The How‑To Virtual Conference

Kick off the day with Ragan’s editorial team as they share the most in-demand skills and competencies communicators need to master—from strategic thinking to AI fluency. You’ll walk away with insights to sharpen your edge and use today’s sessions to start leveling up right now.

Change is constant, but it doesn’t have to catch you off guard. This rapid-fire session is built for comms pros who want to shift from panic mode to power move when navigating change. Whether it’s a restructure, layoffs, or simply rolling out new tech or AI tools, this session zeroes in on the risk assessment and mitigation skills that should live at the beginning of your change comms strategy. You’ll learn how to:

• Assess change fatigue and readiness: How to evaluate your organization’s saturation point with recent changes, so you can tailor message tone and timing with empathy and strategy.
• Your listening infrastructure: The always-on listening systems (ERGs, manager feedback loops, and digital sentiment tools) that can give you real-time insights into workplace morale.
• Survey best practices: How to ask the right questions to assess emotional tone, clarity of messaging and psychological safety. Plus: ways to leverage town halls and anonymous feedback for nuanced understanding.
• Scorecard strategies: How to build a dashboard or change heatmap to align leadership and the comms team on where pressure points exist, how to assess fatigue. Plus: What do to when the data indicates your corporation isn’t ready.

Too many channels, not enough clarity? Internal comms pros are being asked to do more with more—more tools, more content, more chaos. Meanwhile, email still reigns supreme and face-to-face comms are making a comeback thanks to the RTO wave. This fast, practical session gives you the strategy and structure to streamline your comms. You’ll learn how to:

• Conduct a communications tech audit: The metrics you can use to assess which channels are working, which are noise and where you're wasting time and trust.
• Segment your audience  by channel: Why certain roles, generations and departments prefer different platforms, and how to align accordingly.
• Set up the review evaluation cycle: How to make sure your channels evolve with your employee needs—and comms bandwidth.

Join all the speakers from this module in this moderator-led Q&A session, answering audience questions.

Too many internal comms teams are still judged on clicks, opens and impressions when what leadership wants are results tied to retention, productivity and profitability. Learn how to shift from surface-level metrics to proof points that resonate with leadership—and position comms as a strategic function, not just a support role. You’ll walk away knowing how to:

• Build outcome-focused metrics: Replace your generic open rates with metrics that matter, like message retention, behavior change and manager comms success.
• Align with business goals: How to map comms objectives to org-wide priorities, such as improved reputation scores, reduced turnover, increased engagement or smoother change adoption.
• Showcasing ROI in people terms: How to track the business story using before-and-after employee survey data and help desk ticket trends. Plus: How to connect comms tactics to outcomes and align to KPIs other teams already track (like employee retention or technology adoption rates).

As technology, regulations and expectations evolve, so must your approach to budgeting. This session is your inside track to making the business case for your communications spend. Whether you're leading a lean team or scaling strategy across a global enterprise, you’ll walk away knowing exactly what to invest in, what to push back on and how to make your case when dollars are tight. Because in 2026, comms isn’t a line item—it’s a business driver. You’ll learn how to:

• Speak the language of value: Connect tech upgrades, vendor support and media production to outcomes that matter—like engagement, retention and risk reduction.
• Plan for constraints without cutting impact: How to defend high-priority line items (like training or measurement tools) and shift lower-impact projects without sacrificing strategic influence. Hint: it’s about investing in people, not just platforms.
• Include risk mitigation in your budget: How to show that comms isn’t just a cost center; it’s a reputational safety net, especially in times of crisis or change.

Join the speakers from the first three sessions in this moderator-led Q&A session, answering audience questions.

You don’t need to be an AI expert to get real value out of it. You just need the right prompts. In this session, you’ll learn how to use generative AI to save time, spark ideas and sharpen strategy across your internal comms. These are time-saving prompts you can drop into ChatGPT, Claude or your org’s custom tool today. You’ll learn how to:

• Automate the busywork without losing your voice: Prompts that will create first-pass draft copy for executive messages, FAQ docs, or campaign blurbs and balance speed and brand fidelity.
• Get smarter and faster with content strategy: Prompts to generate content calendars, message frameworks and headline variations that align with internal messaging or sentiment data.
• Pressure-test your messaging before launch: Unique uses for AI, including how to use AI as a synthetic focus group to simulate audience reactions, identify jargon or suggest blind spots in your plan.

Imagine a version of you, your tone, your judgment, your strategic flair, handling repetitive questions, writing with your voice, and keeping your comms crisp and on brand. In this fast but practical session, you’ll learn how to do just that, and create your own AI sidekick tailored to your comms needs. Whether you want a press release pro, an always-on brand guardian, or a newsletter scribe that never sleeps, you can train your AI Agent to do just that. You’ll learn how to:

• Define the purpose: How to train your AI to fit your needs, whether that’s handling auto-scheduling of meetings, marketing copy, social media posts or ghostwriting.
• Manage your plug-in-personality: How best to feed it your content, tone, background information and context so it generates your purpose.
• Understand the limitations and guardrails: How best to avoid hallucinations, protect your company’s data and privacy and incorporate human-review steps to ensure brand safety.

In this closing fireside chat, a seasoned communicator will unpack the big three core lessons that shaped their journey—from navigating reorgs and tech revolutions to staying centered through cultural and leadership shifts. This isn’t just a highlight reel. It’s a how-to guide for anyone looking to level up or pivot within their role with confidence. You’ll learn how to:

• Stay future-fit: The personal habits and mindset moves that help veteran communicators stay sharp, relevant and in demand as the industry evolves.
• Fortify your foundations: How to double down on your strengths, reset your approach and stay steady in the face of constant disruption.
• Lead when it’s hard: Insights on managing multi-generational teams, influencing the C-suite, and choosing your battles wisely.