Creating more engaging intranet content is one of the main priorities for internal communications and HR professionals today. This is particularly hard for large organizations with different employee personas, distributed and frontline workforce.
In the same way marketers and content creators are expected to create personalized, relevant, and diverse content, employees expect the same in the workplace.
In this blog, we will cover some rules for creating better internal content and share out-of-the-box intranet content ideas you can implement today!
💡 Also, don’t miss our blog about best intranet practices to help you get the most out of your intranet platform.
How To Create Intranet Content That Excites Employees
In a survey by Prescient Digital Media, only 13% of employees reported participating in their intranet daily—31% said they never do.
The main reasons for that are lack of personalization, disengaging content formats, poor intranet accessibility for mobile workers, and lack of knowledge about employees’ needs and preferences.
So let’s dig deeper into the rules for creating better intranet content.
1. Relevancy and targeting
The results of a recent study point out that 42% of customers who receive irrelevant content from a brand unsubscribe from that brand. Your employees may not be able to unsubscribe from the company’s intranet content, but they can surely start ignoring it if it’s not relevant to them.
Still, too many organizations deliver the same content to every employee at the same time via the same communication channels. As a result, employees ignore the content, they often miss critical company information, or they don’t engage with the content being delivered to them.
HR and IC professionals need to do a better job segmenting their internal audiences by interest, departments, job functions, locations, languages, channels, and other criteria. This is the only way to deliver relevant content to every employee.
2. Employee-generated content
Even though company or brand-generated content is sometimes necessary, employee-generated content has much better engagement and readership. When brainstorming for new intranet content ideas, make sure to involve your employees and encourage them to become content creators and ambassadors for your company.
A 2022 State of User-Generated Content revealed that 52% of communications and HR teams already use employee-generated content (EGC).
3. Content types and forms
Try different content types to post on your intranet. Plain text and images are usually not enough to drive higher engagement.
Test with video, internal company podcasts, live webinars, infographics, GIFs, interactive quizzes, surveys, and polls.
💡 Related: The Ultimate Guide for Internal Company Podcasts
4. Humor and tone of voice
According to academic research, humor in communication creates an open atmosphere by awakening positive emotions that enhance listening, understanding, and acceptance of messages (Greatbatch & Clark 2002).
But when was the last time you used humor in internal company communications? Unfortunately, many IC and HR professionals still stick to serious business topics in internal communications. According to Gallagher, only 26% of companies say their organization is open to using creativity and humor in communication.
So if you want to grab attention from your internal audience, and improve employee engagement and readership, make sure that you add some humor to your workplace communications.
5. Mobile-friendliness
Having an intranet mobile app is one of the biggest prerequisites for higher intranet engagement. Most employees today use their smartphones to access company-related information and apps.
Moreover, frontline workers are dependent on their smartphones to stay up to date with important company information, engage in daily conversations, and connect with their colleagues.
In fact, 87% of businesses rely on their employees to use their personal mobile devices to access company apps, according to Syntonic.
6. Data-driven approach, employee suggestions, and feedback
When creating your list of intranet content ideas, make sure to involve employees in the process. You can always send out a simple survey asking employees for intranet content preferences and suggestions.
Also, you must track employees’ engagement with the existing content. For example, if your intranet platform tells you that your employees best react to video content, that’s a good insight into what kind of content you should create more of.
But many organizations are still not there! Even though 72% of employee communication professionals globally report that internal communication is seen as a key driver of employee engagement, only 41% report having dashboards or reports to measure the impact of activities regularly.
Start creating and distributing more engaging intranet content today!
Content Ideas for Better Intranet Engagement
In this section, we will give you some intranet content ideas to help you improve employee experience in the workplace.
But before we move forward, you may be wondering what’s the current state of intranet content.
According to Gallagher, the three most popular topics each contributed to the creation of an inclusive culture and a sense of belonging. Diversity, equity and inclusion came second at 29%, while value, behaviors and culture, and wellbeing and mental health sat side by side at 27%.
1. CEO updates
CEO communications are important for building trust and transparency in the workplace. Make sure that your internal editorial calendar includes important company updates directly from your CEO.
