As Gerard outlines in this video, whether you deal with internal or external communications — you can easily avoid these common mistakes — that we, unfortunately, see all the time:

1. Communicating what you think people want to hear rather than what they need to hear. Being clear, direct and honest is the key to the most powerful communications. Your audience may not like what you’re saying, but in the end they will appreciate the honesty.




2. Making communications available only on a need-to-know basis. The opposite has to happen when you are in crisis — you need to keep communicating and you have to have two-way dialogue with your audience!  Shutting it down only sends the wrong message to your audience. You look like you’re hiding something … and chances are this is exactly what you’re doing.




3. Your words don’t match your actions. We’ve seen this time and time again in executive communications and nothing can kill your credibility faster. Don’t set false expectations. Do what you’re going to say, or don’t say it.




4. When spin is part of your communication strategy, you have a problem. Your audience is not a bunch of idiots — they see right through this! Again, delivering clear, concise and honest communications is the way to go. That doesn’t mean you always have to have an answer. If you don’t have one — tell your audience you don’t, and why you don’t have an answer. If possible, tell them how you’ll go about finding one — and then be sure to follow up!

At some point in our communications career, we all find ourselves communicating during a crisis. Sometimes a little too often. But the same standard rules apply and, if followed, can see us through to the light at the end of the tunnel.

The IABC Global Communication Conference in Hong Kong was an eye-opening experience. Outside of being in an incredibly cool city, it was really refreshing to hear about communications from a different perspective.

Last week communicators from countries all over the world (Canada, China, Singapore, Australia, and  India … just to name a few) experienced the first-ever IABC communications conference in their neck of the woods.  One of my favorite sessions was with Mark Schumann, ABC. During his morning keynote he talked about the new rules of employee engagement -  and I had an “a-ha!” moment.

One of Mark’s main messages was that when it comes to communications it’s all about listening. Now, we’ve all heard this before, right? I’m a measurement person, so I definitely have heard, and have said this myself many times. But this time, there was something different. Mark used a wonderful analogy to put this statement in a global perspective.

“Think about two tin cans and a string,” he said. So I did. I could visualize myself using these to talk to my sister when I was growing up. I thought it was cooler than the set of walkie-talkies we had.

“Now,” said Mark, “Think about what happened as you got farther and farther away from the person who was holding the other end. The farther away you were from that person, the harder you had to listen. The same applies with global communications.”

OF COURSE! That made perfect sense to me. And, it’s so true. I work with a couple of clients right now and engaging the regional offices and working to not be so U.S. centric is an ongoing battle. And, while we have included them in employee surveys — and have done some focus groups here and there — we just aren’t listening hard enough.

Unlike our ability to constantly get feedback from the offices we’re located in, we’re making the mistake of only “scheduling” feedback mechanisms once or twice a year. And, as Mark put it during his keynote, that’s only a snapshot of how their feeling right at that moment.

In order to engage them throughout the year, we need to have conversations with them throughout the year to understand their challenges, their achievements, their fears, their questions and their markets.

So how do we do this? Here’s a couple of  ideas I have that I’d like to toss out here — I welcome you to do the same.

Steve and I are off to London next week (April is proving to be an exciting month) to speak at the Simply-Summit. I’m hoping to get more case studies and best practices from across the pond. In the meantime, what about you? Has anyone used any techniques to bring global offices together? I’d love to hear from you!

In our recent seminar, Strategic Communications, Steve and I cover what we like to call “Guerilla Research.” Quick hitting research that communicators can conduct on their own, that if done correctly, is incredibly powerful and provides valuable insight into your communication efforts.

When we get to the Guerilla Survey section of the presentation, it never seems to fail that someone will either raise their hand, or ask me during the break about what to do when “surveys don’t work” in their organization.

In my opinion, you need to start out by identifying why they don’t work, and it usually comes down to these five reasons:

1. You over survey
Take a look at the calendar and see how often you are sending surveys out. Even better, compare your schedule to other departments that may be sending surveys out as well (marketing, HR, etc.). This can be a very eye opening exercise. I mean, c’mon! How do you expect anyone to get any work done? Do more with less.

2. It’s too long
One of my past clients had to deal with a consulting group who considered themselves to be “engagement specialists.” This meant that they saw it necessary to send out an engagement survey that was 106 questions long. That’s right. 106. And, do you think they were surprised when only less than five percent of the internal audience submitted a survey? Or were they surprised that out of those submitted, 90% of them were only partially completed?

Well, no they weren’t, because this consulting group was a bunch of idiots. Again, people are at work here. We need to respect that. Unless there is a REALLY good incentive (extra days off or a brand new car) don’t expect people to trudge through lengthy surveys. It’s just plain unrealistic.  Especially when organizations everywhere are being asked to do more with less.

