It’s been over four years since I started this list of my favorite internal communication blogs. And I am still absolutely blown away.
The depth of thought. The effort. The heart. The insight.
It’s incredible. And it only keeps getting better.
I’ve scoured the internet once again, tapped Comms-unity (the Slack group for Internal Communication Professionals) to make sure I haven’t missed any, all so that this year I can bring you 22 of the absolute best-of-the-best internal communication blogs out there.
Note: The blogs are not ranked, just numbered. There’s no way I could ever say any of these incredible labors of love are objectively better than the others. They’re all awesome or they wouldn’t be on the list.
#1. All Things IC
Who are they?
The All Things IC blog is the magnificent brainchild of Rachel Miller, internal communications consultant, educator, and mentor extraordinaire.
Honestly, it feels weird even explaining who she is because if you are in internal comms and you don’t know who she is, I have concerns.
For those who don’t know, she’s a total rockstar in the IC community, her knowledge is incredibly valuable, and she’s got a drool-worthy client list to prove it.
Here are just some of the companies she’s worked with and advised: BBC, Coca-Cola, the Guardian, Lego, Harrods, Johnson & Johnson, Royal Mail, The Jamie Oliver Group, Land Rover, Jaguar, NHS England, Aon, Vodafone, Nestle, Telefonica, the British Red Cross, and more.
Why should you read their blog?
Rachel has written over 1500 blog posts. That’s 11 books worth of content and over a million words on all things IC.
And she isn’t showing any signs of slowing down.
With every post being chock-full of precious insight and great guest posts from some of the sharpest minds in the industry, there isn’t a better place to start your journey into the internal comms world than with this blog.
Where to start:
- How to write an internal communication strategy
- How to communicate with furloughed employees
- Free crisis communication guide
- The inside story of being an IC pro this year (2021)
#2. Alive with Ideas
Who are they?
Alive with Ideas is an independent ideas agency that helps create effective, engaging communications.
Why should you read their blog?
If you’re more of a visual learner, you’re in luck. Alive with Ideas knows exactly how to communicate using vivid imagery and beautiful illustrations.
Their blog is a nice change of pace that uses powerful visuals to explain content, rather than copious amounts of copy.
What’s better is that they are always teaming up with our favorite practitioners and consultants to create incredible work that educates and resonates.
One of the many things that I appreciate about their blog is that they also try and spread positivity by tackling topics like well-being and self-help. And after all that we’ve gone through in the last few years, I’m super grateful for this kind of content.
Where to start:
- 3 ways to improve your creativity backed up by neuroscience
- Finding your flow in times of trouble
- Hybrid working: What IC needs to think about right now
- You’re on mute!
#3. Brilliant Ink
Who are they?
Brilliant Ink is a hybrid consulting firm and creative agency dedicated to designing meaningful employee experiences that translate into business results and improved engagement.
Why should you read their blog?
We’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with the folks at Brilliant Ink (more than once!) and let me tell you, they really are brilliant—and their blog is no exception.
As a blog connoisseur, I very much appreciate their approach to writing. They write on all sorts of topics, the soft and the hard, but they always keep it relevant and engaging. This, paired with their approachable tone and sense of humor, gives their blog wide appeal that extends far beyond just communications.
Better yet, you won’t find any navel-gazing here. They’re 100% focused on providing value and contributing to the knowledge and elevation of the community.
You love to see it.
Where to start:
- How to Rock an IC Preferences Survey
- Rethinking the Salary Transparency Taboo & Compensation Philosophy
- Workplace Diversity, Anti-Racism, and Allyship Resource Center
- Money Talks: Introducing the Internal Communications Salary Report
#4. Redefining Communications
Who are they?
Founded by internal comms expert and former President of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) Jenni Field, Redefining Communications is an internal comms consultancy that helps organizations understand, diagnose, and fix what’s not working in organizations, and manage change effectively.
Jenni is also backed by an impressive team with well over a century of experience between them. They specialize in everything from digital transformation and organizational culture, to design and event management, and even coaching and mental resilience training.
Why should you read their blog?
My favorite thing about The Redefining Communications blog is that instead of strictly focusing on organizations or employees like most blogs about internal comms, they also focus on the individual communicator, their professional development, and their experiences—with a healthy dose of honesty.
Though most posts are relatively short and to the point, Jenni and her team don’t shy away from hard topics like ethics, fear, and mental resilience.
And these are exactly the kinds of conversations that we need to be having.
So if you’re hungry for an authentic internal comms perspective, definitely check out this blog.
Where to start:
- What is mental resilience?
- Why we need to understand symptoms versus root cause
- Ambiguity, resilience, and the Stockdale Paradox
#5. Comms Rebel
Who are they?
