There has been a rapid growth in available communications channels in the last couple years.  This channel explosion places an unprecedented pressure on the communications function to design a strong channel strategy to use these efficiently and effectively.  All of these new channels present an opportunity for communicators to reach out to large audiences and spread information and messages with rapid speed. But it also takes lots of more of communicator’s time to navigate these channels and measure and evaluate how effective they are in their usage.

While many communications teams have a dedicated channel and/or social media person on the team, every communications professional (regardless of your specialization) needs to have a good grasp of channel management. As part of my new project focused on designing a channel audit diagnostic, I have spoke to several of our members to figure out what types of channel related metrics (data) would help communicators use channels in more efficient and effective way.  Here are some of the challenges faced by our members that we are hoping to help them solve with the new channel audit diagnostic:

1. Tracking Usage

Most communicators I spoke to have a good idea about the overall channels usage in their company. They can tell what percentage of their mailing list typically opens their newsletter; how many people listen on to their webinars; or how many people showed up for their CEO/Employee roundtable. However, while lots of communicators know their absolute numbers, they can rarely benchmark themselves to other comms functions in other companies to see how well they are really doing in these metrics.

2. Measuring Comms Effectiveness

While usage numbers are important, high usage is not the same as high impact and effectiveness.  At the end of the day, what really matters not how many people read your blog, but how many of them actually went and took action or modified their behavior because something you said really resonated with them. Many of the communicators I spoke to express a desire to be able to determine better which channels are more/less effective in helping them drive real behavioral change-related outcomes among different groups of stakeholders.

3. Impact of Channels on Employees’ Productivity

A big part of modern communicator’s job is not just to use channels effectively, but also to ensure an organization-wide efficiency in channel usage across the company.  Not all channels are created equal when it comes to boosting employees’ productivity, and some can even be detrimental to it (30 Facebook updates a day, 20 corporate-wide emails in over-worked employee’s inbox). Consequently, communicators need to worry not only about their own channel effectiveness, but also focus on guiding the employees and other functions on how to use channels to their advantage in productive manner.

I would love to hear your thoughts on some of the new challenges you face due to the channel explosion, and what measures/metrics you have in place to track one (or all three) of the above.  As well as how are you making all these new channels work for you!

And make sure to check out some of our great channel-related resources:

Channel Selection Tool

Social Media Latest Outlook

Mobile Technology Latest Outlook

Traditionally, printed newsletters, bulletins, and corporate magazines have been the main vehicles for internal communications outreach.  However, with shrinking budgets and increasing demands on the communicator’s role, as well as greater IT reliance, many CEC members are rethinking their newsletter’s frequency and content and questioning its overall usefulness.  Some companies are going as far as phasing out their physical publications completely and relying on intranet and email to achieve the traditional newsletter’s role of engaging employees and keeping them atop latest news and company strategies.

A recent question regarding the newsletter’s role sparked a lively debate on our CEC Employee Communications Forum.  Here are some interesting points made by our members regarding the frequency and optimal distribution channels for corporate newsletters.

1. Let the content determine its own frequency.

While it makes sense to share long-term, strategy focused company-wide announcements in quarterly publications, distributing news, event details, and other time-sensitive content on a quarterly (or even bi-monthly) basis often makes the content irrelevant  by the time it reaches your audience.  A longer publishing timeframe also makes it a struggle to get employees to share their own news and stories – by the time they get published, the information stops being relevant.  Some members address this issue by publishing corporate and local news items on the intranet, and retain their quarterly newsletter for the sole purpose of sharing company-wide, longer term, strategy-focused information. Read More »

Thanks for the comments and notes about our utility industry blog within a blog.  I appreciate the individual e-mails and encourage folks to use the comments as a source of ongoing conversation as well.  One of the common threads to your feedback was the complexity of messages involved in your space.  Indeed, when I review the questions that come to the Council from our utility members, we are confronted with difficult issues such as rate increases, renewable energy vs. clean coal generation, a massively complex energy bill (at least temporarily stalled in Congress), and regional economic development packages.   To make life even harder, utility communicators must simultaneously address both low-information residents and high-information advocacy groups or legislative committee staff members.  In other words: It’s Complicated!  Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

Good communication skills are fundamental to every successful relationship. In time for the holidays, let’s think about the film Home Alone in which series of miscommunications results in young Kevin being left behind while the rest of his family travels to Paris over Christmas. And while the boy successfully fends off burglars, I can’t imagine anyone would be happy with such a scary misunderstanding.

Poor communication doesn’t just affect personal relationships—it also hinders us professionally. Employees can’t learn how to improve their performance if they have little clarity on what the company really wants to prioritize. Successful communications begin with the sender of the message, so it’s essential for executives to package information as effectively as possible to ensure that employees are able to decode it. Read More »

I just got back from a glorious ten days in Croatia (which by the way, I would HIGHLY recommend– totally beautiful and so far, unspoiled) and now that I’m back, I am noticing more than ever the constant bombardment of information, emails, & instant messages that distract me from doing any true thinking.  Matt Richtel has coined the term the “three-day effect” when you are away from all technology and distraction.  After three days you start to relax, sleep better, and lose that nervous twitch of checking your blackberry every 3 seconds.  This is probably why the average weekend just doesn’t feel long enough; you get close to relaxing and then get pulled back to reality with a thump.

