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January 21, 2005
Consider a virtual tour for your intranet
Nearly every day I receive information about an external communication innovation or trend that inspires me about how to improve internal communication. Today’s epiphany comes from the always-helpful Pew Internet & American Life Project, which reports that 45% of online American adults have taken virtual tours—in fact, on a typical day, more than two million people use the Internet to tour without leaving the comfort of their own desktop.
I’m sure you’ve taken these tours to virtually visit places like museums, vacation locales, colleges, houses for sale, parks, public places like the White House, and hotels. There are many different approaches to virtual tours, from very sophisticated HGTV Dream Home to relatively simple U.S. Capitol.
Virtual tours represent terrific potential for employee communication, especially if you’ve got a large, far-flung organization. Wouldn’t it be great to give employees the chance to visit other locations without having to travel? Employees could see firsthand what life is like in other parts of the organization—manufacturing facility, warehouse, call center, retail outlet.
And unlike in external tours, which are usually devoid of people, your virtual tours could picture the folks who work in the place being visited. (You could even include quotes or a video featuring employees commenting about what they do.)
I know that many of you have system constraints (most virtual tours work best in broadband), and budgets are always tight. But don’t let those restrictions limit your thinking—keep exploring ways you can take your intranet from merely informative to intriguing and interesting as well. One simple way to start is to create an “album” of still photos of your major facilities.
For more information on the Pew study, visit http://www.centerformediaresearch.com
Posted by Alison Davis at January 21, 2005 11:27 AM