Monday, October 18, 2004
HC+T Update: October 2004
The October 2004 e-mail newsletter from Holtz Communication + Technology
HC+T Update:
October 2004
In This Issue:
1) Employee Communications Manifesto Growing—Slowly
2) Let’s Focus On Results, Not The Tool
3) Deliver Radio Broadcasts Using RSS
4) Manager/Supervisor Communication Is Subject Of Next Webinar
5) Web-Based Knowledge Sharing A Natural For Intranets
6) Advertising infiltrates RSS feeds
7) Anti-Disney Web Site Attacks Company’s Internal Communication
8) City Government Web Site Introduces RSS Feed
9) IABC Chairman David Kistle Starts a Blog
10) How Ready Is The UK For Communication Directive?
11) Another Study Shows Workplace IM On The Rise
12) PRSA Adds Blogging Session to Conference Agenda
13) A New Search Engine Has The Goods To Take On Google
14) Speaking of search utilities…
15) Content Management Association Open For Membership
16) Sites of the Month
17) HC+T Update
18) Boilerplate And Subscription Information
1. Employee Communications Manifesto Growing—Slowly
In a special mailing to this list earlier this month, I announced the opening of a new wiki, the Employee Communications Manifesto. Since then, a few people have added a bit of content. Some words about the communicator’s role as an educator, an introduction to communications measurement and a few links to online resources now appear on the Manifesto, along with the names of several communicators who are contributing.
A wiki is a community effort, and this is your opportunity to get engaged with one. Trust me, they’ll become far more common in short order. A Chicago Daily Herald article suggested that wikis will become as popular as blogs, and BusinessWeek notes they have already infiltrated organizations both on the Web and on intranets. It’s likely that you’ll want to recommend one as part of a communication plan, and it would be helpful to have some experience with one.
Of course, you could just post something to Wikipedia. The Employee Communications Manifesto is an opportunity to not only get familiar with wikis, but also to contribute your knowledge of internal communications to the community at large. It’s a group effort—I’m just hosting it on my server. So please visit and contribute:
http://www.EmployeeCommunicationsManifesto.com
2. Let’s Focus On Results, Not The Tool
A review of the top 15 or20 most-read blogs shows that most of them barely mention blogs. They’re not talking about the medium. They’re just using the medium to communicate about other issues (politics mostly). Of course I know that, as PR people, we’re talking about the medium because most of our peers are not yet on board with it. We’re evangelizing in order to spark some interest and kick this lethargic profession into gear. But still, I wonder if it’s wise to spend more time talking about the tactic than the strategy.
Then I read a post on the SocialText blog about a presentation made by Mike Pusateri from the Disney ABC Cable Networks Group. Speaking at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, Pusateri noted that Disney had introduced blogging to employees, but Disney didn’t call it blogging: “They said here’s new software, period.”
According to CommonCraft, these are Disney’s means of getting employees to accept and use the new technologies:
* Don’t tell users there are new methodologies and paradigms, they don’t care or need to know.
* Show them that the new systems allow them to get their work done
* Show them that you can fix problems that prevent them from getting their work done going forward
These are excellent guidelines. If you want your CEO to blog, don’t say, “Hey, chief, how about starting a blog?” It would be much more effective to note than a regularly updated message from the CEO would have specific positive outcomes with specific audiences. Discuss the nature of the content and the time commitment. Once you get him to agree, show him how to use a text entry screen to add his next message. You don’t even have to call it a blog on the Web or the intranet, do you? “From the CEO” or “CEO Corner” would do just fine.
Blogs have been around long enough and are getting common enough that we can move beyond the star-struck focus on the tool, particularly with business blogs. Let’s use the tool but focus on the content.
3. Deliver Radio Broadcasts Using RSS
The last month has seen a lot of focus on “podcasting,” which delivers radio-like shows to an iPod via an RSS feed. Some predictions about the future of podcasting are a bit over the top, like Cluetrain Manifesto co-author Doc Searles, who writes, “Podcasting will shift much of our time away from an old medium where we wait for what we might want to hear to a new medium where we choose what we want to hear, when we want to hear it, and how we want to give everybody else the option to listen to it as well.”
