How to use Your Internal Communications Strategy Template in 5 Steps [Free Template]

Firstly, before you start, you need to establish why you are looking to use an internal communication strategy template and what it is you want to achieve when communicating internally, is it to improve employee communication? 

Are you looking to increase the top-down communication between your leaders and the rest of the organisation? Or are you looking to create a buzz around your brand, internally?

Making sure you and your team know the end goal of your internal communications is very important. Just like you would if you were marketing externally.

Some reasons why you may want to improve your internal communications by using ann internal comms plan template or an employee communication strategy template: 

• Leadership connectivity
• Inter-team connectivity
• Work culture and morale
• “Marketing internally”

Creating personas for your internal communications is just the same process as when you create them for your external communications. Use this section to define your taget audience’s demographics including;

• Age
• Gender
• Interests
• Goals
• Challengers
• Communication Preference
• Common values

The second step is to ensure you have your target personas confirmed before going ahead with your internal communication, otherwise, you may risk annoying your audience before having the chance to woo them.

Use your internal communication strategy template to create SMART objectives and goals for your internal communications. 

Specific – Make sure you are crystal clear about the specifics of your goal, make it significant and relevant.
Measurable – How will you measure your success? Identify your metrics and make them meaningful.
Achievable – Agree with your team on how you will attain your goal and ensure it is realistic and reachable.
Relevant – Step back from your strategy and ask yourself if it is still relevant or have you gone off on a tangent that only you or your team understand. Is it a reasonable goal? Does it still have relevancy?
Time – Identify the period you want to achieve your goal in? Also, identify any time barriers like time-limited, timely, is it time-sensitive?

Which applications, software and tools will you use to help you with your internal communications? Discuss and Identify these in your internal communications strategy template, be sure to test different tools to see what works.

For example, if you are making a video, you might something like YouTube Studio or Vimeo to host it.

If you are communicating by email or newsletter, you can use a marketing automation platform like Swift Digital to design, build and send your emails, and measure engagement rates like opens and clicks. You can also use your newsletter to embed your videos. Double win!

Establish how often you want to communicate with your organisation in your internal comms plan template.

Maybe you want to try communicating with different departments on different days depending on priorities. If you are using emails and newsletters to communicate, these can be scheduled daily, weekly or monthly. 

Wednesdays are the most popular day to send internal communications via email but we are seeing an increase in sends on Friday morning and late morning. So use your employee communication strategy template to plan for experiments with A/B testing and test your sends to find what works for you.

Do you need help with the creation and automation of your internal communications?

Here at Swift Digital, we can help get you started with our useful internal communications template.

We also have tips on internal communications best practices and a bunch of internal communication examples to help make your internal communication campaign a success.

Swift Digital’s templates help you effortlessly create stunning emails and events communications using our drag-and-drop email and event builder.

You can raise engagement with embedded images, videos, polls, article feedback, and emojis and schedule messages to send at the right time.

Government departments’ unique marketing requirements are covered with Swift Digital, and full compliance with all anti-spam and privacy laws is guaranteed. Swift Digital is also ISO 27001 certified.

Swift Digital is Australia’s leader in marketing automation software and event management working with organisations like the NSW Government, ATO, and companies like Westpac Bank and Qantas.

Find out why we’re the Australian government department’s number one choice for their professional communications and events.

To find out how your business can get the best out of Swift Digital’s platform, contact our team today.

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