Monday, September 20, 2010

Blogging and Tweeting in Search of a Purpose

The previous blog entry here stimulated a number of private emails to me. It felt like a lot of people were nodding in agreement. Clearly, it struck a nerve. An editor friend shared with me a parallel experience she's having at work.


Her company publishes a series of specialized ink-on-paper trade magazines for niche subscriber bases – old-time media, in other words. The powers-that-be in her company are trying to stay ahead of the curve, as well they should. For some time now, they have been alert to the impact of the Internet on their products and audiences.


To that end, they were early in launching web versions of their half-dozen magazines, available to subscribers for no additional cost, where readers can find supplemental and updated information about topics covered in the magazines. That’s a smart model and one that a number of other print publications have been following – to their benefit.


But now, her managers are latching onto the buzz of social media as the next new thing. Her boss said that if they don’t get into social media, they’ll be left behind.


Perhaps. But, as she wisely noted, the meeting at which this idea was launched was devoid of any discussion of readers’ media preferences or habits. There was also no dialogue about the appropriateness of tools like Twitter and blogs to carry their messages and information to their target audiences, or what specific type of information would be offered in these new media.


Instead, the discussion centered largely on how social media works, who should do what, and when the effort will be launched. In the end, as my friend sighed, it will mean more work for the editors and writers.


This kind of discussion should really be about the interaction between a content provider and its audience. On the one hand, the audience’s preferences must guide the choice of media. But on the other hand, the disseminator of information has the opportunity – some might say the responsibility – to move its audience along the curve of technological innovation. It’s a delicate balancing act between what the audience will accept versus the content provider’s desire to advance its business model.


Innovation is like that. After all, where would we be today if Steve Jobs had dismissed the idea of the iPod 10 years ago because people didn’t listen to music and manage their music collections that way? What if Steve Jobs saw the music business through the narrow lens of the Tower Records model? (Remember Tower Records?) After all, it could have turned into a major flop. Fortunately for Jobs and Apple, it didn’t. His target customers “got it.” And they got on board pretty quickly.


To cite a metaphor, suppose I had approached last weekend with the good intention of doing some long-postponed household chores. What if the first thing I did was to open my toolbox and grab three random tools: a hammer, a screwdriver, and a socket wrench. Then I went to do my household tasks. What’s wrong with that picture? Obviously, I selected tools before assessing the nature of the chore. So I had a wrench, a screwdriver and a hammer in search of the appropriate job where they might be useful.


Sounds silly. No one would operate that way. But isn’t that, in fact, what a lot of people do when they seek to communicate to a discrete audience by pre-selecting a given medium without thinking through the needs and desires of the audience? It’s exactly what my friend’s company is doing.


Without so much as a simple poll of readers, this organization is going to force its editors and writers to start tweeting and blogging. Why? “Because everyone else is doing it and if we don’t start now, we’ll be left behind.”


I’ve seen similar thinking inside other business organizations, where communications professionals (who should know better) think that it would be nifty if their CEO started tweeting to employees, or began writing an internal blog. Perhaps it was the boss’ idea to start with and the communications pro felt powerless to resist. Consider Dilbert’s “pointy-haired” boss, who torments Tina, the tech writer:



Certainly there are cases where a CEO has plenty to say to his/her employee audience, where blogging or tweeting makes perfect sense because they are the quickest, easiest and cheapest ways to have on-going dialogues with that internal audience. But beware of the initial excitement that often peters out after a few weeks, as the CEO loses interest and/or enthusiasm.


As noted in my previous blog, I’ve seen these kinds of ventures start out great guns, only to fade away because the CEO runs out of things to write about, or finds he/she doesn’t have the time. At that point, as often happens, someone in the communications department starts writing it for the CEO, thereby defeating the whole purpose of the exercise.


No matter the technology, no matter how sexy and exciting it may feel to be tweeting or blogging in 2010, if your audience is not in a position or desirous of following your tweets and blogs, you’re wasting your time and money, while risking losing the trust and interest of your audience.


