The Communicator

Blogging is a wonderful way to build relationships, showcase ideas and motivate audiences. But do blogs work in every industry and for everyone? Certainly not.  

Blogs facilitate the sharing of ideas with like-minded audiences. They can be used to motivate, inspire, educate or placate, but – at the end of the day – their value rests in their ability to communicate ideas and opinions. 

In my very first post on this blog (To Blog or Not to Blog), I suggested that certain industries and functions – in particular those that generate ideas or motivate people – had more to gain from blogs than most other sectors. Here are some examples: 

Not-for-profits: For organizations that depend on public good will, blogs provide an excellent way to motivate donors, inform volunteers and advocate for a cause. Blogs are also great vehicles for improving an organization’s profile with stakeholders, media and the general public. 

Professional Services: No industry produces more thought leadership than the professional services. For consultants and ‘rain makers’, blogs deliver a safe and certain distribution channel that can be branded and reused as business development or marketing collateral. 

Industry Associations and Unions: With a geographically dispersed membership and only the occasional formal interaction with the members themselves, blogs offer trade associations and unions a way to highlight certain issues and motivate the membership around advocacy. 

Politicians: In most democracies, the public likes to know what their elected officials are thinking, planning and doing on a daily basis. Blogs provide a transparent and approachable way for politicians to further their agendas, rally constituents, and win-over their detractors.  

CEOs: Regardless of the type of organization, blogs have a large role to play in Executive and Internal communications. It is critical – especially in times of change – that executive teams be visible, approachable and honest. Blogs can be an excellent way to provide context to corporate objectives, motivate employees around a cause or inspire innovation and collaboration.  

Just over two years ago I ended my post with the following advice for professional communicators:  

Treat blogs like you would any other communication vehicle. Evaluate their reach, impact, cost and effort against your objectives. And if it turns out that a blog makes sense, the first step should always be to ensure that you have a long-term commitment from your organization, and the right resources to ensure sustainable success.  

And – regardless of your industry – that certainly hasn’t changed.  

Want to talk about whether a blog strategy is right for your organization? Contact Peter at peter@communicationsunlimited.ca.

iPhones, iPads, PDAs, laptops, cell phones, PCs… the internet is now truly ubiquitous. No matter where you go, the web always seems to be right at your fingertips. 

But for professional communicators, the rapid proliferation of web-accessible devices can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the public’s increased access to the internet can lead to more visitors for your website and thus a better return on your investment. On the other, the complexity of maintaining a consistent customer experience and brand identity across a growing number of platforms can quickly sap your resources and become a burden. 

For many organizations, there is no easy answer. Communicators will need to find a comfortable balance between maintaining an easily-accessible website and managing the host of other web priorities that drive their traffic and achieve their objectives. 

Regardless of your current strategy, we have noticed a few trends that we’ve picked up from leading websites: 

• Keep it simple: Don’t let your website get bogged down with long passages or huge pdf files. Remember that people may be accessing your site with different download speeds, screen colour capabilities, and data plans, so try to stick to simple text and a lot of white space to enhance ease-of-use. 
• Know your audience: While this may be a ‘no-brainer’ for most, it’s easy to get caught up in hype (or simply the desire to demonstrate your innovation to the world), and lose sight of the basic characteristics of your audience. Use your website metrics to understand how your most frequent visitors – or most valuable customers – access your site, and concentrate on improving their experience first. 
• Seek value opportunities: Regardless of their popularity, many new technologies and devices perform unique functions that can greatly enhance your message. Try gauging the added effect of incorporating tools such as interactive charts, streaming video and real-time updates to illustrate your point and add value. 
• Leverage free apps: Rather than spending too much time and money deploying video functionality or other cool applications, consider harnessing existing free sites such as YouTube or Twitter to perform some of those functions. Not only are they extremely cost-effective, but they can also gain much wider viewership than your corporate site alone. 

At the end of the day, it all comes back to the basic fundamentals of communications: know your audience, how to reach them, and what really matters to them. If you always keep that in mind, you can’t really go wrong.  