Comms Rebel is an internal comms consultancy founded by Advita Patel, ChartPR FCIPR.
Advita Patel is awesome. She’s got over 15 years of experience in communications, she’s a Board Director for CIPR UK, a Chartered PR Practitioner, qualified coach, co-founder of A Leader Like Me, accomplished speaker, a podcast host, and an all-around great person.
Why should you read their blog?
Personally, I read every word Advita writes.
Advita is one of my favorite people in the internal comms industry, not only because of her wonderful sense of humor and great perspective but also because of her candor.
And that candor spills over into her writing in the best way. Her blog posts are emotionally honest and insightful—think internal communications for the soul—which is a breath of fresh air in the corporate blog world.
Whether you’re struggling with imposter syndrome, difficult conversations at work, or just need practical advice on how to plan and improve your internal comms, Advita’s got knowledge to share.
Where to start:
- Three practical ways to share good news stories across your business
- Step up and call out… my reflections
- Five tips to help you develop an inclusive comms plan
#6. Comms Over a Coffee
Who are they?
Comms Over a Coffee is the brainchild of comms pro, and winner of the 2019 IoIC rising star award, Harriet Small.
Harriet has over 12 years’ experience in communications, journalism, and public affairs at companies such as the UK Civil Aviation Authority, Transport for London, Sky, Merton Council, the European Union, and the NHS
She also runs workshops on the role of IC in building diverse and inclusive workplaces, and speaks internationally on topics like internal communications, employee engagement, employee experience, public relations and social media.
Why should you read their blog?
Every post feels intimate, down-to-earth, while still being fresh, candid, and inspiring.
Reading each post really feels like I’m sitting across from her in a trendy London cafe and she’s recounting her experiences and newest ideas.
This narrative, conversational yet contextualized style of writing is really rare in the communication blogs that I’ve come across, and I love it.
Aptly named ‘Musings’ on her website, Harriet’s blog dives into thought leadership, ethics, diversity and inclusion, and so much more. I highly recommend giving it a read.
Where to start:
#7. scarlettabbott
Who are they?
scarlettabbott is an internal communications and workplace culture agency that focuses on strategic digital storytelling and campaigns. Their impressive team of experts is dedicated to enhancing organizational performance through people.
Why should you read their blog?
What makes scarlettabbott’s blog unique, in my opinion, is the different kinds of expertise that back up their content.
Pulling insights from digital transformation experts, unflinching and experienced D&I leaders, executive coaches that work with the C-suite of major brands, behavioral scientists that understand how to change employee behavior, and even cultural anthropologists, really sets this content apart.
Long story short: I’m here for it.
Where to start:
- World Changers 2021
- IC lessons from consumer media
- The Power of the Past: Harnessing nostalgia in your internal comms
#8. Vision2Voice
Who are they?
Vision2Voice is an internal communications agency founded by comms and change management expert Andrea Greenhous. With over 25 years of experience, Andrea and her team work to build extraordinary workplaces through strategic communications, campaigns, and tactics that involve, inform, and inspire employees.
Why should you read their blog?
What I love about Vision2Voice’s content is that they always take a human-first approach. This way of thinking always pushes the traditional internal comms wisdom a little further, making it even more effective because it actually takes people and psychology into account.
All of their posts are thoughtful and intentional, while also being practical and offering tactics you can implement right away.
10/10 would read again.
Where to start:
- Ten Ways to Build Psychological Safety in Your Organization
- Put Down the Pom-Poms! How This One Switch Builds a Better Corporate Culture
- The Internal Communicator’s Guide to Employee Well-being
#9. Local Wisdom
Who are they?
Local Wisdom is a digital communications agency that specializes in cutting-edge thought leadership. Since 1999, they’ve established themselves as a unique voice in the comms landscape. Their super talented team spans UX design, development, and content production.
Why should you read their blog?
First of all, Local Wisdom has a lot of well, wisdom.
Wordplay aside, this blog is a must-read if you’re looking to level up your approach to digital communication. They dig into the transformative power of storytelling, the shift from reactive to proactive communication, which tools you should be using to level up your remote working set-up… I could go on.
Basically, it’s all the internal comms wisdom you need. And then some.
Where to start:
- Internal Communication And Digital Content Team Maturity
- Five Lessons From Transitioning to Virtual Town Hall Meetings
#10. Inspiring Change
Who are they?
Inspiring Change is a Dublin-based internal comms and employee engagement agency. They were founded on the idea that a business’s success is driven by its people. And they practice what they preach: they make sure that organizations can connect with their people in an authentic way.
Why should you read their blog?
Scott McInnes, the founder of Inspiring Change, is the face of their blog. Scott’s posts read like the straightforward advice you’d receive from a comms mentor… like: “Strategy is boring. Or, more specifically, strategy can be exciting but how we communicate it—in 50-page strategy documents—is boring.”
