You’re reading a piece of content – a blog post. You’ve probably read a ton of these before: some good, some not-so-good.
I speak to a lot of people who want to write better blog posts. You won’t find any of their work online – because they run internal blogs that live in their Twine account.
Running an internal blog is just as hard as any other blog – you face the same problem: how do I come up with ideas for interesting blog posts?
That's why we put together a list of blog ideas.
We refer to our internal posts as one of two types on content: 'fruit and veg' or 'ice cream' posts. Fruit and veg are day-to-day updates about things like release notes, new starter welcomes and details of events. These updates are essential for a healthy company, but not all that exciting.
Ice cream posts are great to sprinkle in between. They include more fun content, things like charity fun-runs, photos from the Christmas party, results from the the company-wide sweepstake. These are a great when consumed every now and then, but you should mix them in with your fruit and veg for a nice and balanced content diet.
Below, I'll take you through a few of our favourite types of posts that I see from other companies using Twine.
We’re a remote company, which means we ‘re based all over the world: some of us work in London, others work from Barcelona and one person even works from a farm.
This means we don’t get to know each other as much as we would if we were based in the same building. We’ve tried to remedy this by creating blog posts that introduce an employee or team. For example, a few members of our tech team are based in the same co-working space in Bristol so we put together this post:
This type of post is useful for companies who are spread across multiple locations or have 100+ staff (it’s impossible to know everyone’s name around this number).
When you’re a small team, your boss knows everyone personally. But, as you get bigger, they start to move away from the frontlines. That’s why we always recommend that Twine administrators try to collar their CEO into blog writing duties.
When it comes to rousing the troops they’re the best person for the job. Plus, according to our research, people at companies with 200+ employees reported increased engagement when hearing directly from the CEO.
However, I recommend that you do not give your CEO free rein to publish whatever they want will-nilly. In our experience, CEO’s can sometimes get carried away - writing 1000+ words about their big vision for the next quarter. You’ll need to be a judicious editor if you want your employees to actually read your content.
Most companies have a corporate value scheme and they’re almost always include something like teamwork, customer service or integrity. So, when you get great reviews about your customer service, or your NPS score goes through the roof – you should be using news content to show all of these off.
We work with an office space company who use Twine to do just that. In their Twine account, they have a form where employees can nominate a colleague who has recently gone the extra mile for a customer. The company will then write a short news post that interviews the employee about what they’ve done as a lesson for the rest of the team.
As you grow, there are going to be a lot of new faces in a lot of new locations. Twine's People app is a great tool for helping people to put a face to a name, but it's also a great opportunity to write an introduction to your new staff member to the rest of the company. This can be something really simple like a photo and a quick introduction, but we really like what some Twine companies have done when they let the new starter fill in a few questions (some serious, some not so serious), about themselves. Something like this:
Sometimes you don't even need to write any words for your posts. If you've thrown a company event or had a team go to a conference, you've probably got some great content. Collect the photos from budding photographers and feature them in a post. It's a great way to share what's going and easy for people to flick through.
Those five should get you started. If you run out of content, these smaller posts will keep your employees engaged:
Twine's News app can make it super easy to keep communication strong and company culture vibrant in a fat growing company, but it's only as good as the content that you put on it. We recommend posting at least once a week, preferably more, and mixing up those fruit and veg and ice-cream posts to give a balance between functional and fun.
And finally, keep it personal. An internal blog is a great opportunity to uncover the untold stories and unsung heroes in your organisation. These always make the most interesting posts, so go seeking them out! 🕵️♀️
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