What are the best ways to use intranet to share company news?

Individuals tend to be more attentive to and have better retention of visual and auditory content as opposed to plain text. Which is why incorporating images, videos, podcasts, or infographics to depict your message, enhances its allure. Multimedia content additionally facilitates the expression of emotions, representation of company culture, and the cultivation of a stronger bond with your workforce. It is important however to consider the ever shortening attention span of our audience and the number of messages we are exposed to on a daily basis and so keeping our videos short helps.

From my experience working with medium and large companies, only posting on the intranet was not effective. A mix of communication channels is needed to reach employees including email, push notifications on the phone, visual media (TV, posters, flyers), using meetings, or even out-of-the-box solutions as events. Also, there has to be an engaging content so that employees give feedback and engage with the content.

Interactive Virtual Newsrooms represent a transformative evolution in how companies communicate and engage with their workforce. These digital hubs, nestled within the company’s intranet, offer a dynamic and immersive experience, redefining the traditional approach to sharing news and fostering employee engagement. At the core of these newsrooms is compelling visual storytelling. Leveraging innovative technologies like 360-degree videos, augmented reality elements, and virtual tours, employees gain firsthand insights into company events, achievements, and behind-the-scenes happenings.

Intranet is a vital tool for internal communication, facilitating the dissemination of crucial company news, from new projects to achievements. To enhance communication and engage employees effectively, follow these best practices: craft clear messages, use visuals, employ interactive features like comments or polls, tailor communication for diverse employee groups, maintain a consistent news-sharing schedule, encourage open dialogue for employee input, and ensure mobile accessibility for wider reach. These practices collectively optimize the intranet's potential, fostering a connected and informed workplace.

Articles posted by company's experts on their field on intranet is an effective way to share knowledge and blogs to involve employees. A download point for doc, podcast and video is always appreciated.

Not only is preference-based News and segmenting valuable, but it’s also important to have representatives who can inform Internal Comms of what these segments really want to hear about. It’s common these days for the technology and licensing to be in hand to connect with Frontline workers, but it’s not always easy to create a backlog of content that is meaningful for the Frontline without knowing their world!

Modern intranets have become a game changer in using data, analytics and AI to allow organisations to engage with employees at a greater personal level. The result is they receive and can interact with relevant content at the best time, through the most appropriate channel and in a language of choice. Our ability to target information in this way means that we are able to share relevant company news and at the same time, involve employees in a discussion about what it means for them and how they can contribute to success.

Understanding that different teams or departments within your company may have unique interests and priorities is essential. By segmenting your audience on the intranet, you can tailor the delivery of company news to specific groups, ensuring that information is relevant and resonates with each audience. This targeted approach enhances the effectiveness of your communication, fostering a sense of connection and relevance for all employees.

One invaluable practice I've discovered in aiding the creation of targeted segments and understanding the distinct needs of our colleagues is the development of colleague personas. Crafting these personas has proven instrumental in cultivating a profound comprehension of the intricacies that exist among our team members. From uncovering their interests to understanding their aspirations and preferred modes of information consumption, these personas serve as a valuable tool in not only targeting news based on their role, department, or location, but also based on their interests and what they value.

Internal segmentation seems to be a recurring question since the creation of internal communication. Should we segment managers/employees at the risk of widening a gap? Should we segment managers according to their level at the risk of creating suspicion? My experience has taught me that animation by managers is essential in conjunction with top management, but a space reserved for managers no longer makes sense. The objectives must be shared down to the finest mesh to involve all the teams, so this is also not a subject reserved for managers.... And the list could still grow... so in my opinion segmentation does not encourage the creation of a collective and does not contribute in any way to added value for management.

Create a culture of open communication by actively encouraging employees to provide feedback and engage with company news on the intranet. Incorporate features such as comment sections, surveys, or discussion forums to allow for a two-way dialogue. This not only fosters a sense of inclusivity but also provides valuable insights into employee sentiments and concerns, fostering a more collaborative and transparent workplace environment.