Need help adapting your communications material? Contact Peter at Peter@CommunicationsUnlimited.ca.

Let’s be clear: there is absolutely no excuse for bad spelling. Yet every day, I see websites, brochures and even newspaper articles where, in the author’s haste to produce content, they have decided to forego the rigour of a simple spell check. 

Indeed there seems to be a pervasive feeling these days that good grammar and good spelling are somehow passé. Has Twitter and texting killed the need for communicators to worry about spelling? 

Hardly. In fact, a recent story on the BBC’s website (well worth reading) claims that – as a result of poor spelling – UK companies are losing millions of pounds per year in revenue.  It seems that consumers don’t particularly trust websites that contain spelling errors. 

In fact, given the increase in fake websites, online scams and phishing emails, consumers have become increasingly wary of anything that does not seem on the up and up. No wonder: one of the surest ways to identify scam email (besides the obvious fact that very few people with $3 billion tend to legitimately need a Wisconsin retiree as a transfer agent) is their poor – often laughable – grasp of spelling and grammar. 

As self-styled Guardians of The Written Word, the responsibility of monitoring spelling and grammar often falls to professional communicators. So what can we do to eliminate spelling mistakes and destroy bad grammar in our organisations? Here are a few ideas: 

• Slow down: Given the pace of work for most professional communicators, we tend to see ‘editing’ as a nice-to-do rather than an absolute must. But taking the time to reread our work is absolutely critical and cannot be rushed or ignored. In fact, communicators may consider rethinking their content development process to create a formal review round that is focused solely on grammar and spelling.
• Get some help: A second set of eyes on a project can be invaluable. And while there are many great external editors (like us) with the right skills to make quick work of editing, communicators may also want to develop a ‘buddy system’ with a colleague that can act as an editor on higher-risk pieces.
• Know your kryptonite: When it comes to spelling we all have an Achilles heel that is impervious to spell check. For some these may be innocuous (‘fro’ instead of ‘for’), others can be more embarrassing (‘pubic’ rather than ‘public’). Self-aware communicators may want to keep a short list of these usual suspects by their computer and do a ‘find and replace’ to hunt them down and eliminate them. 

Finally, communicators should remember that an over-reliance on the spelling gurus at Microsoft and Apple is no solution and – as we pointed out in an earlier posting – can even be detrimental to your career (and your relationships). 

Need a great writer or editor? Contact Peter at Peter@CommunicationsUnlimited.ca.

There have been a record number of home foreclosures over the past few years. In simple terms, the credit crunch combined with a reduced income has forced home owners to choose between paying the mortgage and putting food on the table. Not surprisingly, many families have opted to service their short-term needs, often to the detriment of their long-term stability.   

Many professional communicators are facing a similar problem at work. For years, they have been building equity with the public through steady investments in their corporate reputation. But as the economy tightened and budgets were decimated, many communicators diverted their funding away from their long-term commitments to shore up projects that would provide ‘quick-hits’ and generate instant revenue. 

Faced with certain foreclosure, many home owners choose to renegotiate the terms of their mortgage, allowing them to manage their short-term needs while maintaining the equity they have built up over years of steady payments. 

That’s a good idea. Here are a few areas where professional communicators can look to renegotiate, while still securing their corporate reputation investment: 

• Maintain sponsorships, especially your support of community or charitable organizations. It’s easy to be magnanimous in the good times, but your continued support during a tough economy will do more to build and protect your equity. Try working with your partners to renegotiate the terms of your sponsorships rather than abandoning them all together.
• Focus on low-cost, high interaction vehicles such as websites or social media. Take a hard look at your current cost-per-contact (how many people you reach vs. the cost of using a specific communications tool), and put a premium on vehicles that engage and interact with your customers. Besides, not everyone needs a high-gloss brochure or expensive chatchkes.  
• Look to Public Relations. Not to fuel the PR vs. Advertising debate, but spending lavishly on full-page ads can send the wrong message in a slow-recovering economy. Instead, try employing smart and targeted public and media relations to reach your audiences.
• Use freelancers and consultants to support your corporate reputation initiatives and to reduce the cost of maintaining an ongoing program. While corporate reputation may not require full-time oversight, it is important to maintain consistent objectives, principles and tone of voice. Try using freelancers and consultants to augment your in-house team without increasing your headcount or retaining expensive agencies.  

