The Communicator

Like it or not, books are judged by their covers. Today’s books have to ‘peacock’ themselves just to entice us to read the fifty word synopsis on the back cover. It’s no wonder: with so much information available, most of us have become ‘skimmers’, and quickly capturing our attention has turned into quite a challenge.  

Your website is your organization’s ‘book cover’. The truth is that many of your potential customers or partners will form an immediate impression of your company based solely on a brief visit to your website, so it’s critical to put your best foot forward.

What can professional communicators learn from book covers when building their websites?

• Tell a good story: Flashy websites may get you more eyeballs, but without compelling content and a strong value proposition, turning those visitors into paying customers will be an uphill battle. Make sure all of your content reinforces your brand and provides value to the visitor.
• Be succinct: Remember that you have a finite amount of space to tell your story and grab the reader’s attention. Most decision makers won’t read more than 500 words before making up their minds, so get to the point right away.
• Get on the ‘Best Sellers’ list: Ranking highly on popular search engines (such as Yahoo or Google) can certainly propel your business. Beyond SEO Services, savvy communicators use specific keywords in their content to drive better search results (more on this strategy in an upcoming post).
• Seek endorsements: We all know what happens when an author is listed on Oprah’s Book Club. For every industry, there are key opinion leaders and market makers who can add valuable third party endorsement and website traffic just by linking to your site.
• Use good imagery: The choice of graphics on a book cover isn’t an accident. The publisher knows that the right images and colours can enhance and even drive book sales. Be prudent about the graphics you use – make sure they support your message and are consistent with your corporate image.

Finally, offer new content regularly. Nobody goes to the store to find the latest J.D. Salinger book, because everyone knows he hasn’t written anything for more than 45 years. So if you don’t update your site with new content on a regular basis, don’t expect to get repeat visitors.

There is only one book I can think of that bucks the trend and carries no synopsis, no endorsements and only the title on the cover… but good luck competing with The Bible.

Need help with your website content? Feel free to contact me for a free consultation at Peter@CommunicationsUnlimited.ca

These days most people are pretty good at recycling. Even the most passive households patiently sort their reusable material from their garbage for collection, while the more avid find ways to reuse products over and over again before begrudgingly retiring them to the recycling bin (just ask my mother what you can do with a used yogurt tub).

So when it comes to corporate communications, it surprises me how often we think of content as a single-serving dish, created for one purpose and then discarded.

More importantly, given our economic climate, professional communicators should look at repurposing content as a smart way to drive business results while maximizing their investment.

Many communicators already do a decent job at recognizing and taking advantage of the easy wins: some leverage external announcements to enhance employee engagement, while others may use their annual reports to create stronger relationships with stakeholders and customers.

But the communicator that adds the most value is the one that considers the potential for a wide variety of different tools and audiences for each communication, and weighs the return on investment accordingly.

Here are a few tips for uncovering these value opportunities:

• Involve yourself in the planning phase of a project. By understanding the expected outcomes you can better identify alternative uses and audiences, and plan for the unique needs of different tools if required.
• Take a step back and think like a generalist. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in meeting your objectives and forget to take a wider view of your work. Larger or more complex communications teams might consider assigning staff by projects rather than by audience to encourage a more holistic view.
• Create a vehicle checklist. Try documenting all of the potential tools available to you and make a checklist of each of their unique requirements. Refer back to the checklist every time you are involved in a new project and line it up against each option.  
• Integrate with other content generators in your organization. It is amazing how much content is generated by non-communications divisions (some prolific teams include business development, public affairs, market research and human resources). Work together to enhance content sharing and find opportunities to make the most of your messaging.

Repurposing isn’t just about maximizing your resources and budget. If done effectively, it’s also an excellent way to repeat and reinforce your key messages throughout your audience groups.

So – like my Mum with her well-used yogurt tubs – be purposeful about finding ways to reuse your content. After all: recycling isn’t about being cheap, it’s about being smart and understanding the long-term benefits.

Need help repurposing your content? Contact me for a free consultation at Peter@CommunicationsUnlimited.ca

Leadership transitions are always a turbulent time for an organization. To the rank and file, a new leader signifies a departure from the past, indicates a change in strategic direction, and is often a harbinger for dramatic change. Even the best planned successions can lead to a drop in productivity and loss of employee engagement. 

There are, however, a few ways for professional communicators to mitigate the upheaval that can come from a change in leadership.

First, try to avoid the Cult of the Leader. While the strategy can work well in select cases – almost only with Founding CEOs (Bill Gates, Donald Trump, etc) – there is an inherent risk in tying an organization’s future to their leader’s persona: at best, the inevitable departure of an iconic leader impacts employee engagement and investor confidence; at worst, the organization spirals through a series of stand-ins who are forever doomed to be compared to the Great Leader.

