Internal Comms

Making time for internal content: 3 ways you can do it

February 10, 2020

By

Daniella Nerea

Here’s the situation: Your job is to keep employees engaged, and you really want to create the great content that your employees love.

But, you’re finding it hard to fill a schedule with great ideas. Sound familiar?

When you invest time in internal content, you invest in your employees. In this post, we'll show you how to set up a solid communications plan that finds time for the great content that your employees want.

Here are the three things you need to do:

  1. Promote collaboration
  2. Commit to a plan
  3. Prioritise quality over quantity

Promote collaboration

When your target audience includes the whole company it can be difficult to find somewhere to start. You should treat internal communications as a team effort, where your team includes everyone. To really make time for internal content, you’ll need their help.

Start by asking employees what content they want by organising cross team meetings. At Twine we do a 15-minute cross-departmental meeting every morning. For the comms team, these short meetings give us great ideas for content that will answer the real questions employees are asking.

You can go a step further by asking employees to write their own blog posts. Not only will you break down those annoying communication silos, but you’ll also give yourself a load of free content. The ‘permissions’ feature in Twine does the job perfectly by giving writers the ability to submit articles for your approval.

Now, with everyone looking forward to what you’re going to publish next – you’ve got no excuse to skimp on content.

Make a plan and stick to it

Now everyone is on board, we can start planning. Setting out a strategy isn’t the easiest thing to do, but, done properly, you’ll work yourself into a routine that makes the whole process easier.

If you don’t have a plan, start small. With this, you can build start building momentum behind your content.

Google Calendar and Trello are perfect for this (you can even link the two together). Create a Trello board for your content plan, enable the calendar power-up and start collaborating. Also, don’t forget to take advantage of the colour coded labels.

If you’re looking for some guidance on setting up a strategy, the UK government has set up a handy guide. Remember their important mantra: “What is most important is that you choose an approach and format that works for you and your organisation.” With a bit of ground work, you’ll have a tight schedule that your organisation can’t do without.

Prioritise quality over quantity

Let’s reiterate what we just learned: start small. Begin with a focus on short but high quality content. A weekly 300 word blog of interesting updates is not only good for engagement, but easy to write.

If you’re worried about the quality of your writing, aim to keep it simple. To get you started, the guys at Buffer have put together 6 of the best writing tips from some great writers. The key take-away here is not to write, but to write less.

Another way to cut the fluff is by making your content specific to what’s going on in your organisation. Those micro meetings will be a gold mine for this, and soon you’ll know exactly how to produce engaging content each week.

Don’t just stick to writing. Videos and podcasts are great for engagement and take less time than you think. Start by asking management to talk about your company’s current vision and press record. Play around with different media, and you’ll be well on your way to revitalising your internal communications.

3 things you can do right now

Like any publication, good engagement with internal content takes time. That said, here’s some things you can do by the end of today:

  • Set up a content calendar using Trello
  • Do an open call for blog posts
  • Get a free demo of Twine to see a great example of an internal blog

Now, with these steps and the lessons outlined above, you’ll be able to produce engaging internal content – no problem.

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