It’s also good practice to tell employees how much time it should approximately take to complete the survey. By giving them a little insight into how much time they need to set aside to take your survey, you’ll help reduce the number of incomplete surveys.

Finally, when choosing which questions to include in your survey, ask yourself this question: “What will I do with the answers I receive?” If you don’t have an answer to this question, then why are you asking for this information in your survey?

You’re not only cluttering up your survey, you’re setting false expectations. If people are asked their opinion, they expect you to do something with it. If you can’t, simply don’t ask. Guerilla surveys are all about keeping things simple.

3. Participants don’t understand the value or purpose.
This might be one of the most important reasons why surveys don’t work for your organization. If your audience doesn’t understand why they should give you their input, than why should they take the time?

When you administer the survey, let them know why their input matters. What will you do with the information? And, most importantly, AFTER the survey was sent and the results tabulated, follow-up! Communicate the results at a high-level and then tell them what will be done based off the results.

Finally, don’t be afraid to use incentives. From cafeteria gift cards to company baseball hats, you’d be surprised what works. If you have the budget for it, use it to your advantage.

4. The survey isn’t relevant to all of your participants
Before you send out your survey ask yourself these two questions. 1) Can everyone who takes this survey answer all the questions? 2) Can everyone who takes this survey understand these questions?

If your answer is “no” to either of these questions you either have to a) re-think who you’re sending your survey to, or b) edit down your questions so they are relevant to everyone.

5. You don’t have manager buy-in
So many times, employees don’t think they are “allowed” to take the time to participate in these surveys.  I always recommend internal communicators work with their management team to help increase employee response on surveys.

Again, let them know why it’s valuable and why it’s important to get their employee’s input. Then, ask them to discuss the survey at their next team meeting and encourage employees to fill them out.

If your management team is reluctant, then you need to start at the top and get your executive or leadership team on board and have them encourage managers to get employees to participate.

Do any of these scenarios sound familiar to you? If so, think about doing things differently. In good time you’ll start to see your response numbers on the rise  … along with the valuable input you need to build strong communications.

Number one on my list? Is to get the perspective from these communicators about how to best manage global communications. We’re currently working with two clients right now who are faced with this challenge — how to break down the silo mentality that often forms when you have global offices.

How do you bring in the voice of your regional offices and how do you provide content that is relevent to them — on a regular basis? In an environment that is constantly changing, how do you keep employees who are located half-way around the world engaged and informed?

And, of course, it’ll also be really interesting to see how they are using the new social media tools to tackle these challenges.

How about you? Are there any communicators out there who are facing these and other global communication challenges themselves? Any best practices you can offer your peers?

We’ll be sure to bring home any great case studies, tips or best practices on our end. That, and a slew of great pictures!

I’ve known David Kligman for almost six years, and he never ceases to amaze me.

David is the senior publications manager for AAA’s Northern California, Nevada and Utah region, and he was doing “social media” before the term was even coined.

In 2005, David started allowing employees to comment on his daily intranet articles. He called it the “feedback string,” and the comments would go live—with no moderation or censorship. It was a free-flowing, open discussion about business issues, and it was a huge success.

That may not sound like much today . . . but back then, nobody was allowing comments on intranet articles; and if they were, they were moderating them first, and deleting any that carried even a whiff of bad news or other “controversial” stuff.

Well the “feedback string” is still going, stronger than ever, and David recently e-mailed me to tell me that he found another use for it.

“I’m using the comments section to do an inexpensive version of a ‘live chat,’ between employees and leadership,” he told me. “We did our first one in November, and the response was terrific.”
I immediately wanted to know more, and thought you would, too. So here’s a Q&A with David, where he walks us through how it works and what he uses it for.

Crescenzo Communications: What made you think of turning the comments section into a live chat, instead of just setting up a live chat? It’s genius and a hell of a lot more cost effective, I imagine?

David Kligman: Like a lot of companies, we just don’t have a lot of money to spend on new technology. So I figured let’s use what we already have. It’s based on our feedback string, which has allowed our employees to post un-moderated comments on every article since 2005. Our feedback string is also really popular and sometimes people read the comments more than the actual article. The only thing I had our developers do before the first Live Chat was to add a function to our feedback string so that users can sort comments from newest to oldest or oldest to newest. This allows them to follow the chat however they like.

CC: How does it work, exactly?

