It’s easy for companies to overlook their internal content strategy. After all, your employees are a captive audience. Why bother putting time and effort into creating an internal content strategy? Because internal content strategy is just as important as external strategy. Here are three things to consider when preparing your internal content strategy:
1. Story matters
Storytelling is a crucial part of preparing an internal content strategy. We live in a world full of stories, which is how we make sense of the world. A good story will engage everyone – even the employees who seem to have no vested interest in the company.
According to an article by Anton Rius, internal storytelling is “all about how you market your brand to your internal team”. From the CEO to the guy in the mailroom, everyone should be on the same page and understand the story of your company. And one of the best ways to do that is to give everyone a voice.
2. Allow employees to tell their story
As you begin to develop your company’s internal content strategy, remember that people want to tell their own story. That’s why there are so many blogs out there now! As this article on Bloomfire notes, the more employee contribution, the better. Employees who feel their voices are being heard – even if they never actually contribute – feel included and invested. Just having the option to share their story can make a huge difference.
And if employees are hesitant to share at first? Start at the top. Encourage executives and managers to contribute, and usually employees on the lower rungs of the company will too. If not, that’s where incentives come in. Reward employees who contribute, or even just employees who respond and engage with the content being shared.
3. Numbers matter too
Storytelling is crucial to your company’s internal content strategy, but how do you know if it’s having any effect? You need to develop analytics related to your strategy to see what works – and what doesn’t.
Track how many employees opened your email and how long employees actually watched the video you produced. An effective internal content strategy doesn’t happen overnight. There will be trial and error as you determine what your employees respond to.
An internal content strategy can only help improve internal communications in your company. Because a well-thought out strategy improves employee engagement, you may find you’re getting invaluable feedback from employees. And as a bonus, that feedback and some of the content being shared by employees may be able to repurposed and used for external content strategies as well. There’s really no downside to taking a little time and effort to create a quality internal content strategy.
