I’m sure anyone reading this has Slack channels full of epic /giphy moments going down. And GIPHY’s are awesome, no doubt (especially when it’s totally not the GIPHY you were expecting).
But GIFs can be even more powerful in building community, team engagement and overall satisfaction when those GIFs are made by your team.
And the good news is you can use a site like andtheniwaslike.co to create a GIF really quickly based on a webcam recording.
Here’s a couple examples of daily “GIF magic tricks” we’ve started doing:
After starting to do these, our team now wants to compete to see who can get the most ‘reactions’ to their GIF trick. GIFs created by your team add a whole new dimension to culture and environment, especially for a remote team.
Some more ideas for custom GIFs your team could do:
- Make a big company announcement, then ask everyone to respond with a webcam GIF
- Get everyone doing GIF high-fives after a big achievement
- Themed GIF competitions (sports, holidays-releated, gaming, travel, etc.)
The creativity options are really endless here, and giving your team a break from their routine to focus on being creative for a few minutes is a huge win for satisfaction and maintaining a high energy environment.
So again, GIPHY is cool, but if you really want to build camaraderie and engagement with your team that’s meaningful and memorable, your team’s own GIFs will always win on Slack.
Plus, for all the haters who say “NO MORE GIPHY IN SLACK”, I think they’ll find this approach much more valuable.
Bonus: Ever tried meatspaces? Creepy name, but awesome for team engagement. We used it for one of our X-Mas parties and had a blast. You can take over the public chat, or set up your own instance on Github.
More Slack tips:
Create an employee spotlight channel
Always use Reactions on announcements