Internal Communications Strategy Best Practices to Show Your Value

Are you seen as an internal communication strategist? Or are you seen as a tactician? As an experienced communication professional, I know about this struggle first-hand. Proving your value—and the power of good communication—can be an uphill battle. But the trick is to start with a strategy that gets results, so you can show just how valuable you are to your company. I’ll share how following internal communications strategy best practice will help you become a strategist and not just a tactician. We’ll cover conducting an internal comms audit, putting together a comms strategy, and how to show the positive impact you have on culture, engagement, and the bottom line.

3 Internal Communications Strategy Best Practices

Let’s talk about internal communications strategy best practices that will help you prove your value and earn your seat at the table.

Strategy 1: Start with an Internal Comms Audit

Any good comms strategy starts with an audit. Why? Because an internal comms audit lays the foundation for what’s currently being communicated and provides the framework to determine what needs to change or be communicated in the future.

Auditing your strategy lets you understand exactly who you’re reaching, how messages are being sent, and what channels you’re using. This will give you a foundation for success. Why? Because to change something—like adopting a new communication channel—you need proof. 

It’s a lot more compelling to tell senior leadership that you need an app because 80 percent of your workforce doesn’t have an email address or Intranet access, and therefore are regularly missing x, y, and z critical updates, than to say it’s your “gut instinct.” 

So, an audit helps you craft a responsive strategy, but it also helps you measure how successful your current strategy is.

Internal Comms Audit Questions

We recommend using our audit guide and template for a comprehensive, step-by-step walkthrough of how to conduct an audit, but there are a few foundational questions to consider when you get started.

• Who is your audience? Have you built employee personas for each core group? This is a great marketing best practice that comms pros can use to improve their targeting and personalization of messages.
• What does your audience want? And what do they need? The best way to learn this is to ask through employee surveys or focus groups. But this is also helpful research for building employee personas and really understanding how to reach your target audience. Determine:
  • How do they like to consume information (e.g., video, podcast, text, etc.)?
  • What channel(s) do they prefer (e.g., apps, email, etc.)?
  • How often would they like to receive information?
  • What topics interest them outside of operational, need-to-know content?
• How is my audience currently receiving information? Get your baseline on channels and content mediums.
• How do I want my audience to be receiving information? Really think of the art of the possible here. Are all your executive comms going through email and print? Do you want to make those short video messages instead? Document these wishlist items, noting why you want the change.
• What is happening with content governance: are comms unified through you or are departments still going rogue? Are comms unified through you or are departments still going rogue? It’s important to pull your stakeholders together regularly to understand what messages are being sent and if anything is being shared without your expertise.

There are many more internal comms audit questions, but these are the most foundational and important.

Strategy 2: Make Measurement an Integral Part of Your Strategy

With your audit results in hand, you’re ready to start putting together your internal comms strategy, right?

Not so fast!

Do you have:

• A comprehensive list of your comms goals?
• The business’ objectives?
• What about what your stakeholders need to achieve?

Make sure you understand and record all these goals before you pen a strategy. Watch our video series on measurement to learn how to set SMART goals and what to do with them:

Once you have your goals, you can start planning your strategy. As a seasoned IC pro, you’re already crafting campaigns and messages all the time. But figuring out how to measure success, adapt, and continue to drive results is how you continue to evolve.

To learn from what you’re currently doing, an Internal Comms Stop, Start, Continue Analysis can be invaluable. This audit makes it easy to look at your current objectives and campaigns and create actionable plans for what you want to keep the same, try (and test!), and stop doing altogether. It’s a great way to tweak your existing internal comms strategy and meaningfully test new approaches.

But if you’re really struggling to move from individual messages to comms campaigns, our Guide to Creating Successful Internal Comms Campaigns has great step-by-step instructions and pro tips.

Strategy 3: Optimize Your Content For Mobile Consumption

If you’re realizing that your current comms strategy is stuck in the stone age—reliance on email, signage, and intranets—you may want to consider a mobile internal comms strategy.

There are a few best practices when building a mobile comms strategy to keep in mind. 

• The content has to suit the medium. Apps are made for quick, multimedia, and more informal content. While that may be very different from how you craft content for traditional channels like email, it’s actually a huge opportunity. Less formal (and jargon-heavy!) content is more relatable to your employees. And video and audio content create more trust and transparency with your audience than printed messages do. So take advantage of this different channel and way of communicating!
• User-generated content is king. Just like on social media, mobile apps provide the opportunity to elevate more voices within your employee community. People want to hear from people just like them, so finding these employee stories and giving them a platform is a huge culture win.
• Focus on new metrics. A new channel means new metrics to help you assess the effectiveness of your strategy. But don’t get lost in vanity metrics. Focus on what actually helps you prove your ROI.

Use Data to Demonstrate Your Impact

When all is said and done, you need to measure your impact and share those results with leadership to truly be seen as a strategic comms advisor at your company. But luckily, when you build your comms strategy with objectives in mind, you set yourself up to be able to measure your ROI.

But we understand that measurement and analytics can sometimes be an overwhelming subject for IC pros. That’s why we worked with our friends at Brilliant Ink to create this guide to internal comms measurement.

If you have questions about internal comms best practices and how you can take your strategy mobile, we’re here to help.

About the Author

Sydney Lauro is the Demand Generation Manager for theEMPLOYEEapp. Prior to joining the team at theEMPLOYEEapp, Sydney worked in internal communications for Chipotle Mexican Grill. She users her internal comms expertise and passion for improving communication and the employee experience to create content and share best practices to help other communications professionals.