2. Industry news and market drivers
Your intranet is the best place for employees to share their knowledge, learnings, and other important findings.
If you are looking for intranet content ideas to improve employees’ performance and understanding of the business, you can create designated channels to share important industry news and market drivers.
3. New employee intros
As a part of your employee onboarding process, you can welcome your new hires with a few interesting facts about them.
This will help them feel more welcomed and will open up conversations with their new colleagues.
4. The wall of fame
If you have an employee recognition program, you can use your intranet as a wall of fame to express gratitude to great performers.
Making recognition social and visible to others is a great way of showcasing desired actions and behaviors from employees and it allows others to join the celebrations.
5. Open enrollment
Open enrollment is a specific window of time, typically every autumn, during which employees can freely enroll in or update their health insurance plans and other benefits programs.
You should always use your intranet to notify your employees about open enrollment.
6. Culture podcasts
24% of large organizations use their intranet to communicate their organization’s values, behaviors, and culture.
To make this more fun and consumable on the go, consider organizing monthly podcasts to remind your employees about your company’s core values. You can invite your employees to share real-life stories and tips about practicing those values.
For example, if teamwork is important to your organization, you can have a podcast to showcase an example of a successful cross-functional project.
7. Sales wins and customer stories
Boost your sales team’s motivations and morale by sharing new closed-won deals with the entire organization.
Whenever you publish a new customer story, make sure that you showcase it on your company’s intranet.
8. Ask me anything webinars
Once a quarter you can organize a live webinar where employees can ask any questions about the company, business, or their work.
This can be particularly useful for remote, hybrid, and dispersed workplaces where employees don’t have many opportunities to meet in person.
9. Contests
There are many ways to make work more fun, and contests are one of our favorite ones. You can create contests just about anything, but they are particularly beneficial when they drive better business results.
For example, if you are launching a new marketing campaign, you can ask your employees to share it on their social media profiles. The advocate who drives the most engagement on social media can be rewarded with a small gift.
Luckily, the best intranet platforms have embedded employee advocacy features for easier content sharing and gamification features to boost engagement. (Like Haiilo! 😉)
10. Funny office videos
Ask your employees to record spontaneous, authentic office videos. Share them with the rest of the company on your intranet platform and watch the engagement skyrocket!
The great thing is that you can reuse this type of content for your employer branding and recruitment marketing initiatives to attract new talent to your organization.
11. Trivia
Who doesn’t like trivia? This initiative takes such a little effort but can go a long way in boosting engagement with your intranet content.
You can simply post one question per week in the form of a simple poll. After a few days, you can release the results and enjoy the comments, reactions, conversations, and discussions about them.
12. Work-life balance and WFH tips
Even though 72% of workers believe work-life balance is a critical factor when choosing a job, 66% of full-time employees say they don’t strongly believe they have a work-life balance. Yet, only 23% of companies believe they are promoting work-life balance.
Remote workplaces and those employers who truly care about their employees’ well-being already have internal employee newsletters with tips and best practices for achieving better work-life balance.
You can share these in the form of text, or to drive even more engagement, you can ask your employees to record short videos of their own tips and experiences.
13. Career path stories
Most employees care about their career growth and development within your organization. To keep them in, it is important to remind them of the career paths your company offers.
Again, the best way to do so is by sharing existing employees’ stories and career paths.
For example, if you have an employee who has been with the company for a while, you can have them write a short blog post about their career path. Alternatively, you can create an interesting infographic to showcase their journey within your organization.
14. Product launches
Use your intranet to let the entire organization know about new product launches and other important product updates.
Make sure to attach enablement documents to help your employees understand how to communicate the benefits to the customers.
If new product launches are important for driving new sales or increasing engagement within the existing customer base, you can ask your employees to share the news on their social channels.
15. Job openings
Whether you are looking to improve internal mobility or hire new people, posting new job openings on your intranet is always a good idea.
Internal mobility is the movement of employees to new career and development opportunities within the same organization. If this is something you offer to your employees, encourage them to apply to positions you post on your intranet.
