In workplaces overflowing with content, there are three simple questions internal comms pros need to ask themselves: What do they want their colleagues to think, do and feel with their messaging? When communicators struggle to answer those questions, clarity gaps can emerge.
During Ragan’s Brand Storytelling Certificate Course, Cheryl Hoops Fisher, professor of brand strategy at New York University, will explore how communicators can build clear and consistent narratives across both their organization’s internal and external channels. Fisher told Ragan that internal communicators have an especially important role in ensuring that employees view the brand they work for.
“Internal communicators are critical to brand narrative,” Fisher said. “Employees experience organizations through so many different touchpoints every day. The organizations that do this well are very clear about who they are, consistent in how they communicate and constantly innovating without losing sight of the bigger picture.”
She added that internal communicators often feel pressure to produce content while navigating retention concerns and changing employee expectations. But before they can create upticks in engagement with their storytelling, they need a deep understanding of the employee behaviors they want to influence.
“Communicators today are operating in an incredibly noisy environment where employees are absorbing information from every direction,” Fisher said. “The organizations that break through are the ones that create consistency across all those touchpoints so employees aren’t getting fragmented versions of the brand experience.”
Build your stories around the behaviors you want to reinforce
Fisher told Ragan that one of the biggest mistakes communicators make when creating a brand storytelling campaign is failing to identify the problem they’re trying to solve. Rather than determining the channels and content formats they want to pursue, Fisher said that comms pros need to focus on the behavior they want to influence among their audience.
“A lot of organizations skip straight to execution,” Fisher said. “They start building campaigns, publishing profiles and pushing content before they’ve really defined success. The strongest storytelling programs are intentional about what they’re trying to change and why those stories matter in the first place.”
For instance, if internal communicators need to focus on retention, they could spotlight employees who have risen into leadership roles within the company or feature jobs that most employees might not see daily. Fisher said that this approach is key to culture-building in large organizations, especially because it helps connect day-to-day employee work to their colleagues’ activities and the broader purpose of the company.
The employee stories that resonate most are the ones that feel recognizable and believable,” Fisher said. “People want to see examples that reflect their own experience or show a path they could realistically follow. That’s what helps storytelling move beyond promotion and actually build trust.”
Focus on consistency of voice, not publishing volume
Fisher also said that far too often, comms pros fall into the trap of measuring their brand storytelling success by the amount of content they’re producing rather than whether their audiences are taking away a better understanding of the company’s priorities after engaging with content.
This can be especially challenging in big companies in which employees hear multiple messages from multiple directions each day. For instance, an employee might get three distinct messages from a manager check-in, a town hall meeting with leadership and an employee newsletter. Fisher said that when organizations fail to align those touchpoints, employees can end up with fragmented perceptions of the company itself.
“Employees don’t separate communication into buckets the way organizations often do,” Fisher said. “To them, it’s all part of one experience with the company. If leadership messaging, manager communication and employee storytelling all feel disconnected from one another, employees start to lose confidence in what the organization actually stands for.”
Fisher said communicators should regularly audit their channels and messaging to ensure that every communication reinforces the same organizational priorities all the time. She added that it doesn’t mean repeating the same language everywhere. But it does mean ensuring employees encounter the same themes and values no matter where they’re getting their brand storytelling content.
“Communicators are under pressure to keep feeding channels all the time,” Fisher told Ragan. “But employees don’t remember organizations because they published more content than everyone else. They remember organizations that communicate clearly, repeatedly and with a consistent point of view.”
Fisher said internal communicators should focus their content pushes on the overall experience employees are having with the organization over time. When messaging feels disconnected across channels, it can undermine trust and create uncertainty about what the company is prioritizing.
“If you don’t define your narrative clearly and reinforce it consistently, employees will create their own version of it,” Fisher said. “People are always connecting the dots internally, whether communicators guide that process or not. The organizations that do this best are intentional about the story employees are walking away with after every interaction.”
To sign up for the Brand Storytelling Certificate Course, click here.
Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications.