Well, maybe, when everybody you want to reach owns an iPod. Which will be…um…never. Still, I like the idea of radio broadcasts that (a) don’t require a commercial radio station to make them available and (b) work like Tivo (which has certainly changed my life).
The iPod (as opposed to any other digital audio player) is necessary because of the way iTunes, the software that serves as the device’s foundation, works. Audio files are uploaded to a server along with an associated RSS tag. A listener has software like iPodder installed on his system to identify when a new RSS feed is available. When it finds one, it grabs the feed and automatically imports it into iTunes. The next time you drop your iPod into its cradle, it will update to include the podcast.
I’ve reported here before that Duke University gave iPods to all its incoming freshman. Some companies are even using MP3 files to share meetings and speeches with employees. Podcasting could reach critical mass when it works with any digital audio player. In the meantime, if you have an iPod, you may want to try it out.
Podcasting tutorial: http://engadget.com/entry/5843952395227141/
A Podcasting site: http://www.podcasters.org
4. Manager/Supervisor Communication Is Subject Of Next Webinar
Here comes this issue’s only promotional item:
Communicating to managers and supervisors: strategies and tactics for engaging your most influential audience
A new Webinar led by Shel Holtz, ABC
Five consecutive weeks beginning October 25, 2004
Managers and supervisors—those leaders to whom front-line workers report—represent the most critical audience for much of our internal communications. Yet many organizations pay them scant attention or, worse, ignore them altogether, lumping them into the great mass of workers we call “employees.”
Managers and supervisors have unique information needs, distinct from those of front-line workers. It is to them that workers turn when they hear something. It is from them workers expect to be told how events and initiatives will affect their departments and their jobs.
This Webinar—blending strategic planning with tactical implementation—will help you weave a manager communication plan into your efforts in a manner that is sure to boost the value of all your communications.
In five weeks, some of the topics we’ll cover include:
* Ongoing manager/supervisor communication tools
* Aligning manager/supervisor communication with the total internal communication plan
* Using managers and supervisors to achieve better internal communication results
* Assessing the effectiveness of your manager/supervisor communications
* The role of manager portals on the intranet
* Using managers as a communication channel to employees
The best part about this Webinar is that you won’t have to leave your desk. Webinars are not conducted in real time, so you can go to each lecture (virtually) when you have the time. There are five lectures in all posted on consecutive Mondays—the equivalent of a full-day workshop! Besides the lectures, you’ll get printed handouts, links to invaluable World Wide Web resources, and the opportunity to interact with your instructor as well as other Webinar participants.
If you’ve never participated in a Shel Holtz Webinar before, go to http://webinar.holtz.com to tour a demo session and watch a video introduction.
The course is only $175 for the full five weeks—and you’ll have access to the content online for a full year! Register today at: http://webinar.holtz.com/synopsis/mgr-sup.htm
Questions? Send e-mail to shel@holtz.com.
5. Web-Based Knowledge Sharing A Natural For Intranets
I’m still waiting for online social networking to take off. I’ve been on LinkedIn for many months and, while my network has grown (342,300+), I’ve received maybe two messages and never really accomplished anything.
So I was intrigued by a story in the UK newspaper, The Register, about the launch of a Web site called Yelp (http://www.yelp.com). Started by Paypal founder Max Levchin’s incubator company, Yelp helps people find stuff they want by using their existing contacts—friends, families and colleagues—and their e-mail addresses. Let’s say you want to find a great new seafood restaurant in San Francisco. You’d enter that request and the e-mail addresses of friends whose opinions you trust. They’d get an e-mail with the request and respond. If they don’t have a recommendation, they can forward the e-mail to their friends. When somebody responds, you get an e-mail with a link to the site where you can read the replies. The replies link to back-end services, like addresses and maps. Since these searches are saved, the service grows into a comprehensive source of such information.
