« March 2008 | Main | May 2008 »

April 23, 2008

Want to improve your intranet site?

All you need to do is watch a music video . . . as long as it’s a rap video created by the Poetic Prophet, the alter ego of online marketer Charles Lewis.

Although the advice is geared toward Internet sites (especially commerce sites), there are great tips for anyone who wants to make a web site cleaner, clearer and more searchable. Check it out—Design Coding—and you’ll see what I mean.

Posted by Alison Davis at 07:35 AM

April 21, 2008

Die, press release, die!

A colleague just forwarded me an old (February 2006) blog post from technology journalist Tom Foremski entitled Die! Press release! Die! Die! Die! because she knows how I feel about press releases.

Mr. Foremski’s tirade is directed at the PR industry for its continued use of press releases. As he writes, “The press release is a statement announcing a product, service, office opening, financial results . . . and a hundred other types of commercial activities.

“Press releases are nearly useless. They typically start with a tremendous amount of top-spin, they contain pat-on-the-back phrases and meaningless quotes . . . Press releases are created by committees, edited by lawyers, and then sent out at great expense . . . to reach the digital and physical trash bins of tens of thousands of journalists.

“The madness has to end,” Mr. Foremski concludes, and offers an alternative approach to disseminating information to the media.

Since I’m not a media relations expert, I can’t comment on the value of press releases in generating publicity. But I can share my views on using company-issued releases as part of an employee communication program (for instance, posting them on an intranet site or publishing them in a newsletter): Please, I beg you, just say no.

Employees despise press releases because they hate packaged or “spun” communication, old news, and anything that wastes their time without adding value. In most cases, press releases fit all three criteria.

As one employee in a recent focus group told me, “I find (most communication) to be perfectly crafted, perfect words that don’t tell us much.”

And another employee said, “Too much of (communication) is a sort of gloss-over loaded with business speak.”

And another: “We get so much information that is just wasting our time. It’s just something being sent with no purpose.”

If employees don’t find press releases valuable, why do communicators use them? The painful truth is that it’s easy to do so. Releases are approved copy (there are those lawyers again) and a no-sweat way to send “news” to employees or post it on an intranet site.

Some companies (bless them) are eschewing press releases, at least for employee communication. They’re creating completely original versions of news stories or, at the very least, building on the frame of a press release to add color and context for employees. The idea is to always answer the question, “What does this mean to us?”

Mr. Foremski wants to kill the press release for media relations. Even if your organization hasn’t yet followed this advice, I encourage you to eradicate the use of releases in employee communication.

Posted by Alison Davis at 08:08 AM

April 14, 2008

What’s your cellphone communication strategy?

Yesterday, as I read The New York Times magazine article, "Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?", I was struck once again by how much cellphones are revolutionizing communication—and how many of us who have responsibility for communicating in our organizations aren’t yet prepared for this revolution.

While the article focused on the impact of cellphones on the 3 billion people—mostly poor, mostly in Asia and Africa—who don’t have mobile (or any) phone service, the article made me think of the broader implications of a world in which the dominant communication device fits in your pocket.

Just how significant are cellphones? According to Nokia’s Jan Chipchase, “in an increasingly transitory world, the cellphone is becoming the one fixed piece of our identity.”

Some relevant facts from the article:

And here’s an important thought from article author Sara Corbett: “As cellphone technology grows increasingly sophisticated, it has cannibalized—for better or worse—the technologies that have come before it. Carrying a full-featured cellphone lessens your need for others things, including a watch, an alarm clock, a camera, a video camera, home stereo, television, computer or, for that matter, a newspaper. With the advent of mobile banking, cellphones have begun to replace wallets as well.”

If cellphones are this important—particularly in countries where your company may outsource or offshore manufacturing or service—what is their role in your communication program? Do cellphones have the potential to narrow the gap between wired (tethered to a computer) and nonwired employees? Can cellphones overcome some of your toughest communication challenges, such as access, timing, geography, and interaction?

I urge you to read the article, but, even more importantly, to think about the potential of cellphones in your work.

Posted by Alison Davis at 10:54 AM

April 09, 2008

The PowerPoint problem

Don’t worry; I’m not going to rail against Microsoft PowerPoint® as if it’s the devil’s tool. (That would be Edward Tufte's specialty.)

In fact, I think PowerPoint can be a good thing, as Martha Stewart would say, if used well.

But what I realized as I was listening to a senior communicator’s presentation at a recent conference, is that PowerPoint is often misused—even by communicators. Talk about Shoemaker’s Children Syndrome. If we communicators can’t do PowerPoint well, what hope is there for all the engineers and accountants and scientists and nuclear physicists out there?

I was surprised that at least half of the presentations at this recent conference were mediocre (at best). The problems were remarkably consistent, including:

Lack of navigation. Too many communicators plunged into their talk without providing an agenda or contents page. They also failed to use simple navigation tools such as numbering (“5 ways we’ve improved communication”), eyebrow titles (indicating where they were in the narrative) or summation slides (“5 ways we’ve improved . . .”). This had the effect of setting audience members adrift; we didn’t know where we were in the story, where we might go next, or how it all would end.

Too much content per slide. There were w-a-a-a-a-y too many words, jammed together, crowding each other for breathing space on a single slide. That meant the speaker talked to each slide for far too much time. After about 10 minutes on a slide, the impatient among us longed to grab the clicker to move things along.

Not enough slides. This is the same problem as above, from a different angle. It was as if speakers thought they were limited to 18 or 20 slides, therefore they had to cram all 45 minutes worth of content to fit that quota. I wanted to tell them: “Hey, slides are free! Just divide one slide into two or three, and you’re already going a long way to improve your presentation!”

Reading the slides. A beginner’s mistake, yet several speakers read word-for-word from the text on the slides. I was embarrassed for them.

A lack of visuals. If ever there was a medium that begs for photos, cartoons, drawings or other visuals, it’s PowerPoint. Yet most of the mediocre presentations contained not even one visual: just words in the form of bullets, tables, or paragraphs. Even Clip Art (which Microsoft provides for free) would have provided relief.

Am I being hard on these speakers? Absolutely. But these folks were all senior communicators, working for major corporations or consulting firms. They should be role models for presentation excellence, not poster children for how not to use PowerPoint.

Love PowerPoint or hate it, but if you’re going to use it, use it well.

Posted by Alison Davis at 02:56 PM | Comments (3)