Who would have thought election campaigns and the out-of-touch politicians behind them would be teaching us a thing or two about corporate communications?

Because that’s exactly what you can take away from the recent Australian election.

Not only were our national leaders well aware of the rising number of Australians accessing news through digital channels – 49% according to the 10th Annual Digital News Report: Australia and 60% if you’re Gen Z.

They were actively engaging with digital platforms to reach more of their voting audience.

Both Albanese and Dutton opened TikTok accounts several weeks before the election and used it to share short videos with key policy messages. The Trumpet of Patriots party reached out to voters via text messages (although with mixed results and a bit of backlash). And the Greens leader used meme-driven reels to help get themselves more attention and reach.

It’s no wonder this election was dubbed “Australia’s first truly social media-led election”.

But here’s where the corporate world needs to take a leaf out of their game book, because while our politicians have evolved their communication strategies and methods to take advantage of the digital media, most corporate organisations have not.

Sure, they might have a digital marketing strategy for their external communications to reach customers, but they’re still often seriously lagging when it comes to their internal communications.

Many organisations are still relying on traditional forms of communication like emails, posters and intranet posts to reach and engage their employees – and yet wonder why buy-in, engagement and retention among employees is stagnant, or declining.

Here’s the takeaway: traditional, internal corporate communications are no longer cutting it. And organisations who aren’t jumping on the social media bandwagon are in danger of being left behind.

So if you want to successfully reach, influence and engage your employees – at all levels – then it’s time to learn a lesson or three from our national politicians and the 2025 election.

Here’s some of the things they did – and you can too – to ensure your internal communications takes advantage of the opportunities presented by the digital media era.

Five ways to improve your social media communications to engage your employees:

1. Be where your people are: whether it’s a YouTube channel, a TikTok account or a private organisation Instagram feed, make sure you’re present – and active – on the platforms that the majority of your employees and stakeholders are scrolling through in their spare minutes! (Because they’re sure not looking at your intranet.)
2. Try new communication methods: social media is the home of the short and snappy. Think short-form video, memes, audio snippets or even your own company podcast. Most of all, social media is the home of storytelling. So how can you use that age-old format to create more interest, engagement and buy-in with your company communications?
3. Identify your in-house influencers: forget hierarchy and find those people in your organisation who are already great with social media, feel comfortable doing a Reel on the fly, or already have great social networks in the company. Internal communications don’t need to be top down. Think about who can positively boost engagement, interest, or clarity of message – and get them involved.
4. Personalise your leadership: social media provides an opportunity for real connection and interaction with your employees and a chance to directly share values, vision, behind the scenes, progress updates or who you are outside of work. Your CEO could jump on TikTok or a department head could leave a Telegram audio update for their team.
5. Build a sense of community: done right, social media communications can foster a sense of belonging and develop trust and loyalty among your employees. Two key qualities that are statistically shown to support satisfaction and performance in the workplace.

There’s one more layer to this social media cake, and that’s understanding who you are tailoring your message for. Because there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to effective communication.

Even more so when using social media, in order to grab the attention of your audience, you need to craft your content with your recipient in mind.

Our politicians knew that and their campaigns didn’t just pump out the same message again and again – they tailored it to the audience and the platform.

Inside your organisation, the three groups you’re often communicating to are your individual employees, your teams, or the whole organisation. 

So part of your internal digital comms strategy will be to figure out the key messages you need to share with them, how to word them, and how to deliver them so they are effective, influential and much less formal so they’re more relatable.

But the crucial element right now is this – we are in a digital age and the digital medium is the future for communications both externally and internally.

So don’t get left behind. Start thinking and planning now for how you’ll bring this type of communication into your organisation.

Like when you’re trying anything new, it’s about doing the research to make informed decisions about your chosen platforms and then being brave and not afraid to try something new or different.

Because one of the best things you could learn from the election campaigning, we just watched is this: try things, test them out, see what sticks and double down on what works. Which is exactly what they did.

And if you want help implementing this kind of internal communication into your own organisation, this is part of the core work we do at Tactician.

If you want help to better understand your communication style or what will best serve your teams or organisation when it comes to digital communications, reach out. Call us on 1300 110 165 or email enquiries@tactician.net.au and we can talk through how we can help.