If you are looking to attract new talent, you can ask your employees to share the job opening with their networks or make referrals. Remember, referrals are the best source of new hires!
16. Internal and external events
Whether you are holding an internal event such as a company summit or teambuilding, or organizing or sponsoring an external event, your company’s intranet is the best place to let your employees know.
17. LOL GIFs and memes
Earlier in the blog we talked about the importance of humor in the workplace. Why not have a designated place on your intranet with funny GIFs and memes?
When trying times come, every employee can have a place to go to when they need a good laugh.
Here’s one to make you laugh today!
18. New policies and procedures
Reaching every employee with new policies and procedures is important for every organization, especially those large ones with a distributed and frontline workforce.
Whether it’s a new safety procedure, social media policy, or any other situation that requires some change management, you need to ensure good readership and engagement.
Such announcements should never go one way. Instead, you should allow your employees to post questions and raise their concerns within the intranet.
19. Quick polls
Quick polls are one of our favorite intranet content ideas. They allow you to be creative and also learn more about your employees’ current state of mind.
Here are a few suggestions:
- React with an emoji that best describes how you are feeling today.
- Which of the following company’s benefits do you value the most?
- Which of our core company values do you find the most important?
- Which questions do you want answered during our next Q&A session?
20. Company-wide surveys
Many HR professionals are struggling to achieve satisfying response rates from their company-wide employee surveys.
To improve visibility and engagement:
- Post the surveys on your intranet’s news feed
- Send out push notifications for better visibility
- Use a multichannel approach to distribute the survey via your employees’ preferred communication channels such as Slack, MS Teams, and SMS
- Set up automated reminders for those who didn’t take the survey
- Automatically translate surveys to employees’ native languages
The Role of Technology In Mastering Your Intranet Content Strategy
Creating more engaging internal content is not easy, but the right technology can help.
Your organization’s intranet capabilities, features, and functionalities are critical for improving the overall intranet adoption and engagement.
💡 Before we continue, check out our blog about how an intranet can help you improve employee experience.
1. Seamless multimedia content creation
First and foremost, your intranet platform should enable you to easily create content that excites your employees.
With Haiilo, you can:
- Create engaging content in minutes
- Easily embed multimedia content
- Share compelling video and audio stories
- Make your blog articles interactive
2. Sophisticated segmentation and targeting
According to research, around 50% of communication and HR professionals say that their technology doesn’t allow them to serve content based on employees’ interests, and targeting based on engagement is even lower.
On the other hand, personalization is key for intranet user adoption. Employees will keep coming back to your intranet only if the content they see is relevant to their interests, preferences, job titles, locations, departments, and other criteria.
Luckily, modern intranet solutions offer different segmentation criteria which allows comms professionals to curate and publish content in one place and make it highly relevant through dynamic audience targeting.
3. Multichannel distribution
The performance of your intranet content highly depends on your content distribution strategy. Some employees use email, some use Slack and MS Teams, and mobile workers often prefer SMS as the primary means of workplace communication. So how can we always ensure we send information via the right channels?
Multichannel communications aim to enable workplace communicators to use internal channels strategically – not to overwhelm employees but to keep them informed with relevant information.
With our social intranet, you can publish to all your channels with ease: email, SharePoint, Slack, digital signage, MS Teams, and more.
4. Artificial intelligence
According to research, bloggers who use AI spend about 30% less time writing a blog post, and AI trend is also becoming popular among internal comms professionals.
In fact, AI can help you optimize your intranet content strategy in multiple ways.
For example, Haiilo leverages AI to analyze user activity, understand employee interests, and predict future engagement. Based on data, communicators can identify specific employee profiles, create segments, and get recommendations around what type of content employees are likely to engage with.
The platform also uses generative AI to help internal communicators create content much faster. Regardless of your intranet content idea, AI can help you get started so that you don’t ever have to create content from scratch.
📹 Take a look at why the dilemma of the blank page is no longer a thing thanks to Haiilo AVA with which internal communicators create content 10x faster!
Read on! Learn about the key insights on the measurement in internal comms.