The article gets into some fascinating discussion of the problems with social networking and how Yelp avoids them. But my mind turned immediately to the issue of knowledge sharing inside organizations. How hard could it be to set up Yelp inside a company? Instead of asking where I can find a great mint julep, an employee can ask if anybody has experience with a certain kind of work, forwarding the question to people he knows via the intranet site. Answers eventually come from people he’s never heard of as those who get the message forward it to others they think may know the answer. All of it is managed by a database and retained for future reference. It’s so much simpler than those multi-million-dollar knowledge systems that never seem to do any good.
The Register article is at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/13/viral_yelp/
Yelp is (not surprisingly) at: http://www.yelp.com
6. Advertising infiltrates RSS feeds
On a teleseminar panel I participated in a few months back, San Jose Mercury News columnist Dan Gillmor told the audience he was asking his PR contacts to advise him of RSS feeds for press releases. He would no longer take them by e-mail. E-mail, he said, had become too much of a hassle, what with all the spam. RSS, on the other hand, allowed him to see only what he wanted to see.
Seems we can kiss this benefit of RSS goodbye. While we won’t see feeds to which we have not subscribed (at least, not yet), we will see advertising in some of the feeds we do want. Wired News reports this morning that Moreover, Topix.net, Feedster, and Weblogs (which runs several popular blogs like Engadget) are sneaking advertising into their feeds. If I offered Feedster as one of the channels for subscribing to this blog, I’m not sure I’d like the idea of my subscribers getting ads at all and certainly not ones that I’ve sanctioned.
On the other hand, bloggers interviewed by Wired whose feeds have been polluted with ads haven’t noted any complaints from their readers. Topix CEO Rich Skrenta doesn’t think it’s a big deal. “Folks understand that if there’s not a way to monetize content, there’s not going to be content,” he said. Feedster’s CEO characterizes the move as the maturing of RSS as a medium. Meanwhile, RadioLand founder and blogging godfather Dave Winer warns about exploiting the medium.
7. Anti-Disney Web Site Attacks Company’s Internal Communications
The lead story at SaveDisney.com—an activist shareholder site supported by disgruntled former board member Roy Disney—has taken what I consider to be a cheap shot at the company’s employee communications.
The article, titled “Inhuman Resources,” recounts the numerous ways Disney allegedly mistreats employees. “Never known (in recent years) as the most humble or friendly of places to work (its reputation as ‘Mouschwitz’ is well known in the entertainment industry), The Walt Disney Company is increasingly viewed as a company hostile to its workers and unwilling to tolerate or accept even the smallest amount of dissension or questioning,” the article begins.
My father worked at Disney—the part now known as Disney Imagineering—for a long time and I’ll agree that it was never the most people-friendly place. The article cites a litany of HR abuses.
Here’s the bit that irked me:
“Disney offers no avenue for effective employee communications. The official corporate newsletter (physical and online) is a heavily edited jumble of press releases. There is no corporate ‘suggestion box’ or employee representative on the Board of Directors (a practice followed by several leading companies). Cast-Members are offered no voice at the annual shareholder’s meeting or at any company gathering. ...Recent executive ‘coffees’ with ‘randomly selected employees’ appear to feature carefully selected queries that provide a blast of internal publicity reinforcing management mantras.”
If the charges are true, then why is it a cheap shot? Because Disney just hired a new top internal communications officer specifically to fix these issues. It’s not something author Jim Douglas mentioned, ostensibly because it would diminish his argument. I happen to know the new communicator—have for about 10 years—and she’s as good as they get. She knows the challenges she’s facing, but the reason she’s there is for the opportunity to help Disney get internal communications right. If anybody is up to the task, she is.
Not that I expect an attack site to be fair and balanced. But Douglas and his bosses could at least have mentioned that an effort is underway to communicate better with employees.
It’s a cautionary tale, in any case. When your company comes under attack, the quality of your internal communications could easily become a target of your adversaries.