At the end of the day, just remember: much like your mortgage, stopping your investments in your corporate reputation could leave your company out in the cold.   

Looking for cost-effective ways to manage and enhance your corporate reputation? Contact Peter at Peter@CommunicationsUnlimited.ca.

The English language is full of words that have lost their meaning. Many – “awesome”, “cool” and “sick” for example – were hijacked by pop culture years ago and patiently moulded into our minds with completely new meanings. Others were usurped by the business world to metaphorically represent complex ideas to the public in simple terms (some of my personal favourites are “deliverables”, “synergize” or “utilization”). 

But there are a growing number of once-useful words whose meanings have been diluted through extreme over (and occasionally improper) use. 

A prime example is the term “innovative”. At its root, innovation is about creating something completely new. Think Thomas Edison or Alexander Cummings.  Until recently there was a high creative threshold to be crossed before you were considered innovative. Today all you need to do is install the latest software package or use social media in order to brandish this innovation badge. 

As professional communicators, we have all been complicit in the proliferation and dilution of once emotive and strong terms such as innovation… even though it’s sometimes difficult to avoid jumping on the bandwagon for fear of seeming out-of-touch or being left behind by your competition. 

However, from a marketing standpoint, innovation has become an extremely overcrowded market to compete in. Let’s be honest: any value that remains in the term innovation is being fought over by old-world leader GE and new-world upstart Apple, and I’m guessing your pockets aren’t deep enough to seriously challenge either of them. So (as Al Ries and Jack Trout would say) rather than trying to compete in a category with a behemoth incumbent, try to create a new category that you can own in your audience’s minds. 

For example, look for adjectives that are meaningful to your audiences and products, or that articulate your value to your customers and define your core brand characteristics. Try to avoid terms too popular within your industry and too metaphorical or cliché to have any real impact. It’s always best to avoid fads – unless you are the one setting the trend. 

At the end of the day, the key to success has always been to differentiate yourself from your competition. Why should your words be any different?  

Need help giving your words meaning? Contact Peter at Peter@CommunicationsUnlimited.ca or visit www.CommunicationsUnlimited.ca for more information.

Summer is just around the corner. But if you were expecting some much needed R&R… think again. 

For professional communicators, The Dog Days of Summer represent the best (and often only) opportunity to focus on the fundamentals. As executive teams start to shift their thoughts from goals to golf, many communicators take advantage of the relative ‘down time’ of the summer to prepare for the business year ahead. 

Not sure where to start? Here are five areas that should be a priority for any communications team this summer: 

• Clean up your website: All too often throughout the year, press releases, feature stories and news items are rushed onto organizational websites in an ad-hoc fashion to meet an immediate need or crisis – sometimes with little regard to strategy or process. The quiet summer months provide an ideal opportunity to bring some much-needed focus and discipline back to your website(s).
• Update your corporate collateral: With long review and approval cycles, multiple stakeholders and complex production schedules, updating your brochures, press kits and other corporate collateral can be a time consuming business. While the summer season won’t necessarily speed up the process, you will find that key stakeholders (Finance, HR, Operations, etc.) are much more open to participating in these types of projects when their plates are less full. 
• Media train your executives: The worst time to media train an executive is in the middle of a crisis. To be effective, proper media training starts in a relaxed environment, free from distractions and competing priorities. Many executives benefit from group training sessions, which are also much easier to coordinate over the summer.
• Prepare for issues: While most issues are – by nature – unexpected, there are several ways that communicators can use the summer to prepare for the unknown. Standby statements, draft Q&As and position backgrounders are great ways to get ahead of a crisis, and the summer provides the perfect timing to conduct table-top exercises to ‘stress-test’ your crisis manuals.  
• Build/maintain relationships: Never underestimate the intrinsic value of a strong working relationship. Take some time this summer to build on your valuable relationships with your colleagues, peers and suppliers, as well as any key opinion leaders in your industry (media, bloggers, industry gurus, etc.). Besides, it’s a great time of year for a few drinks on a patio!   