Instead, always employ a more diversified strategy incorporating the entire leadership team. Put particular focus on highlighting the skills and attributes that help them to meet corporate objectives or that embody the company vision. At the end of the day, the loss of a General can be overcome, but the loss of the King signals disaster. 

When the time does come for regime change – either from within the family or from those more hostile – the key to a smooth transition is to start communicating early. Introduce the Crown Prince as soon as possible and evidence their commitment to the organization’s mission and vision. If possible, take both the outgoing and the incoming leaders on a road-show together to demonstrate continuity to employees, investors and key customers.   

Throughout, try to position the change process within the framework of the organization’s core objectives. Take every opportunity to show how the change furthers the company’s goal of achieving its mission or long-term objectives. The masses will always back a new regime that helps them to achieve their personal and communal priorities.   

Finally, listen to dissenting views. Right or wrong, the grapevine is a mean propaganda machine, which quickly generates rumours and misinformation. But these can be easily mollified if taken seriously and addressed early. Be sure to identify and address potential rumours and contentious issues before the villagers show up at the gates with pitchforks and torches.

Six hundred years ago, the cry of “The King is dead! Long live the King!” was the first sign of a change in leadership. Even then, communicators keenly understood the need for smooth transitions and continuity in leadership.

Depending on who you ask, the “green shoots” of economic recovery are springing up all around us. But it doesn’t take a farmer to know that it requires hard work to turn seedlings into a harvest. You also need to offer a fertile landscape and encourage strong root growth.

So as the upswing emerges and we turn the corner on the issues and “organizational change initiatives” of the past two years, we’d like to offer professional communicators a few suggestions to help them nourish their organizations for long-term growth: 

• Focus on your employees: By far the most cost-effective way to increase profitability is to increase your employee’s individual productivity. Many employees are still feeling insecure and shell-shocked from the bloodletting of the past year. Now is the time to focus on employee engagement, rebuilding loyalty and retaining top talent.
• Conduct audience audits: There is no doubt that the economic downturn has changed people’s purchasing decisions. For many consumers, price and value now trump the allure of name brand and exclusivity. A lot has changed in a very short time, so make sure you still know what motivates your various audiences.
• Review your suppliers: Recessions – by their very nature – force down prices for goods and services. At the same time, companies have had to become ever more competitive in the fight to acquire and retain customers. Take advantage of this buyer’s market to review your current suppliers and make sure you are getting the best value possible for your budget. 
• Use freelancers: While “green shoots” may be encouraging, the future will still be volatile and companies will continue to be reluctant to increase their headcount. As the pressure builds to get more done with less people, professional communicators should look to freelancers and contractors to bridge the resource gap in the short-term.

So while the appearance of green shoots may be a great omen for future growth, now is the right time to cultivate and nurture your communications strategies for the upswing.  

And if this upswing takes longer than expected, just remember: a really good communicator can find green shoots in the deepest of manure.

At the dawn of time, early man huddled around the fire to talk shop: sharing hunting best practices; offering survival skills mentoring; and carefully aligning scarce resources – skills that enabled our ancestors to survive and thrive.

In reality, these pre-historic “water cooler discussions” acted as an early catalyst to human evolution and created a foundation for future innovations.

Fast forward to today:  Far from creating and encouraging opportunities for staff to learn from casual employee-to-employee (E2E) conversations, many organizations opt for a more regulated approach, with a bias towards formalized guidelines, endless approval rounds and top-down communications channels.

There is no doubt that the regulated approach reduces the risk of miscommunication, but it also exponentially increases the resource burden, slows the natural flow of ideas, and creates a black market for rumour and gossip.

A few weeks ago I had a chance to look at a different model that instead fostered and supported E2E communications. The practice is based on the understanding that internal communications is a facilitator of employee engagement, not a driver.

With this in mind, the communications team identified and focused their efforts on the more critical communications strategies where there was a higher risk of miscommunication (for example, Executive Communications, Financial Reporting, Organizational Change, etc).

But this organization advanced the idea further: their intranet has been turned into a tool that resembles a networking site, where all employees are encouraged to post work-related content directly to their departmental or cross-functional team pages, thereby creating small networks of colleagues coalescing around ideas, best practices and shared goals.

The inherent value could be tremendous: greater information flow enhances productivity and drives innovation, while key communications and legal resources are freed up to focus on mission-critical communications objectives.

And – for those of us controlling, more risk-adverse types (yup, that sometimes includes me) – a formally supported E2E strategy can provide your organization’s leadership with a much more transparent and consistent employee feedback mechanism than any traditional review process.