Now that’s just golden.
Authenticity is key and Scott gets that. Each topic is relatable and leaves you with some tangible actions to take. Plus, he also films 5-min videos to accompany some of the blogs, so you can get that comms mentor experience.
Where to start:
#11. The Switchboard
Who are they?
Julia Levy founded The Switchboard to connect with internal comms leaders and share their lessons learned. The Switchboard is a passion project for Julia—in her day job, she leads global communications for a startup.
Why should you read their blog?
If you love stories about career journeys and internal comms, this is the place for you.
What’s great about The Switchboard is that it reads like magazine profiles. I am convinced that it’s the “Humans of New York” of IC . . . (Humans of IC?).
Grab a cup of coffee and get ready to feel inspired.
Where to start:
- What Philanthropy Taught Me About Executive and Internal Communications
- Nine Steps to Employee Newsletter Success
- In Search of a Home for Content: 11 Recommendations for launching an Intranet
#12. Ragan
Who are they?
A communications powerhouse, Lawrence Ragan Communications Inc. has led training for professionals in corporate comms, public relations, social media, and management for more than five decades.
Why should you read their blog?
The Ragan blog is like an internal communicators’ roundtable, with a range of different perspectives from around the world.
The content reflects literally everything going on in the IC world—from listicle-style pieces on industry-wide trends like podcasting, to how to communicate with employees in times of political crisis.
Where to start:
- 4 ways to help your team move from tactical to strategic communications
- 6 steps to humanize, personalize and maximize your employee comms
- A survival guide for managing workplace COVID discussions
#13. Low Hanging Fruit
Who are they?
Low Hanging Fruit is part of Crescenzo Communications, a comms firm run by husband and wife IC super duo Steve and Cindy Crescenzo. Their mission: to help corporations tap into communications with creativity.
Why should you read their blog?
Low Hanging Fruit looks at the trends and shifts in the corporate comms world and considers how internal communicators can navigate these changes.
With a tagline of “The newsletter that will shift your paradigms so fast, your core competencies will never be the same again” . . . well, you can be assured that you’re in for a treat. The writing is great and the topics are always on-point.
Where to start:
- Managing the Hybrid Workforce: What will employees want and need?
- Who says measurement has to be boring?
#14. Buffer Open
Who are they?
Buffer Open is the culture blog of Buffer, a great social media management tool that I have personally used and love.
Why should you read their blog?
Buffer Open is revolutionary. Plain and simple.
Buffer is raising the bar for what it means to be a company that values its employees. If you give their blog a read, you’ll see how they are thinking way harder and deeper about what work means to us as humans than 99% of the brands out there.
Their aim is to be fully transparent.
That means they post about their annual budget and how they create and spend it; how they bought out their investors and why; their salaries and how they calculate them; their internal pay gaps between men and women; and how they pull off being an awesome company to work for with an entirely remote team.
Buffer Open is for anyone who is hopeful about the future of work and wants an honest look at how we need to build organizations for the future.
Where to start:
- The Buffer Salary Formula
- 2021 Pay Analysis: How We’ve Lowered Our Gender Pay Gap From 15% to 5.5%
- When Taking Fridays Off Can Help Our Team Get More Done: An AMA on the 4-Day Work Week
#15. Mister Editorial
Who are they?
Mister Editorial is Shaun Randol, an internal comms pro with over 10+ years of experience in corporate comms and publishing.
Why should you read their blog?
Mister Editorial is all about showcasing the value of an editorial strategy for internal comms teams. Shaun links storytelling to business goals—and features advice from the best minds in the biz.
Miss reading actual, physical magazines?
This blog is the closest thing to a regular magazine for IC. Shaun publishes twice a week and sends a weekly round-up newsletter with “ICYMI” content.
He also features lots of great behind-the-scenes interviews with IC pros.
If you want an inside look at what it’s like to be a communicator at big companies like IKEA, Coach, and Spotify, you’re going to want to read this one.
(PS. Mister Editorial has a free version and a paid version. Personally, I’ve only read the free version and so I can’t honestly endorse the paid version—yet.)
Where to start:
- Interview with Spotify’s TK Breuer, Manager of Internal Communications
- ICYMI: What employees want, slow your roll, movie recs
- Who and What is Mister Editorial?
#16. NOBL Academy
Who are they?
NOBL helps leaders foster cultures that are a competitive advantage. They train organizations to embrace new attitudes and adopt new behaviors, creating lasting organizational change.
Why should you read their blog?
I really love learning about how to make work awesome. I stumbled across NOBL when I was researching the importance of organizational design.
How information is distributed, collected, passed down, or through an organization is by design. As such, internal communications is an integral part of not just how we ensure organizations are designed effectively, but how our internal culture and structure is maintained and optimized.