Above all, take advantage of the comparative calm to take a vacation, long-weekend or afternoon off, and remember that achieving work-life balance is (or should be) just as important as achieving your business objectives. 

Looking for help to get ahead of your communications strategies this summer? Contact Peter at Peter@CommunicationsUnlimited.ca.

iPhones, laptops, PDAs, cell phones, PCs… the internet is now truly ubiquitous. No matter where you go, the web always seems to be right at your fingertips. 

But for professional communicators, the rapid proliferation of web-accessible devices can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the public’s increased access to the internet can lead to more visitors to your website and thus a better return on your investment. On the other, the complexity of maintaining a consistent customer experience and brand identity across a growing number of platforms can quickly sap your resources and become a cumbersome burden, especially for smaller communications teams. 

The truth is, there is no easy answer. Communicators will need to find a comfortable balance between maintaining an easily accessible website and managing the host of other web priorities that drive their traffic and achieve their objectives. 

Regardless of your current strategy, we have noticed a few trends that we’ve picked up from leading websites: 

• Keep it simple: Don’t let your website get bogged down with long passages of text or huge pdf files. Remember that people may be accessing your site with different download speeds, screen capabilities, and data plans, so try to stick to simple text and lots of white space to enhance ease-of-use. And if you are looking for some ideas for writing for the web, try this article.
• Know your audiences: While this may be a ‘no-brainer’ for most, it’s easy to get caught up in hype (or simply the desire to demonstrate your innovation to the world), and lose sight of the basic characteristics of your audiences. Use your website metrics to understand how your most frequent visitors – or most valuable customers – access your site, and concentrate on improving their experience first.
• Seek value opportunities: Many new website technologies have now proven their ability to enhance communications messages. When updating your website, consider incorporating tools such as interactive charts, streaming video and real-time updates to illustrate your point and add value. 
• Leverage free apps: And while you are thinking about it, why not consider harnessing existing free sites such as YouTube or Twitter to perform some of those functions for you. Rather than spending tons of time and money deploying video functionality or other cool applications onto your corporate site, these tools are extremely cost-effective, and can gain much wider viewership than your corporate site alone.   

At the end of the day, it all comes back to the basic fundamentals of communications: know your audiences, how to reach them, and what really matters to them. If you always keep that in mind, you can’t go wrong.

Updating your websites is one of our Top 11 Communications Issues for 2011. Next week we tackle the last issue on our list, how communicators can be reducing their organization’s environmental footprint.

Need help with website content? Contact Peter at Peter@CommunicationsUnlimited.ca.

Only a decade ago, professional communications was a fairly straight-forward gig.  Fax machines and phone lines were (pretty much) the only communications channels available, almost everybody read a daily newspaper, and most of us only had to worry about three main audiences: the media, the employees and the bosses.

Today, everything has changed: multi-channel communications strategies are the norm; the idea of traditional news cycles has been blown away by the instantaneousness of Twitter and YouTube; and our audiences continue to diversify exponentially.

Indeed, most communicators now find themselves catering to a bewildering array of new audiences that include traditional and non-traditional stakeholders. From social media groups to non-governmental lobbyists (such as environmental or transparency watchdogs), professional communicators are now spending more and more time establishing and maintaining their voice in new arenas and unfamiliar territory.

And as the number of new audiences grows, the challenge increasingly lies in maintaining clear and comprehensive communications across all of the various audience groups and channels. This isn’t easy. It requires robust processes to ensure that messages are delivered consistently, with the flexibility to adapt to new and unpredictable audiences, and an innate understanding of the needs and biases of each new audience group.

To achieve this, professional communicators will need to develop new skills and strategies that enable them to quickly identify and respond to new audiences as they emerge. These include:

Audience audits: Audits are a fantastic way to better understand your new audiences and their motivations. By carefully selecting and engaging a small sample group, communicators may find that they are able to not only stay on top of the key trends, but can also build equity with a more influential sub-set of the audience.

