When publishing news on the company intranet, there is a clear objective: to reach the right people and get a message across effectively. Sometimes just reading the news is not enough to achieve our goal. We expect readers to take certain actions, such as commenting, participating in a survey or visiting a link.
We call this "engagement". When readers perform these actions, it shows that the content is interesting and relevant to them. The editor closes the feedback loop and can thus assess whether the goal has been achieved or not.
ahead insights help you understand whether you are achieving your engagement goals. On ahead, a user falls into the "engaged user" category if he or she has reacted to content or left a comment.
We've put together a short list of best practices that will help you increase your employee engagement in the news section.
1. reach the right audience
As an editor, you want to publish content that is relevant and useful to employees. Reaching people with the wrong content will tarnish their intranet experience and give editors misleading insights.
You need to target a specific audience, not a broad one. First, be clear about who your target audience is and ask yourself: "Who is this content relevant for? Then select the user group from ahead that best matches the answer to this question. It's better to reach 20 highly engaged readers from a properly segmented audience than 200 uninterested readers from a broader audience.
💡 Learn more about ahead target audiences and how best to use them.
2. headlines are crucial
An attractive and thoughtful headline is key to grabbing your audience's interest. The headline (or title) is the reader's first point of contact with the content and your best chance of piquing their interest and getting them to read your news.
Headlines should be about the employees. Think about what they will get out of reading the news. Instead of "Updating vacation and time off policies," you should say, "More flexibility with your days off. Policy update".
When you publish news, the headline will appear in mobile and in-app notifications (if you choose to notify users "by notification") and in the email subject line (if you choose "by email"). The headline also plays an important role in the newsfeed on the homepage.
3 - Use simple calls to action
Let readers know what you want them to do by including a clear call to action. A call to action is a concise, clear statement that asks the reader to take the desired action.
Do you want your employees to open an attached file and read its contents? Don't be afraid to be clear. Be clear and include highlighted text that says "Please read the attached file".
Want to gather information or insights from readers? You can use the ahead poll feature and ask readers to cast their vote.
4. openly ask for feedback
If you want readers to share their thoughts or opinions, try proactively asking them to use the comments and reactions section. Let your staff know that their comments and feedback are welcome. A simple friendly invitation to participate, such as "Please let us know what you think in the comments", will give readers more confidence and a willingness to contribute. A clear open-door policy encourages participation and transparency and therefore engagement.
5. include visual content
It's hard to grab an employee's attention, but it's even harder to keep it. Including photos, videos, infographics or memes in your messages not only gives you additional useful information, but also creates a more enjoyable reading experience. Visual content is easier to digest, more memorable and more engaging than plain text.
Use aheads image, video and embedded content building blocks to insert visual content and publish engaging news.
We've covered some of these best practices in our webinar 'From passive to interactive'. Now it's time to incorporate these tips into your company's internal communications strategy. Good engagement!