If moving from a primarily email-based org-wide communication to a more visual, brought to life version using intranet as the place to host news and announcements - It could help to begin discovering what data already exists within your organization’s email database to avoid the need to start from scratch. E.g. # of clicks might tell us what kinds of content/company news employees would like to get a deeper understanding of (tailored content) using a website environment that’s exclusive to them. Also important to remember using intranets for company news doesn’t mean completely abandoning email communication.

In my view 2-way communication is absolutely critical to any successful intranet project. With it be 'near' impossible to speak to possibly every single person within an organisation inevitably there will be incorrect content. Giving employees the ability to feed back on any page is something we feel is key with Attollo. We have implemented a 'page content accuracy' page widget to feedback if they are not happy but also give people the opportunity to feedback the positive. A lot of 'feedback' tends to point to 'what is wrong' we feel lets welcome both.

Parte final- En resumen, la comunicación interna si bien es de vital importancia para la gestión, todavía no es vista de esa manera por la mayoría de las empresas uruguayas.Es importante se?alar que siempre existe comunicación interna aún cuando no existan canales formales, ya que la misma se da informalmente lo cual puede generar "ruidos" importantes( la famosa radio pasillo).Por tanto, incluso para poder gestionar adecuadamente la comunicación interna y minimizar esos " ruidos", es necesario crear y/o incrementar las estructuras necesarias para tener unidades de comunicación sólidas y confiables.

A couple of things I have found extremely helpful are : 1) Usage of internal social media channels such as Yammer, Slack, etc. 2) Using gamification tools to boost user experience and encourage interaction.

One of the best platforms Ive used that is mobile friendly is Viva Engage. Helps to have a clear title to the message so that the audience knows what it is about before diving in to the article as that is the first thing they will see before deciding to click on it further. Keeping the title short and simple helps increase visibility.

Where as I agree we are well and truly living in a mobile world, based on our last 5 intranet projects mobile device usage for intranets as a business as been down - are people 'turning off' at COB? Has the hybrid bubble of working more hours coming to an end? I am watching this space very closely.

The question of content and its adaptability on mobile seems to me to be at the center of debates about the future of internal content. Mobile was seen as a fun tool for employees, allowing too much idleness and having too many features. IT departments have therefore offered mobiles with a central functionality: that of making telephone calls. The question of mobile in a world of remote work, remote management and episodic relationships with the company, capturing attention for content accessible by mobile initially then business applications offering in particular gamifying one's relationship with work and the company seems to me to be a necessary development to continue the company's story telling and have impactful speeches.

In today's mobile-centric world, ensuring that your company news is easily accessible on various devices is paramount. Optimize your intranet content for mobile viewing to accommodate employees who may prefer to access information on smartphones or tablets. This enhances the flexibility and convenience of accessing company news, especially for those on the go or working remotely.

Nowadays, mobility has become the key to work efficiency. Employees choose to access the intranet from their mobile devices, especially when working remotely or on the go. This trend presents an opportunity to improve connectivity and accessibility, but also highlights the importance of optimizing content for a seamless mobile experience. To optimize consider: 1. Responsive Design. 2. Loading Speed. 3. Readable Content and Intuitive Navigation. 4. Tactile Interactivity. Optimizing for mobile devices is not just a matter of convenience, but a smart strategy to adapt to the modern way of working.

One of the pitfalls is that intranets are fundamentally different from public-facing websites in several aspects related to metrics. For example, very rarely is the goal to have employees spend a lot of time on the intranet. It's about getting access to the things you need to do your job. A website's goal is mostly to get you to spend as much time as possible there. So, be careful when you put in place your metrics framework and ensure it is relevant for the intranet. There is so much marketing-focussed content on the intranet that doesn't apply to intranets.