8. City Government Web Site Introduces RSS Feed
You don’t have to be a news outlet or a blogger to take advantage of RSS. The city of San Carlos, California, has introduced its first RSS feed, “What’s New on the Web.” According to the trade Government Technology, “This will enable interested Internet viewers with RSS enabled software to receive notification and copies of new information on the city’s Web site the same day it is posted, without visiting the Web site itself or the need for an email subscription.” The site is also employing Macromedia Flash Paper, which lets visitors view paper documents that download much faster than PDFs.
Not a bad idea at all for those of you working in government. And the applications for business should be pretty obvious. Try out the San Carlos feed at the city’s Web site: http://www.cityofsancarlos.org/frontdoor/
9. IABC Chairman David Kistle Starts a Blog
David Kistle, 2004-05 chairman of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), has started a blog. Kind of.
It’s a blog insofar as it uses blogging software and allows for comments (13 so far). But a critical characteristic of blogs is regular updating, and Kistle hasn’t updated his since the first entry on October 7. Nor has he engaged in any conversation with the 13 people who have posted comments so far.
I’m greatly encouraged by the blog (at http://blogs.iabc.com/chair) It’s a bold step for IABC. Now we need to see Kistle actually offer up posts at a clip greater than once every 11 days (or more). Even Richard Edelman, chairman of Edelman Public Relations, manages to update his blog once a week!
“I look forward to matching wits with more experienced bloggers and giving all of you a chance to tell me what’s on your mind,” Kistle wrote in his October 7 debut. We have. Your turn, David.
10. How Ready Is The UK For Communication Directive?
Last month, I reported that the businesses in the European Community were about to be subject to a law that requires companies to communicate effectively with employees. Now, a study released by IRS Employment Review (that’s a human resources publishing group in the UK, not a revenue collection agency in the US) reveals that most British companies aren’t anywhere near ready to comply with a European Community communications directive or the UK regulations associated with it.
The Information and Consultation of Employees (ICE) Directive becomes law next April for larger employers in the EC. (I reported on this back in mid-September.) Under the directive, employees have the right to know about anything that materially affects their job security, prospects and future, including the company’s financial performance and its prospects. According to the study, just one company out of 20 plans to consult employees on this information even though seven out of 10 are prepared to “tell them what is going on.”
The difference between consultation and reporting is pretty clear. The publication says the gap signals a long way to go before British companies are in compliance with the spirit of the law.
Some other findings:
* 98% of the sample uses team meetings to communicate with employees. 91% use a noticeboard, 83% use e-mail or letters, 78% use a publication, and 67% use an intranet.
* Two-thirds said they measure the effectiveness of their communications
* The two most popular issues for consultation (that is, the two issues companies in which companies most engaged in dialogue with their employees rather than just informing them) are changes to employment levels or status and changes to pay and working conditions.
* 67% said internal communication is an HR issue, while 27% said it depended on the issue.
11. Another Study Shows Workplace IM On The Rise
More companies are using instant messaging (IM) than ever. Osterman Research looks at the number of companies using IM every March and September, and last month set the record, with 50% of organizations using IM for business purposes. In March, 44% of companies were taking advantage of IM. When Osterman began surveying in 2001, only 21% of companies were leveraging IM.
This despite serious reservations on the parts of companies. These include security of information sent over instant messages (important to 64% of respondents), too much personal use (61%) and the potential for infection by viruses (60%). The fact that IT doesn’t roll out IM in many companies—employees just use existing tools like AIM and Yahoo’s instant messenger—leads many of those repsonsible for networks view it skeptically. Consequently, IM traffic is being blocked by 33% of organizations, the highest percentage since Osterman began its IM survey. According to Michael Osterman, “We attribute this to the growing concerns about the potential for consumer IM being a conduit for malware, as well as the growing number of IM detection and blocking tools that are available from a variety of vendors.”
12. PRSA Adds Blogging Session to Conference Agenda
They called it (if you can believe this) “bloggergate.” The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) had announced the schedule for its annual conference, titled “Architects of Change, Advocates of understanding: Advancing the Public Relations Profession.” There was no session on blogging.