DK: Essentially, we use our feedback string for a special one-on-one interview with a business leader. We promote it with an article the week before, soliciting employees for their questions. Then I take their questions, add my own, and interview the executive for one hour. The interview appears in the feedback string of that day’s intranet article, and employees can ask their own questions then, too. That’s what makes it like a ‘live’ chat, as opposed to a Q&A article. Employees can either follow along by refreshing their browser to see updated questions and answers, or they can check back later in the day and see the whole transcript. We’ve gotten great responses. We just did our second Live Chat with the head of our automotive services team. The interview lasted 90 minutes and I sent the executive the remaining questions we didn’t get to, as well as additional employee questions that came in during the chat. He’ll answer those, send them back to me and we’ll post them later in the week.

CC: Where did you get the idea?

DK: I saw something similar on CNNSI.com a few years ago—where people asked questions of a sportswriter who had visited and rated every major league ballpark. I liked the idea that you could either follow the chat live by refreshing your browser or go back later and read the full transcript. I’m a big believer in taking ideas from mainstream media and adapting them for use in companies to talk about business issues with employees.

The only difference between what we’re doing and what a Web site like CNNSI does is that we don’t have the technology to limit when folks can jump in on the feedback string. So to keep it from becoming a free-for-all, we reminded employees to not post comments or questions during the actual chat and instead e-mail them to our Editor mailbox. I then took many of those questions and asked them during the interview.

CC: What kind of feedback did you get the first time? Were people into it right away?

DK: Our first Live Chat was in November with the person who oversees the AAA discounts program. I wanted to debut with a topic that our employees know about and are passionate about. And our employees love talking about all the discounts you can get using your AAA card. Plus it seemed to tie in with the upcoming holiday season.

I prepared about 20 questions for a one-hour conversation just in case we didn’t get any employee questions. We got about 15 employee questions e-mailed to us ahead of time, and many of the questions were ones I hadn’t even thought of asking. I gave priority to the employee questions.

The response was really great. We got almost 3,000 hits (we have about 6,000 employees). And a lot of people came up to me afterwards to tell me how much they found it fascinating and that they really enjoyed it because it was different than just a stagnant article.

CC: How did you market it? How did you get the word out?

DK: We marketed the Live Chat several ways. First, we introduced the concept one week before the event with an article on our intranet home page. The article explained the concept, the ground rules and solicited employees for their questions. This is the artwork we used to brand it:

We also have a scrolling banner on the top of our intranet, which we used to count down to the Live Chat a few days prior. On the actual day of the Live Chat, we posted an article that was similar to the preview article, telling folks exactly when to tune in (10 a.m. to 11 a.m. Pacific time…we needed to be very clear with the time because we have employees in three different time zones). We also took a photo of the person we were interviewing so that people could put a face to the person being interviewed. Here’s the photo of Steve Sumner of our AAA discounts team that we used for our first Live Chat:

CC: What was the feedback afterwards? Did you measure it? As I mentioned, the feedback has been really positive. It’s an opportunity for any employee to ask any question of an executive. In our second live chat, we tweaked our follow up a bit. We gathered every question that we couldn’t get to (from employees and my own questions) and had the executive write one-paragraph responses and e-mail them to me. He promised he would answer every question, no matter what the topic. We then posted it the week after the Live Chat. Here’s a partial screen shot of what that looked like after the second Live Chat, in December, with the head of our automotive team:

CC: Did you moderate or censor the questions before posting them? Did any “bad” ones come in that the executive was not comfortable answering?

DK: We absolutely did not censor any questions. On a few occasions, I e-mailed the employee back to get clarification. We sent our questions ahead of time to the executives, but I was very clear to them that they shouldn’t prepare answers or the conversation would sound scripted and not believable. I told them their responses should be off the cuff, just like we were sitting and having a regular conversation over coffee. By the way, during the actual interview we were in the same room working off our own laptops. We could have done it from separate locations but I wanted us to be in the same room to make sure we were on the same page as to when we were posting comments so that they flowed in an orderly, logical way. So I’ll type the question, which shows up as a comment; then he’ll immediately type the answer, which shows up as the next comment. (I could type as he talked through the answer, but then the answer would have my name attached to the comment instead of his.)

CC: So, technically you don’t have to be in the same room?

DK: No, not technically. But we’ve done it that way so far just so that we can talk in between questions or talk through an answer if that’s necessary.

CC: Can’t wait to see what you do next!

DK: Okay, but can you stop calling every day? You’re kind of like a stalker.

The rest are flying by the seat of their pants. That is scary.

And the number may even be lower than that. I recently did a very informal survey on Twitter, asking people what they thought the percentage of people who had a communication plan was.

I heard 1 percent. I heard less than 10 percent a lot. I heard less than 20 percent. The most optimistic response I heard was 55 percent—which, even if it was true (it’s not) still means that half the communicators out there are working without a plan.

And we wonder why our profession doesn’t get any respect.