The NOBL Academy blog provides real tools and innovative resources that inspire people to think about organizations differently and to design them (and our internal communications) more effectively.
Where to start:
- A Simple Diagram to Determine: Should This Be a Meeting?
- Hacking the Eisenhower Matrix
- What Is Organizational Design?
- Getting Culture Change Started
#17. Ocasta
Who are they?
Ocasta creates knowledge, training, and education tech for employees.
Why should you read their blog?
I got hooked from subscribing to their newsletter. It’s adorable. (The emojis just get to me, man.)
Their blog is just as good. Aesthetically, it’s really a step above. It’s easy to read, posts are relatively short, well-written, and they get straight to the good stuff.
And their GIF game is on point.
In terms of content, they are very employee experience-focused, which I love. They have creative ideas about how to get employees to give a crap about boring stuff they need to know like policies and procedures.
Unlike a lot of other blogs in the space, they dedicate a significant amount of their content to the sensitive stuff in workplace culture. They get real about why your employees hate their jobs, how your workplace may be contributing to apathy, and basically how not to be a jerk employer.
Where to start:
- 100 employee engagement questions to ask your employees
- How can you measure employee knowledge?
- How to preboard your remote employees
#18. Shel Holtz
Who are they?
Shel Holtz has been in organizational comms for more than four decades. He’s seen it all—as a journalist, internal communicator, and independent consultant. He’s a power house in internal comms and also the founder of For Immediate Release – the most prolific podcast network for communication professionals.
Why should you read their blog?
Shel’s blog posts are some of the most thoughtful in the whole industry. His posts are well-researched, chock-full of knowledge and guidance from his jam-packed career.
Trust me. If you want to stay in the know, bookmark this blog.
Where to start:
- Returning to the Office Is The Epitome of Organizational Change. Communicate It That Way.
- A New Model for Employee Communication: Introduction
#19. leadercommunicator by Your Thought Partner
Who are they?
David Grossman, leadership and comms expert, and founder of The Grossman Group is the brain behind the leadercommunicator blog.
Why should you read their blog?
David is plugged in and passionate about leadership communication.
He publishes weekly, which is great for leaders craving regular reads to amp up their communications.
David also features weekly round-ups of the best internal comms and leadership articles (*humble brag* we’ve been featured a few times) from the web. It’s a nice recap that will help stay on top of the latest chatter in the biz.
Where to start:
- The 5 Ws and an H Guide to Communicating Virtually Anything
- Getting Difficult Questions from Your Employees? 3 Tips to Facilitate Dialogue and Understanding
- Internal Communications Check-Up: 11 Elements to Measure Your Organization’s Temperature
#20. The Curious Cultivator
Who are they?
Cultivate, an incredible group bringing together corporate changemakers across industries who want to challenge the status quo inside their organizations is the force behind The Curious Cultivator blog.
Why should you read their blog?
The Curious Cultivator is a good read for anywho who sees the challenges we’re facing at work and society at large and wants to make difference.
They write thought-provoking posts about complex topics—like how to change power dynamics in organizations, how to empower employees, and present new models and frameworks to change the way we think about work.
If you’re interested in shaking up the status quo, check ’em out.
Where to start:
#21. The IC Citizen
Who are they?
The IC Citizen is the brainchild of IC expert Martin Flegg, who has over 20 years of experience in the industry. He specializes in internal comms, change communication, and employee engagement.
Why should you read their blog?
Martin’s perspective is refreshing. His voice is distinct and honest. And maybe you won’t agree with all of his hot takes, but you’ll definitely have food for thought.
Martin doesn’t shy away from saying the thing that everyone was thinking, and our community is better for it.
So go ahead and add this one to your list.
Where to start:
#22. Staffbase
Who are they?
Yes, I know. We’re Staffbase.
That being said, I would just like to note that we get a lot of objective feedback telling us that our blog is a go-to source for internal comms professionals looking for a whole range of advice about how modern employee communications are becoming more critical to the success in today’s changing world of work. Wow, that was a long sentence!
Why should you read their, I mean our, blog?
We have one of the most successful content teams in the industry, so our blog is the bee’s knees. We care a whole heck of a lot about our audience, the industry, and making sure we’re leading the pack when it comes to providing valuable content that actually helps.
Where to start:
- How to Redesign Your Employee Newsletter In 30 Minutes (or less!)
- 39 Employee Newsletter Content Ideas That Will Boost Engagement
- What You Need to Know About The State of Internal Communications Report
- Building a Modern Intranet: 7 Important Tips for Success
And that’s it!
To all my internal comms blogging comrades out there, thank you for keeping me on my toes and raising the bar.
You make me better. You make communicators everywhere better. And you make this community awesome.
