Today, we’re excited to launch channels - an easy, content-driven way to keep distributed workforces connected & united around your company culture
I’m a marketer. And marketers have our own certain vocabulary we like to annoy non-marketer people with: acquisition, retention, brand awareness, brand loyalty, brand evangelists. Audience. Of course what we usually mean by that is customers.
We talk about a million ways to engage our audience: blogs, email marketing, chatbots, social, webinars, virtual events, video, content marketing, ads. We talk about budget, and how we wish we had more of it.
We pour big resources into capturing our audience. We do our most creative and strategic thinking about it. We hire top talent to help us understand and engage this audience so we can grow.
But most organizations typically don’t talk as much about our other important audience: our employees.
Growth trends upward with more engaged workforces
Employees are as critical to the success of our businesses as customers. Compared with other companies, those that invest big into employee engagement report more than four times the average profit and more than twice the average revenue.
Every leader (hopefully) realizes this. Prompt any level manager or executive and why Sarah, they’ll say, of course we believe our staff is critical to our mission! They may continue their protests - and employee engagement? I have an HR department for that.
Why then do so many employees around the globe (85%) say they feel unengaged at work?
The challenge of scaling a company culture
Think back to the days before your company was big. When your team was 5 to 10 people and everybody knew everybody’s business. Before information and people were siloed off into departments. Engagement was naturally high because everyone had an important stake in the organization. Everyone had to be a brand evangelist if you were gonna have any shot at growing.
Smash cut to your org where it is today. Your workforce is hundreds (maybe thousands) of people strong. You have clear corporate policies in place, admins at every corner, and workflows under control thanks to a handy suite of software tools. You have done that holiest of holy things and SCALED your business.
But the thing you haven’t been able to scale is that miraculous culture you had when your entire team was tight, engrossed in their work, and unified around your vision.
It’s one of the hardest things leaders have to do. And now as remote (often globally distributed) workforces become the norm - how do you keep everybody connected? As importantly, how do you minimize - instead of layering on - the tools you use to do it?
If you’re unsure of the answer to that, you’re not alone. The pandemic has forced everybody to take the issue of disengaged employees seriously.
How we want to help
When it comes to corporate communications, we’ve always believed that digital signage is key to engaging employees and surfacing important information in an ambient way.
Hint: For the uninitiated, digital signage is a system you can use for broadcasting content to TV screens around your offices.
The benefit for distributed teams is that hundreds of screens in offices around the globe can be managed centrally from anywhere. Potentially thousands of employees have a way to engage with corporate content in a way that prioritizes their productivity and capacity for info uptake.
That’s all fine and dandy when people can watch your screens, but for our customers and other orgs that are ‘out of office’ we thought - how can we let them share their digital signage content without the digital signage?
How can we help orgs reap the benefits of this kind of communication without making their employees download yet another tool to their tech stack?
Introducing Channels
With channels, we’ve created an internal content hub for organizations where it’s easy to create, optimize, and distribute corporate content at scale.
Think of it as a company TV channel you can watch in a browser or embed into your intranet or other communication tool like Confluence or Notion.
Getting your channel set up is simple:
- Gather content into a playlist inside Fugo (use your own media assets or try some of our apps!)
- Schedule when the content will run (or don’t - you can push it out immediately!)
- Copy and share the link with your employees! (or embed it anywhere that supports iFrames)
Check out the full guide here.
Broadcast compelling visual content targeted at the right people
Both your channels and their content can be configured in the way that’s most meaningful to your org, whether that’s by department, usage, theme, branch - however you decide you want to distribute your content.
Fugo lets you access tons of free content options. Curate a virtual noticeboard that visually engages teams with news feeds, data dashboards, event announcements, due dates, schedules, social media, and more!
Channels are also a great way to combine & distribute data from various sources that typically require expensive login access:
It’s not just virtual noticeboards
We built channels to help teams connect and have a voice within their organizations, but the versatility of the feature means it can actually be used in other ways besides a virtual noticeboard.
In essence, a channel is simply an embeddable link to your visual or audio content, which opens up the doors to all kinds of use cases…
- A company radio station that streams your audio
- Ad space within your site (think nested Google Ads)
- Welcome & onboarding messaging for coworking, hospitality, or event spaces:
What makes Fugo Channels great internal content hubs for teams?
They’re simple. Anyone can set them up and share - no training or coding skills required.
They’re centralized. Never again will employees have to wonder where they can find (or where they saw) that important piece of information.
They’re versatile. They can be created, organized, and put to use however you need.
They’re unobtrusive. Channels communicate information in an ambient way that prioritizes people’s productivity, eliminating the pings and dings that disrupt deep work.
They’re measurable. Fugo tracks the view count on your channels, so you can make sure your content’s getting seen.
Expanding our vision
We’re just getting started with channels. Keep your eyes on Fugo for upcoming releases:
- Authentication to make your channel private and secure.
- Content templates to help you make slick, professional content.
- Zoned content so so you can display multiple pieces of content at once.
- Interactivity so viewers can guide themselves through the channel content.
- App releases to give you access to even more content possibilities.
Got an app or feature request? Drop a comment on our Public Roadmap!
Get started with your first channel
Now that you know why you should use Fugo channels as your internal content hub, go ahead and create your first channel. It only takes a few minutes to get started, and we’ll give you two weeks free 😎
