Slack Tips Tuesday: Always Use Reactions on Announcements

If you ever post important announcements in Slack channels, this tip is for you.

The bigger your Slack team gets, the more likely it will start to feel like a Twitter feed of massive amounts of noise.

And when it comes to #general-like channels, how can you help make sure people pay attention to your announcement?

It’s easy: use reactions.

Why? Because it’s the closest thing to a ‘retweet’ that Slack has. In other words, it immediately tells your brain, “Other people thought this was worth reading, so I should check it out.”

Go test yourself right now in Slack — scroll through a channel. Which messages do you pay most attention to? Images, and posts with lots of reactions on them, right?

So here’s the tip: use reactions on every important post you do in Slack.

Once you post your announcement, immediately add reactions to it that you think people are most likely to click on in support of your announcement.

My general rule of thumb is to make sure to include:

1. A supportive emoji – :thumbs-up:, :tada:, :clap:, :simple-smile:, etc.
2. A visual emoji – an announcement about summer calls for a :sunglasses: emoji
3. A funny emoji – endless options here, inside jokes work the best

You don’t always need all three, but using all three will get the best results.

Then watch as people start clicking your reactions (it’s like a reflex at this point for people), and within minutes you’ll have a post that looks way more important to read than it did before.

:tada:

Give it a try and let me know how it goes!

Bonus: Go get some more emojis for Slack here and here.