Instead, do your homework. Find out more about your target audience: who they are; how they like to get the kind of information you’re providing; whether they are comfortable with social media; why they come to you in the first place for that information; and the specific type of information they want and expect to find on blogs or tweets, to what level of detail. Until you probe for the answers to those kinds of questions, save your time and money and put the blog and Twitter on the back burner.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Employee Communications vs. the Employee Newsletter

At one time or another, you’ve undoubtedly found yourself having to explain what you do for a living to someone completely unfamiliar with your discipline. If your field is employee communications, as mine is, and someone at, say, a neighborhood party asks, you’re eager to slip into your rote 30-second elevator speech (if you have one) before he can say, “Oh, employee communications. I know, you write newsletters.”


Sometimes, I’m tempted instead just to say that “I work for the federal government, but I can’t talk about it,” give a conspiratorial wink, and leave it at that – better that than the alternative of explaining why “employee communications does not equal employee newsletters” to someone who won’t care to understand the difference and will quickly lose interest in your refutation.


Amazingly, I ran into a variation of this absurdity earlier this year when invited to pursue an assignment to help improve the internal communications of a local company. The business employs nearly 10,000 people at several sites around the U.S. and Canada. The head of Human Resources had sought outside support for the employee communications team that reported to him.


His “team” consisted of three hard-working, dedicated and intelligent (though very junior-level) people. I quickly sensed they were overwhelmed and poorly directed, and that they were looking for shortcuts to get things done – “things” being that which they sensed their boss wanted done or what he told them to do.


With respect to communications, their types of shortcuts aren’t always good things. I’ve seen companies grow too comfortable with their established modes of communicating. These tools become part of the fabric of the organization, even after they’ve lost any meaning or value to their audience. Unfortunately, I got the impression this was the case here.


I soon concluded that their desire to “improve internal communications” really came down to wanting an outsider’s fresh approach in order to improve the quality of the monthly employee newsletter: i.e., better-written and more interesting stories, and more appealing layouts and graphics. Roughly half of the employees did not have access to computers, so the tried-and-true printed newsletter was how they learned about their company – if they were interested enough to read it.


But had anyone gone to the trouble to determine whether in fact this tool was the most effective way of reaching the employee audience? Was it bringing them the information they wanted and needed? Were people actually reading the newsletter? Was it relevant to them? Was it opening employees’ minds to new ideas and new ways of doing their jobs? Were they connecting its messages to where the company needed to go? What were they doing or expected to do with the information gleaned from its pages? Or were copies of the newsletter just filling mailroom trashcans?


As I began to ask those questions, I sensed they were not being well received – nor would I likely get cogent or informed answers.


When I asked for examples of other internal communications, I was shown a series of sporadic emails from the CEO and his management team on a range of minor and major topics. There was also an “inter-active” on-line “CEO’s Forum,” its most recent entry more than two months old. The inter-active component was not apparent. It was all one-way. An occasional “Letter from the CEO” appeared in the newsletter.


One person said that the CEO and/or his team held infrequent “town hall meetings” to make important announcements, though she couldn’t remember the last one or its core message. For that matter, she couldn't tell me the last time she had spoken to any of the senior people or seen them on site.


The problem at this company and, no doubt, others today really boils down to this: It has become too easy for leaders and managers to let technology do their communicating. In fact, executives are not communicating effectively when their communications are simply emails, newsletters, and on-line postings, where the medium becomes more important than the message. Media, no matter how sophisticated, do not engage employees in the business and its vision.


When a company’s definition and understanding of “employee communications” is a newsletter or email, or when information is expected to “cascade” (I hate that term) down into the organization as if by magic, it’s likely indicative of a deeper, more harmful problem. It means that little consideration is being given to the real communications that should be occurring within and across the organization – the daily face-to-face exchange of ideas, insights and information between and among leaders, managers and employees; communications in which leadership engages the organization in the company’s mission and vision.


And when that’s the case, when leadership is trying to take the company one way while the employees are going in the opposite direction because they’re misinformed or uninformed, the problems multiply and fester, resulting in poor financial results and weak long-term growth prospects.


Because the decision-maker in this case, the head of HR, seemed so set on fixing and improving the newsletter as the solution – without fully appreciating or even being interested in delving into the company’s deeper issues and challenges – I took a pass on the opportunity. This company’s problems were far more than a boring newsletter. They were, in fact, far worse than its HR director knew or could have imagined. No sense beating my head against that wall.