PRSA had just wrapped up a successful teleseminar on the PR implications of blogging, but the PR-focused blogs (including mine) nevertheless took PRSA to task for ignoring blogging at its conference—especially a conference titled “Architects of Change.” There was even some serious sniping between several PR bloggers.
But a cancellation by one of the conference’s speakers gave PRSA the opportunity to fill the slot with a blogging session after all. “Straight Talk about Blogs and PR” is scheduled for Tuesday, October 26 from 8:30 - 9:45 a.m. It will feature wSteve O’Keefe of the International Association of Online Communicators (IAOC) longtime PR blogger B.L. Ochman and Micropersuasion blogger Steve Rubel. The workshop will cover “how blogs work, how they can hurt you, how to influence them, and how to manage the time toll they take.”
Most of the bloggers who waged the campaign to get PRSA to add the session are claiming credit for PRSA’s move (“They caved,” proclaimed one blog.) Hell, I don’t even know if anyone at PRSA is reading these blogs. Until I hear someone from PRSA agree that pressure from bloggers led to the session, I’ll just be happy the association has decided to fill a session slot with the topic.
Ochman will blog live from the conference, so you can catch updates at her blog, What’s Next? at http://www.whatsnextblog.com/
13. A New Search Engine Has The Goods To Take On Google
Given that Google has gobbled the search world (remember HotBot?), how can an upstart get any attention at all for its innovative approach to search? That’s the challenge facing Vivisimo Inc., which just released a beta of a new search engine called Clusty.
My favorite search engine used to be Northern Light, which nobody ever heard of. It was terrific, placing results in subject-matter-labeled folders rather than making you sift through the typical endless scrolling lists of results. If you entered the search term “pizza,” you got a folder for pizza parlors, another one for recipes, and so on. Clusty (so named because of its clustered results) does the same thing, but carries the concept one step further. IN addition to the categorization on the left-hand side of the page, it also organizes results under tabs along the top of the page—Web results (the default view) news, images, shopping, encyclopedia, and gossip. In addition, you can customize your tabs to add eBay, Slashdot…and blogs. (You can also remove any of the default tabs except Web and News.) You can even create your own tabs, linking them to specialized search engines of your own choice.
With Google, if you want news results from a search, you have to visit news.google.com. With Clusty, just click the News tab; the results are waiting for you.
Just for giggles, I entered “public relations.” The categories I got were Advertising, PR and Marketing, PR firms, University, High-Tech, Corporate, Jobs, PRSA, and more. The left-hand categories change when you select a different tab.
The idea of clusters is a great one, addressing the complications of long lists of results. If enough people see Clusty, they could end up switching. After all, as Bill Gates has often noted when confronted with the notion that Microsoft stifles competition, any high-tech company is one innovation away from obsolescence. There’s great hubris in any assumption at Google that nobody can do better. But you have to wonder how much PR and marketing savvy a small company in Pittsburgh, PA has in an effort to topple the Google Goliath.
So here’s my effort to put blogs into play as a community-driven PR effort. Give Clusty a try. You might never Google again.
Clusty is at (of course) http://www.clusty.com
14. Speaking of search utilities…
After using Google’s Desktop, the new free download that lets you search your hard drive, I’ve decided to stick with X1. Not that there’s anything wrong with Google Desktop, particularly if you want to be able to search for files on your hard drive for free. I’ve already plunked down the US $74.95 for X1. This is a case of “you get what you pay for.”
The search engine works just like Google does, displaying its search results using the familiar listing you’d get from a Web search. It’s certainly faster than the tediously slow built-in Windows search utility because it indexes all your files on installation. (That’s how an Internet search engine works, by the way; it doesn’t actually search the Web, just its index of sites it has found). Google Desktop searches exclusively for e-mail, instant messages, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and text files, in addition to Web pages you’ve visited (unless you clear your Web history).
Having used X1 for several months, though, I couldn’t get used to the idea of seeing only the top 10 results on a screen, and I had to click to open the item in its native application to make sure it was the file I really wanted. X1, on the other hand, displays far more results, searches all files, and displays a copy of the file in a pane to the right of the results list; you can even page through the documents without ever having to open Word, PowerPoint or Excel. X1 automatically updates its index.
