Written by Jessica Brook, SocialChorus
Mentioning the title of SocialChorus’ ebook, 6 Ways to Attract And Keep Your Employees’ Attention, is probably a good way to attract any communicator’s attention. Who in the employee communications world hasn’t struggled, at one point or another, to hold the concentration of a group of employees? In the following series of posts, I’m go to examine these six strategies for captivating your employees and keeping their focus. In the last post I talked a bit about why saying goodbye to older technologies is a good idea, and now I’m reflecting on another bit of SocialChorus wisdom: personalize it.
No two ways about it: personalized content is turbo-charged content. And I’m only exaggerating slightly: according to our research, targeted and personalized content is up to 800% more effective at eliciting engagement.
So it’s a no-brainer that a communicator looking to take hold (and keep hold) of employees’ attention would turn to something as engagement-conducive as personalizing content.
No, this isn’t breaking news—effective marketers have been personalizing content for years because of one simple fact: it works. Personalization means relevance. After all, even the most elegantly designed app is useless if it isn’t relevant to the user.
But let’s back up a bit and discuss the nitty-gritty of content personalization. Because while the term “personalized content” is on the tip of everyone’s tongue, it’s important to make sure we’re all on the same page when it comes to how personalizing content can change everyone’s lives for the better.
Personalizing content goes two ways: it benefits both the people putting out the content and the people receiving the content. For example, if you wanted to send out information about a policy change that only pertains to US employees, you’d want to get that info in front of those who will be affected. Personalizing content takes away the need to ‘firehose’ your entire workforce with information that may not be relevant to them.
But personalized content doesn’t begin and end with policy and company changes. The news and info an employee gets should be targeted at their job function—their user experience becomes personalized when the retail store associates are getting news that most directly pertains to retail stores and the manufacturing gurus receive info that’s important for them.
The end result of personalized content? People feel seen and relevant, they engage with the content, and they stick around and become further engaged. The retention rate for users that personalize their newsfeed is, according to SocialChorus, four times higher than users that don’t.
After all, no one wants to feel like they’re alone in a crowd. And when people have to sift through non-applicable news, that’s exactly how they feel. But when that news is personalized, people feel as though they’re being treated as the singular individual they are, and employee communications and attention flourishes.
You’ll have the opportunity to meet with SocialChorus and see firsthand how their solutions can help maximize employee communications at: