The Communicator

Maybe I’ve been exposed to too many musak Christmas carols over the past week, but I’m now fairly certain that Santa Claus is the greatest business leader ever.

So for all the good little communicators out there, here are six business traits that – without sucking up too much to the venerable and ever so generous Mr. Claus – make Santa my choice for History’s Greatest Business Leader: 

1. The Big Red Suit says it all: Santa’s sure got brand identity licked. In fact you’d be hard pressed to find a human over the age of three that can’t immediately recall either Santa’s wonderfully unique uniform, the design of his vehicles, or his head office location. Real fans can even name all nine mascots!
2. Everyone knows Santa’s value proposition: If you’re good, you get presents. That’s it. No ‘layered service offerings’ or ‘preferential pricing regimes’. And even with sky-high brand approval, he sticks to his core business and leaves product endorsements to the likes of George Forman.
3. Santa is the father of viral marketing: Let’s face it – the Jolly Old Guy doesn’t pay a cent to advertise his service. He doesn’t call you during dinner to see if you’ll be participating in Christmas this year. And as far as I know, he doesn’t tweet. Yet somehow everyone still counts the days until his annual One Day Event. That said, why bother advertising at all if Best Buy, Future Shop and Sears will do the job for you.
4. Santa outsources: Sadly, there comes a time in every little child’s life when they realize that Santa doesn’t actually come to their ninety-story downtown condo building, shimmy down twenty floors and magically appear from their electric fireplace with a jolly ‘Ho Ho Ho’. Somehow – and with no supplier contract negotiated, I might add – Saint Nick has managed to creatively outsource the actual purchase and delivery of the gifts to adults while still delivering on his brand promise. You’ve got to credit Santa for his simplistic business model.
5. The undeniable market leader: With no offence to Bill and Melinda Gates, it would be difficult to argue Santa’s dominance in the global ‘rewarding good with gifts’ industry. Sure, he has many small-time imitators (and some – like the intoxicated one I saw at the mall today – certainly don’t help his brand reputation), but unlike other market leaders, he’s managed to successfully capture 100% of the market without running afoul of the European Competition Bureau or requesting Federal Bail Out funds. 
6. The World’s Top Employer: OK, so I guess there is no empirical data. And no, the good folks at CNN have not polled the world’s population of employed elves, but I’ve never heard of an Elf strike or unrestricted layoffs, and – well… they all look really happy in the pictures. The point is that Santa has a happy and highly engaged workforce that seems completely motivated and devoted to the corporate mission.   

Of course, you also have to envy anyone that can work from home 364 days a year, have only one day of productivity, and still maintain absolute job security. 

We hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season. We’ll return on January 6^th with our Top Ten Communications Trends for 2010.

You wouldn’t voicemail a database or fax an audio track. It’s simply not the right medium for the content. By the same token, the pitch that works best for your marketing brochure may not be the most appropriate wording for your website. 

Writing for the web is very different from other mediums. It requires a unique writing style, an ability to immediately capture the imagination, and a somewhat counter-intuitive notion of “less is more”.

Most professional communicators have become very adept at communicating online, but unfortunately many organizations lack the resources or time to do more than simply reformat their brochure into HTML.

While there are many communications shops (including ours) that are highly capable of repurposing your existing content for the web, we’d like to offer the novice web editor a few quick tips to help get things started:

1. Follow the ‘inverted pyramid style’: Put the most important point or critical insight first.
2. Keep your paragraphs short: Whether you break up your writing with sub-headlines or bullet points, short paragraphs are easier to read on websites than long ones. Relegate detailed background information to secondary pages.
3. Keep your sentences short: People scanning websites for information want to be able to find it and understand it quickly. Use the least amount of words for what you need to say.
4. Use simple words and language: All website content should be understandable by a first-year university student and should not contain industry jargon or an abundance of multi-syllabic words. 
5. Use objective language: Stay away from exaggerated claims or overly promotional words like “great” or “world’s best”, etc.
6. Use meaningful headings and sub-heads: Your pages will be easier to scan if you break them up with sub-headlines. Make sure to use compelling and appropriate titles.
7. Stay high-level: Write for the broadest audience; if you are looking to direct information to a specific industry or focus area, provide links to the material on secondary pages.
8. Tackle one idea per paragraph: Reduce the complexity of the content and keep your paragraphs short by dealing with one idea at a time.
9. Be professional: Emphasize your point with text or images instead of slang, block caps, exclamation points or emoticons.
10. Use hyperlinks to provide more information: Allow your visitors to choose the depth of the information they want to read and provide hyperlinks to more detailed or niche content.

For help with your website content, contact Peter at Peter@CommunicationsUnlimited.ca.

It is certainly no secret that internet search engines are driven by keywords. Organizations spend thousands of dollars each year on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies, seeking to enhance their ranking on popular search engine sites such as Google or Yahoo.

Much of the focus of SEO strategies lies in identifying and tagging webpages with specific ‘keywords’ or phrases that are descriptive of its content. Many professional communicators also recognize that they can dramatically increase their rankings by using those same keywords within the content of the webpage itself. More often than not, SEO strategies result in wide-spread website rewrites with the intention of sprinkling keywords throughout.

However, once the initial SEO process is completed, it is easy to fall back into old habits and forget to adhere to your keyword strategy. This week, we offer a few suggestions for keeping your keywords and phrases relevant, active and effective.

Frame your list: While this sounds rudimentary, try keeping a hard copy list of your organization’s keywords on your desk or pinned to a wall.  If you are like me, you’ll find yourself scanning the list every now and then, thereby reinforcing the keywords in your mind.

Create an Anti-Thesaurus: Try compiling a list of frequently used terms that could easily be substituted for your keywords. Before you post new content to your site, look for these terms and see if they can be replaced by your preferred keyword.

Let the content creators own the keywords: In many organizations, webpage keywords are left to the webmaster to create, invariably after the content has already been generated. In reality, the choice of keywords should be the dominion of the content creators, who can appropriately weave them into their material from the start.  

Conduct annual reviews: Just as much as it is good practice to review your website content annually for relevance and functionality, it is important to look at your keywords on a regular basis. Industry terms and trends can change overnight and retired keywords can not only date a site’s content, but could also be a potential liability in the future.

Above all, resist the temptation to over use your keywords. Be strategic about employing them, making sure to not sacrifice good content for quick hits.

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

Ever get the feeling that nobody is listening? Do you spend the better part of each day tweeting, poking and blogging, just to be met with stone-cold silence?

There is no doubt that peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and social media offer an unparalleled opportunity to engage people, but many communicators have found that maintaining audience interaction and creating real dialogue takes more than just regular participation.

While there is no magic formula, there are a number of ways for professional communicators to enhance the value of their organization’s social network:

Content is King: It’s not enough to simply churn out new content every day. The key is to offer some value to your audience. Try to always provide actionable advice or new ideas rather than simply dissecting a problem or repeating other people’s insights.

Stay on point: Be clear about the value – or unique perspective – that you offer, and resist the temptation to go ‘off script’ with topics irrelevant to your audience. Your followers will be more active on issues that have the greatest impact on them, and will quickly disappear if too many posts miss the mark completely. 

It’s all in the approach: Each social networking tool has a unique characteristic that defines its value and use (i.e. YouTube for video content and LinkedIn for business networking), so make sure you are using the right media for the right purposes. A common strategy is to use one vehicle to carry the main message (in my case, this blog) and other tools (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) to deliver the content to specific audiences, taking care to tailor the message to enhance participation and drive discussion.

Count everything: One huge benefit of social media is the ability to gain instant feedback. Beyond the immediate comments you may (or may not) receive from your more active readers, make sure to track and use other easy-to-collect metrics, such as number of visits, re-tweets and fan data to help you monitor trends and target your content.

Out of sight, out of mind: Most social network participants seem to suffer from Online Attention Deficit Disorder, and without consistent interaction, readers will quickly forget all about you and move on to a competitor or “You 2.0”. Each vehicle and audience is different, but once you find the right frequency, be sure you stick to your schedule and stay top of mind.  

Finally, remember that social networking can easily devour hours of time and serious resources, sometimes with few noticeable results. Be realistic about your objectives, stick to your plan and understand that social networking is a long-term strategy. Above all, don’t be disheartened if something comes along and steals your limelight… there’s no accounting for marketing mavericks like Balloon Boy.

Need help focusing your content? Contact Peter at Peter@CommunicationsUnlimited.ca.