Monitor trends: Unfortunately, audience audits take time and a lot of work, and are therefore often only conducted on a limited basis. But trends can change in the course of a day, and professional communicators must be able to stay on top of the key issues within each audience group. Larger communications teams may benefit from tasking each team member with tracking specific audiences through newsfeeds and social media sites, while smaller teams (or departments of one) may have to make do with identifying the top 5 audiences (either by influence or risk) to keep a keen eye on.

Target materials: Most audiences just want to know that their concerns are being recognized and responded to. In many cases, professional communicators can take a proactive approach by targeting corporate materials that speak to these new audiences. This may mean adding a new ‘entry point’ to the corporate website that reflects the audience’s specific needs, or it may require tailoring brochures or one-pagers to demonstrate that their organization understands the key issues and is responding in a responsible and thoughtful manner.

Think long-term: Today’s audiences are not necessarily the same as tomorrow’s. Professional communicators must remember that – in the internet era – communications have a habit of becoming a ‘matter of record’, lingering around the web long after the issue or audience has disappeared or disbanded. And while increased vigilance and scrutiny will certainly be in order, many communicators will find themselves digging back into the archives to ensure that their new messages don’t contradict older ones that may be swirling around the net.

Finally, communicators should understand that they can’t always please all of their audiences all of the time. And that’s OK. But by following these four simple strategies, at least they’ll know which audiences will react positively and which will react poorly, and – hopefully – be able to plan their strategy accordingly.

Working with new audiences is one of our Top 11 Communications Issues for 2011. Next week, we’ll look at ways to get more value from your communications suppliers.

Looking for help communicating with new audiences? Contact Peter at Peter@CommunicationsUnlimited.ca.

Everybody’s talking about social media. And so they should: for almost a billion people around the world, social media has broken down geographical barriers, connected friends both new and old, and even fomented political revolution. But users of these sites are becoming increasingly cynical about the content they are being exposed to, creating a whole new set of challenges for professional communicators. 

To be sure, the commercialization of Facebook and LinkedIn was unavoidable. Even as privately-held companies, the pressure has been on these sites to demonstrate a viable business model. Goldman Sachs’ recent valuation of Facebook at $50 billion has added more pressure still. 

But this is the obvious commercialization, the kind of stuff that users can usually tolerate in exchange for access to a free service. The more dangerous side of social media commercialization comes from the (often clumsy) efforts of marketers and product managers to turn these forums into a marketing bonanza. 

Picture this: you’re sitting at a coffee shop with some friends. Right in the middle of a great discussion, a guy sidles up to the table and says “Hey, you’re drinking coffee. Would you like to buy some insurance?” Off-putting? Certainly.  Now picture this happening every time you sit down at that coffee shop. Would you go back? I’m betting no. 

The same can be said for social media. Once your audience feels that they are being constantly ‘sold to’, their cynicism will get the better of them, and they will quickly leave.  

The problem is particularly acute in organizations where marketing departments ‘own’ social media strategies. Stuck in the old paradigm where the number of impressions topped the quality of the conversation, these advertising-focused types tend to see social media in terms of numbers and opportunity. 

But for professional communicators, social media represents much more. It is an opportunity to build strong relationships, mitigate risks, solicit feedback, engage customers … and yes, also promote corporate objectives. So the challenge for professional communicators will increasingly lie in finding ways to leverage social media networks without irking their audiences. 

Overwhelmingly, this will require communicators to foster and encourage more peer-to-peer discussions. Many organizations are starting to wake up to the intrinsic value that already exists within their employees’ social networks, and are increasingly harnessing their staff as social media ambassadors (like having them re-tweet important messages or become ‘fans’ of a particular page). 

Professional communicators will also need to pay more attention to their strategies for nurturing their communities as they grow their relationships. This means that, rather than just tossing a key message into a group and hoping it sticks (i.e. the advertising method), communicators will need to engage in ongoing and valuable conversations with their groups and fans in order to demonstrate their commitment to the relationship. 

