Employees deserve crisp, actionable news that motivates, delights, and even inspires.
Employee communications are bombarding employees with Zoom calls and Slack chats. Our job as communicators is to maximize our omnichannel approach, integrating messaging so the employee experience is seamless regardless of the channel they use. That starts with content that speaks to employees where they are: physically, professionally, and even emotionally. According to The Economist, the written word is flourishing.
While there are many ways to gauge the impact of messaging, it starts with getting employees to do one thing: click. Here are some tips to attract employees to engage with your content.
Grab them with the headline
“Living Our Values” or “Sales Gains Traction?” Yawn. Steal from popular media techniques and grab them with a title like Jennifer Smith Tames Paper Tiger.
Make it personal
People love people stories. Shift from stories about the company’s strategy, mission, and values to stories through the lens of employees. Get employees emotionally invested in how their colleagues live out company values and deliver strategy–then watch your readership of and engagement with stories skyrocket.
Create compelling visuals
What do you notice in publications at the checkout line? People! Explore people-based images and draw people in using the person mentioned in the content image. Tap into creative resources within your company or subscribe to an image database service.
Switch up formats
We know from the checkout line that people love listicles, anniversaries, triumphs, tips, and hacks. Use those formats to talk about company action and impact. Who wouldn’t open a story that says: “5 Tips to Boost Your Career at Our Company?”
Keep employee communications snackable
Try to keep most communications to 250 words or break the message into multiple parts. After all, 21% of respondents in a survey by platform provider Igloo spend more than half their time on a mobile app to do their job.
Shake up your editorial approach to drive message impact and behavior change. There will always be a shiny new CommTech tool available that promises to reach employees in new ways, and those are important for us to consider. But, we don’t need to wait for the next big thing to make our content more engaging.