The New York Times reports that the average computer user checks 40 websites a day and can switch programs 36 times per hour.  Think of what that means in terms of how much information that you are subjecting yourself to on a daily basis.  It’s no wonder we hear, “I haven’t had time to think” so often.  It is only when you actually stop reading and taking in new information that you can sit back and really think what it all means, and actually process it.  By constantly rushing from one idea to the next without giving ourselves the time to think, we aren’t giving ourselves time to know what we really think.  I’m probably not the only one who sits there and has revelations when I’m on holiday.  You realize opinions you never knew you had.  You make life-changing decisions (or at least come up with the ideas for them).  In short, you think.

So as companies are striving to add more channels to reach their employees from all angles– are we actually doing more harm than good?  Read More »

Lemme ask you… what if you knew that 30-40% of the stakeholders you’re working so hard to reach just aren’t interested in ANYTHING your company has to say?  Not one bit.  How would you feel about THAT?

Frustrated?  Make ya wanna pull your hair out? (not an option for me)

I’ll confess that I, too, used to think that the most frustrating moments of our jobs as communicators are those times when we fail in all our attempts to SOMEHOW reach the people we want to reach.

We just keep trying.  Using every ounce of our creativity, our extraordinary ability to develop compelling messages, our brilliant wordsmithery (including our skill in inventing words that don’t actually exist) to come up with a million new and different ways to connect with people who still seem totally resistant, no matter what we do.

Turns out there is a better way.  Stop trying. Read More »

In my life, I’ve known a few people who’ve struggled to overcome various personal demons (smokeables, drinkables, snortables).

In fact, I had a college roommate who was so heavily into the sauce that he regularly overslept his 4:00pm classes.  (A gifted baseball/softball player, I watched him play center field during one game in which I personally KNOW he was at least 3+ sheets to the wind—and wouldn’t ya know it, with the game on the line, the final play was a high fly to dead center.  As he was weaving to position himself under it, my other roommate shouted to him, “Earl! Just catch the middle ball!” Amazingly, he did.)

(BTW: How do you suppose he celebrated afterward?)

While I have concern and empathy for anyone struggling with a chemical addiction, I don’t feel like I have any kind of expertise to help people who are in that kind of mess.  Dr. Drew, I defer to you.

But just recently I’ve had two separate conversations with long-time friends, who’ve each told me, “I can no longer escape the fact that am ADDICTED to email/my Blackberry/iPhone/Facebook/Twitter.”  And since they know I’m a life-long communications professional, there’s some expectation that I should be able to help, somehow. Read More »

A big thank you to the 100+ Heads of Communications and staff who responded to our 2010 quick-poll, sharing their current strategies for external stakeholder engagement.  Were the responses interesting? Yes.  Did they make me feel warm and fuzzy about the state of Communications? Not especially.

Let me explain why. On the one side, it’s great that communicators are focused on proactively engaging stakeholders in the current climate—not just attempting to manage negativity. It’s more of their approach that worries me.  Here are some of the poll highlights:

I’ll add some quick thoughts on a few of the data points that stood out for me:

• Communicators are on the offensive—49% of communicators say that differentiating their company is their primary objective for 2010, and 39% are focused on directly supporting sales and marketing efforts.  This strikes me as Communications taking positive steps to help their companies get ahead in the ever-aggressive battle for stakeholder support and market share.  We’ve heard a lot of our members facing real pressure to get closer to the bottom line as budget and scrutiny tightens, which seems to be playing out here. Read More »

By Rebecca Canan

As communicators, we often have to deal with snippy and critical comments from others in social media, yet stick to the high road in speaking for our organizations.  But what happens when the urge to snark back is just too tempting?  Nestlé’s recent experiences offer up a case in point.

Here’s what happened:  Nestle posted a status update on its Facebook “fan” page, requesting that people refrain from using altered versions of the Nestlé logo when posting on the company page; otherwise, the posts would be removed.  Not surprisingly, a few people complained that Nestlé was acting overly authoritarian for an open social media forum.  Now, this in itself would not be a huge deal—a lot of brands are concerned about their logo usage and brand integrity.  But here’s where the plot thickens.  Rather than letting a few unfavorable comments go or respectfully acknowledging them, the company moderator got into a petty, sarcastic, and heated comment battle with fans.  Read More »

Where exactly does the smartest, most progressive thinking in Corporate Communications come from?  The ivory tower of some big F500 headquarters? Some ivy-covered hall of academia?

Turns out some of the most progressive Comms ideas I’ve heard in the last year were first developed…in the underground rock & roll scene. Wendy Harman got her start in “communications” promoting local bands in Washington, DC—before she was hired by the American Red Cross as their first-ever Social Media Manager. (You may have seen Evelyn’s post last week about the Red Cross’ extraordinary response to the crisis in Haiti.) And among these progressive communications ideas is…how to create strategic results using social media outlets like Twitter.

So…to the question at hand.  Twitter. Channel, or not? Read More »