Most importantly, professional communicators will need to keep a keen eye on social media trends and demographics. One need only look to Rupert Murdoch following his purchase of MySpace for $500 million in 2005, what was once the world’s leading social networking site quickly lost ground to Facebook, which – at the time – was seen as the ‘grassroots’ and ‘non-commercial’ upstart. 

Obviously, the cycle is set to continue.  

Managing social media cynicism is one of our Top 11 Communications Issues for 2011. Next week, we’ll look at coaching executives.

Want to start more valuable social media conversations? Contact Peter at Peter@CommunicationsUnlimited.Ca

If you are a professional communicator, chances are you own a smart-phone or some other type of mobile device. Whether it’s a BlackBerry, iPhone or netbook, mobile devices are quickly changing the way people interact with each other, and – more importantly – the way communicators approach their jobs and audiences. 

Indeed, mobile devices are in the midst of turning traditional communications models on their heads. Only ten years ago, media was the king of conduits; telephone calls went to people’s land lines; the majority of consumers still got their information on paper rather than online; and subways, taxicabs and public loos were places of quiet contemplation, rather than mobile office spaces. 

But as adoption numbers start to spike (especially following the release of the 3G iPad), communicators will increasingly find that these devices are forcing them to reconsider the way they approach their jobs and their audiences, particularly in five key areas: 

Work-life balance: the lines between work-life and home-life are merging, creating a double-edged sword for communicators. On one side, communicators now enjoy unprecedented levels of connectivity, allowing them to deal with issues and progress projects from almost anywhere in the world (whether a client site in Australia or a couch in the living room). At the same time, however, communicators will need to pay close attention to their work-life balance if they ever hope to retain some of the sanctity that comes from being ‘out of the office’. 

Writing styles: with comparatively small screens and somewhat limited functionality, communicators will need to revisit their organizational writing styles to properly communicate with mobile device users. And while many communicators are already starting to consider rewriting their websites to ‘optimize’ them for mobile devices, this is only half the battle. They will want to carry their new writing style through all of their written communications – from emails to press releases – to make sure they are capturing 100% of their audience(s) all of the time. 

Presentation: separate from writing style – yet inexorably intertwined – is the need to update the look and feel of online material for mobile devices. And while design specs tend to fall outside of the traditional communications purview, IT teams are usually reluctant to build out new functionalities that don’t have a direct bottom line benefit. In response, many communicators will find themselves working as catalysts within their executive teams and IT leadership to free up the required budget and resources needed for redesigns.  

Internal communications: professional communicators aren’t the only ones bringing work home with them on mobile devices. In turn, this has created some unique opportunities (and a few challenges) for internal communications professionals. And it will almost certainly be a boon for HR and benefits professionals, who will see increased rates of compliance on everything from benefits enrolment to professional development requirements (as employees take e-Learning modules and benefits forms home on their devices). That said, communicators will need to work closely with legal and IT to ensure the proper security and controls are in place to prevent the loss of intellectual property or competitive advantage. 

Meeting skills: we are all guilty of it: sitting in a meeting or listening to a conference call and your mind starts to wander.  Before you know it, you find yourself scrolling through emails and checking the latest hockey scores. As frequent presenters and public speakers, communicators will need to recognize that audience attention is becoming increasingly difficult to capture. In some cases, they will want to find ways to maintain their audience’s interest long enough to make their point; in others, they may prefer to recognize the limitations and find alternate methods of reinforcing their messages (for example: following-up calls with meeting notes, recording sessions for audience review, or even sending a synopsis to their mobile devices). 

And while some tech pundits envision a day where offices are abandoned and employees work from the comfort of their homes, don’t expect to be living this utopia any time soon. Looks like you’ll still have to come into the office tomorrow. 

Communicating with Mobile Audiences is one of our Top 11 Communications Issues for 2011. Next week, we’ll look at managing social media cynicism.

Need help with your mobile communications? Contact Peter at Peter@CommunicationsUnlimited.ca.