Leadership communication has never been more important... Or more complex. Leaders want to communicate clearly and consistently, but every message comes with a risk. Broadcast it broadly, and employees tune out. Narrow it manually, and someone important gets left out. 

This isn’t a leadership or strategy gap. It’s a tooling gap. 

Most platforms still force you to choose between reach and relevance. But research from Viva Engage UX Researcher Paula Wellings, shared during Viva Engage Masterclass Season Two: Session 3 – Campaigns & Storytelling, confirms what corporate communicators have long suspected: Employees don't ignore leadership communication because they're disengaged. They ignore it because it doesn't apply to them. 

When messages aren't tied to an employee's role, location, or reporting chain, they're not just ignored. They create active disengagement and information anxiety. That's why precision targeting is no longer optional. It's a prerequisite for engagement. 

That insight is exactly why Viva Engage is investing in a next generation of capabilities designed specifically for leadership communication through Storyline. 

How Storyline targeting changes the game 

By enabling Leaders, and their Delegates, to define audiences directly at publish time using existing organizational attributes like reporting chain, department, or role, Storyline announcements make it easier to confidently notify the right audience without relying on static distribution lists or organization‑wide alerts. This allows leadership teams to move from volume‑based communication to relevance‑based reach — ensuring that the most important updates are delivered with precision, not noise. 

Storyline announcements = Precision, not volume 

Real‑world example: targeted HR updates without the overhead 

Scenario: HR needs to share a benefits update that applies only to employees in the United States. 

Before

• Build and maintain a US-only distribution list
• Or send org-wide and create confusion for EMEA/APAC teams
• Rely on email, with no visibility into reach or engagement

With Storyline announcements:

• Select Country = United States at publish time
• 2,400 relevant employees notified automatically, with optional notification channel delivery customization (Engage, e-mail, Teams)
• Engagement tracked through analytics 
• No list management required

Targeting isn’t just about who sees a message, it’s also about how they’re notified and whether that audience can be reused. With Storyline Announcements, leaders and their delegates can customize notification channels and save audiences for reuse, making repeat communications faster and more consistent over time. 

And soon with smart notifications for Storylines, Engage will send alerts to an employee’s preferred delivery channel first, helping reduce duplicate notifications across Teams, email, and Engage.   

Why use Storyline announcements (instead of sending another email)? 

Storyline gives Leaders a direct, measurable channel for communicating with their audiences, while still supporting dialogue and participation. 

Unlike email broadcasts, Storyline posts: 

• Appear across Teams, Outlook, mobile, and desktop 

• Support engagement and feedback 

• Can be measured using audience analytics 

• Allow Delegates to manage communications on behalf of the Leader 

Leaders’ Storyline posts can complement community‑based communications, and the same principle applies more broadly across corporate communications: the best tool depends on both the audience and the level of amplification a message needs. 

• Cascading messages with added relevance 

• Reinforcing organizational priorities 

• Sharing context and perspective 

• Building leadership visibility and authenticity 

This makes Storyline an ideal channel for business updates, organizational changes, initiative rollouts, policy notifications, campaign reinforcement, event reminders, or action‑oriented leadership messages - all delivered to the people who actually need them. 

To explore these upcoming Storyline announcement targeting capabilities, sign up for the public preview and read more about Storyline announcements.

Another way to increase reach without extra noise

Featured conversations offer another way to increase reach without adding noise.

For posts in public communities, communicators can now choose whether to feature a conversation to everyone in the network or to community members only. That makes featuring a useful option when the goal is to increase visibility without defaulting to a broad notification for every message.

Featured conversations and storyline announcements are separate capabilities in Viva Engage, but they reflect the same principle: giving communicators more control over how broadly a message is amplified. Storyline announcements remain the right fit for targeted leader communications, while featured conversations give corporate communicators another way to match reach to relevance in community-based campaigns and updates.

Learn more about featuring a conversation in Viva Engage.

How analytics help communicators measure leader reach

Analytics in Viva Engage help communicators understand whether a message reached the right audience and resonated once it got there.

• Understand a post’s reach across audiences and platforms
• Measure reactions, replies, and shares to understand engagement
• Extract important themes and sentiment from comments

Now, the Frequent contributors leaderboard view in network analytics can help communicators understand which leaders’ posts are catching employee attention and compare engagement trends across leaders and top creators.

Note: Storyline announcements, targeting, frequent contributors, and related capabilities described in this blog post are available with a Premium Viva Engage license (for example, Viva Employee Communications & Communities or Viva Suite).