Audience Targeting in SharePoint is a powerful feature designed to improve personalisation, which is pivotal in creating a positive employee experience and boosting engagement. It allows content to be displayed preferentially to specific groups within an organisation, ensuring that individuals receive information that is most relevant to them.
Setting up Audience Targeting in SharePoint involves a few key steps. Firstly, the site owner must enable audience targeting on the desired SharePoint components, such as navigation links, pages, or news web parts. Once enabled, content can be tagged with specific audiences using Microsoft 365 groups, which may include security groups, distribution lists, or even dynamic groups. This setup ensures that targeted content is prioritised for the intended audience, making the SharePoint environment more intuitive and employee-centric.
Using Audience Targeting for personalisation makes sure employees are not overwhelmed with irrelevant information, and receive tailored content that aligns with their role, department, or interests. As well as improving engagement with internal comms and key business content, this level of personalisation creates a sense of belonging and recognition. All of which are key for engaged, productive employees.
From an employee experience perspective, Audience Targeting helps create a streamlined digital workspace where every interaction is meaningful and purposeful. It reduces noise and clutter, allowing employees to focus on what’s important. Plus, targeted content is more likely to resonate with employees, encouraging interaction and participation. This can lead to increased collaboration and a vibrant company culture where communication is both effective and enjoyable.
More recently, Audience Targeting has also become available as part of Viva Connections. The targeting set up in SharePoint can be pulled across to dashboards and news feeds to create a hyper-personalised company homepage in Connections.
In summary, Audience Targeting in SharePoint is a strategic tool that, when implemented effectively, can significantly improve the way information is shared and consumed within an organisation.