A challenge for internal communicators posting news on company intranets is setting proper success benchmarks using analytics. Senior leadership may expect all or most employees to view a company news post, but this metric can be difficult to achieve in larger global corporations with a significant news flow and a large contingent of non-desk workers. Most intranets have analytics tools to measure data - the "holy grail" is finding a way to benchmark and interpret the data to improve news performance. Intranet software providers could play a huge rule in helping corporate customers in this realm by providing average news views for similarly-sized companies they service even if company names were whitelisted.

You know how some content just seems to go viral on the internet? Or how some suggested content seems like EXACTLY what you were looking for? There's a reason for that. Someone built an algorithm based on user data. You don't need to build an algorithm but you do need to pay attention to the data if you want to continually deliver value to your audience.

"Data beats opinion", you can make all the actions you want but if you don't track what you do and you don't analyze your actions it will not matter. It is important to track and analyze every action you make in order to see if it makes sense to keep on doing it and putting the needed ressources to that or if it doesn't work then to move forward to something that will be more useful.

We built Helm Insights to help companies measure reach, reactions, and engagement of their SharePoint News. It’s amazing to see the trends with articles over time, what categories are performing consistently well, which articles are your stinkers, how positive (or negative) the sentiment can be from commenting, how many people scroll to the bottom of an entire article!

Something I learnt very earlier in my career and its pretty straight to the point - 'If no one is going to die and we are not going to be sued, then why not try it'. I totally agree with this, some of the fantastic ideas around content, campaigns will work amazingly well at one organisation and fall completely flat at another. We don't take this personally, we keep on innovating. I recommend anyone to try any baked idea you never know the impact. We implemented an idea of a Photography voting application in a business. They did not know they had world class photographers within the business and it changed their whole engagement. Keep your ear to the ground, see what people are doing and where the noise is....

If you don't test new things, you will never know if they work or not. Experiment and innovate is essentiel and can help you have better results. In my experience I do the test and learn. I've done actions that have done excellent results and we keep doing it, and there are some that didn't work at all but it help me see where to go and what to keep on doing. If you know that it won't cost you a lot of money, if you measure the impact of the action to see if it worked or not, then you get to put in place actions that are great to share the news or at least you can learn from your mistakes to be better next time :)

In my journey, I've discovered that embracing innovation and exploring various approaches consistently yields positive outcomes. For example, during a quarterly newsletter initiative in one of my past organizations, I decided to shake things up by entrusting different individuals with the responsibility of curating specific sections each quarter. The result? A vibrant blend of diverse perspectives that not only enriched the content but also nurtured a shared sense of ownership and community.

Sounds obvious, but measurement and analytics should go hand-in-hand with any content experimentation! We built Helm Insights for this very purpose, to help track the content performance of SharePoint News to monitor reach and engagement.

In addition It would be great to add some tools to enable two way data flow so that workers can provide feedback, assessment, view etc. It is valuable to link this feature to create interactive domain.

I would add that it’s really impactful to leverage storytelling on intranets. It’s a natural way to build engagement, and is so much more compelling than other formats.

In my experience, the most effective way to ensure that internally published content is of interest to the majority of employees is by: Having employees sharing directly the most relevant information/content from their respective areas, acting as a kind of internal journalists. Transmitting these contents and news through personal stories and examples. People enjoy hearing stories from other individuals, especially when told by the main characters of these stories.

Just make sure information on the intranet is regularly updated or audited to check it is still current. I joined a company once and found an internal course on their intranet site, only to be told I was six years too late. I then couldn't rely on any information I read on the intranet as I didn't trust it was correct. People lose confidence and then stop using it.

It's always great to involve internal ambassadors - also in less formal contexts. People like hearing from people, especially those they like and/or admire.

GlasgowGPT perspective: 1. Engaging Content: No dreary memos, mate. Inject personality, visuals, and even a wee bit of humor. Spice it up! 2. Regular Updates: Keep the news flowin' wi consistent updates. Don't leave folk in the dark like a dug's dinner. 3. Interactive Features: Encourage feedback, comments, and discussions. Get folk involved. It's no' a one-way street, knowwhitamean? Make the intranet a vibrant, interactive hub, n' the news will spread like wildfire, no bother.