Internal/external alignment, a free ticket 🎟️, message icons

Insider Comms for internal comms

May 13

❄️ Last week my wife and I visited Crater Lake, America’s deepest lake, but nobody told us there was still 25 feet of snow on the ground. (Still totally worth it!) Here’s to closing the laptop and getting outside more often!

Are Your Internal and External Communications Aligned?

black and white short coated dog on window — Inside looking out (credit)

Locked behind a paywall at SmartCompany is this teaser:

When SMEs have an aligned, integrated external and internal communications strategy it can lead to business growth, building trust with employees, attracting the right talent and better strategic alignment. A smart communications strategy will help staff feel more engaged, connected and heard.

The author is right that internal and external comms need to be aligned. It makes good business sense for many reasons, including ensuring that your employees are reading (and singing) from the same hymn books inside the company, on social media, and at the pub.

It also makes sense from a professional point of view. We internal comms pros want to, among other things, make sure that the work we do gets the most value for the comms team and the company. Sometimes, however, our work seems to go as quickly as it comes; the output can be frustratingly ephemeral.

High-performing comms teams sync internal and external editorial on a regular basis (weekly is best) to get the most out of the entire Comms team’s work, but that isn’t the reality for many internal comms pros.

PR folks are externally-oriented, so if one of them hasn’t already pushed to align internal with external, it probably won’t happen.

Taking up the cause can be an interesting, fulfilling, and value-driven career move for yourself.

If the bosses trust your internal comms team to support a business initiative internally, then you can use the content you create to support your external comms strategy.

Often public relations teams are charged with managing the company news site. This means that, on top of regular duties, overwhelmed PR folks must find time to feed the content beast. This involves:

Commissioning/creating content
Reviewing and editing material
Getting approvals from internal stakeholders
Stylizing the post with photos, layouts, fonts, etc.
Publishing (keeping SEO in mind)
Promoting the heck out of the content

The struggle is real. But it doesn’t need to be.

What if I told you there was a way internal comms can eliminate steps 1–4, so that PR could concentrate on what they do best — the promotional part in step 6?

Read: How Internal Comms Can Support PR Strategies (Mister Editorial)

🎟️ Get Your Tickets

The good people at Staffbase are running a promo for Mister Editorial subscribers (that’s you!) for their VOICES 2022 conference, happening May 24-25 in NYC (in person and virtual).

50% discount(!) when you register using promo code VOICES-SHAUN-50

One lucky Mister Editorial reader will get a free pass!

Attend in person or virtually.
The deadline to enter is Thursday, May 19, 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time.
The randomly selected winner will be announced Friday, May 20 in the Mister Editorial newsletter.
Enter the contest.

Good luck!

Internal Comms Adjacent

👮 Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office (Stock Daily)

🏢 A new academic study shows in-person meetings generate more ideas — and more creative ones — compared to videoconferencing (Nature).

⌨️ 10 killer keystrokes that'll help you work faster (Atlassian)

shallow focus photography of red and white for hire signage

American Academy of Dermatology - Senior Manager, Internal Comms (Chicago area)

Bloomberg - Manager, Engineering & Technology Communications

I worked for this team and can’t recommend the team, company, and role enough

Irdeto - Internal Communications Specialist (The Netherlands)

KPMG - Senior Director, Internal Communications Editorial Lead (Multiple U.S.A. locations)

Mars - Internal Communications Specialist

Plaid - Head of Internal Communications and Employer Brand (Remote)

Wheel - Senior Internal Communications Manager (Remote)

🕥 Color Coding and Icons for Messages

Here’s an idea. Recently Charles Schwab sent me, a customer, an email with a helpful key to understanding what I should do with their messages:

We’re busy and distracted; they get it. The new icon system was created so I can quickly ascertain whether the message is simply helpful information or if I need to take action.

What if internal comms employed the same visual cues with company messages? Imagine placing one of these helpful icons in the subject of an email or at the beginning of a chat message.

Wouldn’t your busy employees appreciate knowing how to react with just a glance?

That’s all for now. See you next week!

Connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter | Mister Editorial archive | editorshaun@gmail.com

Disclaimer: Besides running Mister Editorial, I work in employee comms at Splunk. The views in this newsletter are my own.

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