Bottom line: Google Desktop is great if you don’t want to spend anything. X1 is far better if you’re willing to lay out some cash for an improved utility.
Google Desktop (free download): http://desktop.google.com
X1 (free trial): http://www.x1.com
15. Content Management Association Open For Membership
A new association has opened its doors targeting content management professionals for its membership. Some 30 CM professionals from around the world make up the group’s initial membership. Its purpose is to “further best practices based on shared experiences of experts and peers.” Membership will get you a members-only mailing list, a collaborative website, discussion forums, issue-oriented group blogs, knowledge wikis, syndicated web services, a job board, a professional directory and a calendar of face-to-face meeting opportunities. A conference (oops, they call it a summit is planned for November 30 in Boston. Membership is $50. The association’s Web site is at http://www.cmprofessionals.org
16. Sites Of The Month
>>>Sticky notes for computers have been around for almost as long as Mac and Windows PCs have graced desktops. The problem with them is that you can only access them when you’re at your computer. Now a programmer has opened a site where you can maintain your sticky notes on the Web. You can invite others to add notes and even let people know when new stickies have been posted by having them subscribe to an RSS feed. The potential for defacement exists, but it’s just an experimental site. Eventually, a service that allows you to password-protect your notes could be introduced. In the meantime, you can try it out by adding a note to the page I’ve started. Just go to the site and enter hct into the field labeled, “Create or load a workspace.”
http://www.aypwip.org/webnote/
>>>Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are the design standard for the Web, and now there’s a site that serves as “an online resource and inspiration guide for web agencies, designers and developers who takes interest in websites built with web standards and CSS as primary tools.” The site includes resources on using CSS, a gallery of CSS-based sites, a message board, and other useful material. There’s even a list of 200 bullets visitors have submitted that you’re free to use.
17. HC+T Update
>>>I’ll participate later this month at a meeting of communicators and IT professionals for a global company. The topics are Web communication and the company’s new intranet portal.
>>>I’m delivering a keynote and two workshops later this week at a financial services company’s meeting of communicators.
>>>I’m the speaker at this month’s meeting if IABC’s Phoenix chapter, scheduled for lunchtime this Thursday.
18. Boilerplate And Subscription Information
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Monday, October 04, 2004
HC+T Update: Wiki Notice
I’ve opened a wiki for community collaboration on a baseline of internal communications knowledge.
HC+T Update
Wiki Notice
...................
The doors are open at a wiki I’ve set up called The Employee Communications Manifesto. The URL, not surprisingly, is http://www.EmployeeCommunicationsManifesto.com
The term “manifesto” is, I think, apt, since this wiki will serve as a community’s declaration of ideas and exposition of the theories and directions of a movement. The the community is employee communications professionals. The ideas, theories and directions are those those of the employee communications profession.
I’ve launched the wiki because the employee communications profession needs a baseline. As I have noted before, internal communications seems to be performing less than brilliantly at achieving its goals of employee alignment and line of sight. One reason (and this is purely speculation on my part) is the lack of a common knowledge base for anyone starting out in an employee communications job. Accountants, lawyers, doctors, astrophysicists, and programmers all start with the same core set of learnings. Even those who graduate with degrees in public relations know the stuff Fraser Seitel and Scott Cutlip teach in their books (as interpreted by instructors). But employee communications remains untaught, at least in terms of any consistent, agreed-upon curriculum.
It’s my hope that The Employee Communications Manifesto can help fix that. It’ll work if internal communications professionals engage the wiki and create its contents.
My fervent wish is that you’ll contribute. Either add material to the initial pages that are already there or add pages of your own. If you need help, just click the “TipsForEditing” link. The DocumentationIndex includes simple instructions for creating a new page. And feel free to e-mail me directly at mailto:shel@holtz.com with any questions.
A community effort is only as good as the community that contributes to it. Your participation could transform this from an interesting experiment into an important project.
I hope to see you there.
Shel