, you will need to get your tickets fast. Speak to your line manager if you want to bring along a family or friend member to our exclusive work Easter party.
Do you think there should be a payment for tickets to improve the rides and attractions which we have at the annual Easter Bonanza? Comment in the box below. We’d love to hear your thoughts!
Stop sending blanket messages, they are destroying your engagement
Do you ever receive those paper leaflets that get posted through your door, they are generic and you know that they’ve been posted through at least 100 other letterboxes. What do you do with them? You throw them straight in the bin. That’s exactly what your employees will do, mentally, when you send them a blanket, generic email. If your employees are going to mentally throw away your comms what’s the point in doing them at all? You need to make them personal to really engage with your employees. Did you know that 82% of marketers have reported an increase in open rates through email personalisation? As you know internal comms is essentially an internal form of marketing, so why wouldn’t those stats be just as effective for you.
How do I make my internal comms more personalised?
Segment your audience
Rather than sending your communications to all junior staff who work in all areas of the business. Segment each level of audience by what they do.
For example, if you have a group called junior staff, split them it into junior staff (sales floor), junior staff (stockroom) junior staff (customer service). By doing this you can tweak the content to suit them.
It doesn’t mean you have to write hundreds of different articles it just means you can change certain words and phrases which are more relevant to each group. For example, if you are talking about changes to your returns policy you would tell your sales staff how this may affect their selling script. If you were talking to your stockroom staff you may talk to them about how it may affect where they put returned goods or how they check items before they send them back. It just makes them understand what you are saying better and how it will affect them in their role.
Filter your articles so employees only see information which is relevant to them
Rather than tweaking content on your articles why not just put locks on certain articles so that employees only see information which is relevant to them. Because they will constantly be seeing information which is of use to them it will naturally increase engagement and keep them coming back for more.
Our internal communications platform allows you to post any article, news post, how-to guide, manual or process article and put a restriction on when you publish so you can decide who can view it. Perfect for those factory cleaning articles which your delivery drives don’t need to see.
Speak about your team
How much more drawn to a TV programme or news article do you feel when you know someone in it? You feel a lot more invested, this is exactly the same for internal comms.
If you are constantly churning out top-down heavy communications which show little interest in the teams that you are sending your comms to. Guess what, they are going to get bored of reading them. To make your internal comms more exciting you need to include insights from your teams or highlight a particular employee. For example, if you are writing about a change in the way that your business collects performance data. Highlight a team who have been doing really well and discuss how it will benefit them.
Go for the BuzzFeed titles
It’s no secret that BuzzFeed is one of the most successful entertainment news sites in the world. BuzzFeed has a monthly audience of more than 150 million readers. Now that’s a lot of people. How did they reach that success? By using controversial titles and list titles. According to BuzzSumo they analysed which BuzzFeed headline categories are most effective for social sharing and the same headlines can be used for your internal comms to boost engagement.
They found that the following categories had the most read articles:
Humour - Make your audience laugh with a funny title and you’re almost guaranteed to get them to read on.
Identity - Titles that people can relate to. Buzzfeed is well-known for their ‘13 signs you’re a…’ types of articles. You can do this for your comms for example, ‘10 ways the new manual handling policy will make your life easier.’
Emotional - Posts which make your audience feel something. Can you make your staff feel curious, happy, angry or sad. Really think about this when writing your article title and content.
Be thought-provoking with what you are saying
Don’t just write your articles with the intent for staff to read and move on with their day. Write articles which you know will leave them thinking and pondering over what you have said. To be thought-provoking means to be gripping, fascinating and intriguing. Keep this in mind whenever you write anything.
Here are our top tips to make your comms more thought-provoking:
Question certain things:
When you ask yourself ‘how can I make my internal comms more exciting’ think about what’s popular or the normal way of doing things and question it. Question normality and try to look at things in a new light. Would you rather hear an internal comms article where you can predict what it’s going to say or would you rather hear something completely new?
Don’t tie everything up:
A lot of internal communicators feel that they have to bring closure to everything that they say. They are afraid to leave things open, but you shouldn’t be afraid to close your article off with an open ended-question to spark imagination and curiosity. Allow your audience to come up with their own opinion of what you have to say.
Use quotes:
Quotes are a great way to summarise what you have said in one simple, easy to digest sentence. They leave your audience questioning what you have said and leave a lasting impact more than what a few paragraphs would.
Build anticipation in your comms
You know when you are watching a programme and they leave you on a cliff hanger and give you a preview of the next episode? Do you tune in for the next episode whether you think it will be good or not? The answer is most probably yes because we as humans are deeply curious creatures. It’s in our nature to know the answers to things even if there is no obvious benefit to us. This is how TV series, film sequels, book trilogies and computer games have boomed and taken over our society. We are always curious to find out the next piece in the puzzle.
So who’s stopping you from using this technique in your internal comms to make it all a little more exciting. When you next have an article which you need to publish try to drip feed the information to your staff rather than telling them it all in one go. For example, you need to announce a new learning solution which your company is deploying.
First message:
Tell them the topic and give a teaser
Next week we are deploying a company-wide new learning solution. It will benefit you in a few ways and make your job a ton easier. Find out what the solution is and how it can make your job easier in Friday’s article.
Second message:
Give them a fraction of what you teased them with last week
The new learning solution is called Engage it can be used on your mobile phone and tablet devices and can be accessed on desktop too. Aside from being incredibly easy to access it will also help you learn new products up to 60% quicker. But that isn’t all, logon next week to discover more of the amazing benefits to help you do your job better.
Third message:
Wrap up your entire sequence with all of the benefits and conclusion of the main article.
Engage is almost ready for you all to try and now that it’s almost here we thought it was only fair to share with you all of the amazing benefits which you can reap by using it. Engage allows you search for anything you need on the go, it keeps a task list so you can track everything you need to get done and its fun gamification feature will help your store improve their NPS by 10%.
Take popular topics and use them to get your own message across
This tactic is used a lot by big marketing companies. They look for popular topics and see how they can jump on the back of them. A recent example was Marmite. They acted quickly when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were getting married by creating limited edition Marmite jars with their name on.
Not only does this make what you have to say a bit more exciting. It also makes you more relevant because you will be incorporating yourself in a topic which is already being discussed a lot by everyone in your workplace. This is bound to improve your engagement levels.
Look at what has worked previously and drill down on it even further
This one sounds obvious but it can really be overlooked. For your internal comms to be more exciting to your audience you need to be an expert in what they like. It’s no good churning out videos or drip feed comms if no one actually wants to read them. Have a long hard look at your analytics and try to spot any trends of what your audience do like to read.
Use this as a starting point to build upon the tactics which we have metnioned above. You can then begin to test out different tactics and see which ones your staff like the best. We know that every company culture is different so what works in one company may not work in another. The only way you can find out is by testing it and giving it a go.
Our internal comms platform allows you to easily see the reach of your articles plus an engagement score which looks at the number of opens your article or news post has had. Don’t waste time trying to find ways to measure your effectiveness let us do the hard work so you can get on with the exciting work.
Exciting comms made simple
Are you looking for a way to make your internal comms more exciting and still aren’t satisfied with the information above? Then you’ve come to the right place. Engage is an internal comms platform which transforms engagement, so much so that Virgin Media have a 99% usage rate of the app across their entire business.
