Insights

How Intranet Analytics Can Save Your Internal Comms from Total Chaos

Written by Anete Vesere | Oct 15, 2024

Intranet analytics offers a goldmine of insights into how well your internal comms are working and suggests ways you can improve. Find out how. 

An effective social intranet software is super important for keeping everyone informed, aligned, and engaged— agrees everybody. Let us throw in a bummer: 86% of employees and executives cite ineffective communication as a primary cause of workplace failure such as missed goals, inefficiencies, and poor outcomes. In fact, 74% of employees feel they are missing out on company news and information. Wait, what?🫢

So, how do you find out if your internal messages reach employees and hit the sweet spot you’re hoping for? Is there even a way to find out?

Enter the power of intranet analytics. It unfolds a goldmine of insights you can follow to fine-tune your internal communications strategies and ensure what you say is not just heard but also well understood. 

In this blog, we dive deep into the power of intranet analytics and how you can use it to turn raw data into meaningful dialogue.

Wait, what even are intranet analytics?

In the simplest terms, intranet analytics is the ammunition you need to measure and analyze how your employees interact with your company’s social intranet. It involves tracking user activity across your intranet platform and turning that data into insights you can act upon.

The KPIs that matter: what intranet analytics can actually track

Sure, there’s a long list of things analytics can tell you, but here are the key KPIs you should really care about:

  • User engagement metrics: These metrics give you a pulse on how engaged employees are with your internal platform. They answer questions like: 
    • What are the peak times or days when employees are most active on the intranet?
    • How many people are visiting your intranet?
    • How do engagement rates compare across regions?
    • How many times do users sign in daily/weekly/monthly?
    • What percentage of users are actually visiting the platform?
    • How long do employees spend on the platform during each visit?
  • Content: These metrics analyze what content is popular among your folks. It’s an excellent place to know how to refine your content strategy to deliver what employees want. Content engagement metrics answer questions like: 
    • What content is getting viewed, commented and reacted to most or, on the contrary, least? 
    • Is the content igniting employees to interact and take steps like commenting and sharing?
    • Are employees reading and engaging with the content?
    • How many updates are posted monthly?
    • Which type of content is the most popular?
    • How does content engagement vary by department, role, or location?
  • Community and team metrics: This group of metrics takes a closer at group participation and the overall sense of community within your company’s intranet. Studying them can give insights into how smooth collaboration is across your departments. You can tune into these KPIs to get answers to questions like: 
    • Are teams or communities active? 
    • Which groups contribute the most to discussions or collaborations, and how often? Conversely, is there a group that’s repeatedly getting left out?
    • Is there a preferred mode of comms, such as reactions, leaving comments, poll responses, and so on?
  • Mobile app usage: With the rise of remote and dispersed work, these metrics indicate how well your employees are accessing your intranet on the go. Accessing these metrics, you can answer questions like:
    • How many employees access the intranet via mobile devices?
    • How different is the mobile usage vs desktop usage pattern?
    • Is there a noticeable trend of higher engagement among mobile users vs. desktop users?

Now that you know what data and answers you can gather from intranet analytics, let's examine how leveraging intranet analytics can benefit your internal communications. 

How intranet analytics can save your internal comms from chaos

Here are some of the key benefits of relying on intranet analytics.

Stop guessing - analytics will fix your content strategy

Sound intranet analytics positions you to bid goodbye to all the guesswork you might be compelled to do around your content strategy. It helps you understand exactly what content is or isn’t resonating and with which groups. It gives you an understanding of whether you need to communicate more (or even less, for that matter). You can tailor your communication plans using this intel to achieve the best results.

For example, let’s assume you send out details of a wellness program. Your intranet analytics reveal that your desk workers are excited, but frontline workers aren’t showing that much interest. This signals that there could be a problem with your comms or this program isn’t relevant to them.

With that insight, you know you need to brainstorm more on the comms or the wellness initiative to hit the sweet spot. In short, you know what to do next to bring the maximum impact. 

Timing is everything:  intranet analytics helps you hit ‘send’ at the perfect moment

You’ll agree that timing is everything. We all know how likely a message just after your workday ends will most likely get missed. But hey, that’s not the only time the impact of content posting is low. The fact is it really depends on your employees’ activity patterns. This differs for employee groups, depending on their location, shift, and working patterns. How do you crack the code then? 

Intranet analytics! It reveals the optimal times based on your organization’s unique workflow and patterns. This intel helps to ensure that your messages are sent when employees are most likely to engage with them. As a result, you increase their reach and effectiveness(wait, yours too!).

Helps you implement data storytelling

For nearly everyone who’s not a data scientist, whacking one’s brains over a massive database of numbers and graphs can get overwhelming. Yet, digging into those numbers is essential to build compelling narratives that people actually care about.

By presenting insights in a way that highlights key trends, robust intranet analytics aids you in pursuing more data-based storytelling. With this information, you get an edge to focus on what’s essential and align your comms efforts with business goals. 

Intranet analytics = smarter, smoother, and more impactful comms

Intranet analytics offers more than just a bunch of fancy numbers—it's a solid tool that can help you understand how well your internal communications strategy and its execution are working. Using the data intranet analytics collates and presents; you can equip yourself to refine your content strategy, strategically time your messages, and turn passive information into meaningful dialogue.

Want to transform the effectiveness of your internal communications? Discover how Speakap’s social intranet solution can help you end information overload and enhance employee engagement while integrating with your essential digital workplace tools.