I was trying to think of a good analogy for trying to communicate in the modern organization without a communication plan, and the best one I could come up with was this:

Communicating without a plan is like driving cross country without a map.

You may end up getting there, but you’re going to get lost. You’re going to waste time and gas money. You’re going to make wrong turns. You’re going to end up in places you don’t want to be. You’re going to get blind drunk in a honky tonk bar and end up sleeping in your car with the seven ball from the pool table that for some reason you snuck out of the bar with you.

Okay, that last one was based on personal experience. And, to be honest, I actually did have a map, but I was too drunk to read it. But you get the point.

But you know what? The whole “driving without a map” analogy doesn’t even goes far enough. Here’s a better one:
Communicating without a plan is like driving cross country without a steering wheel! Because if you don’t have a plan, not only do you not know where you are going, but you also lose all control over where you end up!

It’s the people who don’t have a plan who get turned into everybody’s private publisher. These are the folks who spend so much time putting out other peoples’ fires that they don’t have any time to do strategic communication . . . which is what they are paid to do, and what they should be doing 90 percent of the time.

Not having a plan is like picking up a stoned hitchhiker on acid and lettinghim decide where you are going to go. (The corporate equivalent of a stoned hitchhiker on acid is the typical middle manager; without a plan, you run the risk of letting those people dictate what you do and do not communicate).

A good plan puts the control back in your hands. It gives you a blueprint to follow . . . and it gives you the ammunition you need to turn away the stories and the content you don’t want to do (and that you shouldn’t be doing). A good plan can establish your department as a serious business partner with strategic goals and objectives.

I recently talked with a utility communicator who for years worked without a plan. Then, after attending a workshop, she buckled down and wrote a great plan.

“I don’t know how I ever worked without a plan before,” she said. “It has changed how I do my job, how management looks at me, and how employees look at my vehicles.”

I’ve heard the same thing hundreds of times, from hundreds of different communicators.

That’s why I decided to work with IABC to launch a brand-new workshop series, Strategic Communication. Our first one is in Chicago on March 12, at the Allerton Hotel on Michigan Avenue, just steps from the lake and shopping!
It’s an “immersion course” in Strategic Communication, and covers everything you need to know to dramatically improve your communication efforts, make them more strategic, and see better, measurable results.

In the seminar, we cover research, strategic planning, tactics and channels, and measurement. You’ll learn how to conduct a do-it-yourself communications audit—and then use that information to craft a stellar communication plan and execute it.

I think the handouts alone are worth the price of admission. You’ll get examples, worksheets, tutorials, sample plans, discussion guides for focus groups, and tons of best practices—including case studies in social media, online communications, print publications, and face-to-face.

And if that’s not enough to get you to Chicago on March 12, I have a BIG SURPRISE for seminar attendees. I was going to wait until the event itself to spring it on you . . . but it’s so exciting, I can’t wait.
Ready? Here it is . . . .

Oprah Winfrey is going to be the lunchtime speaker!!! Yes, that’s right, Chicago’s own Oprah Winfrey, the cover girl of O Magazine, is going to be speak to the crowd at lunch about the importance of communication and having a strategic plan!

And . . . Oprah is going to give everybody a car!!! And not a Toyota, but a real car!!! A Ford car! So you can meet Oprah, learn everything you need to know about Strategic Communication, and do your part to defeat the terrorists by helping the U.S. economy!!

Register here, because space is filling up, and only the first 75 people will get cars. After that, Oprah will be handing out hair products.

After his presentation at the IntraTeam Event in 2009, Steve Crescenzo gives some great tips on how to use print to steer people online, how to use print to compliment your online efforts, and he lets us know how often your print publication should be produced to be effective.Don't miss the next IntraTeam Event: March 2, 3 and 4, 2010. Duration: 3:54

At one point in the night, I can usually place a safe bet that someone is going to bring up the subject of Twitter and whether or not you should be doing it. Either that, or there is always the Twitter vs. Facebook debate. Always.

So, just a couple of weeks ago, I jumped in the Twitter pool. Up until then, I just let Steve take the reigns of Twitter, considering that he is so well known in the industry, it just made sense for him to Twitter. But many people have said just the opposite to me. If I want to get more well known — go out into Twitter and meet more people — "it's such an easy networking tool."

So I did (ahem … @creativecomms). And we'll see. Since I've started I've had a love/hate relationship with this tool. Now I should also let everyone know that I am truly a Facebook addict. I LOVE it. So, I have to really try not to let this skew my little test.

To be fair, I need to give Twitter at least a full month, right? So stay tuned. I plan to come back and reassess this tool and compare it to Facebook in a few weeks. In the meantime, my thumbs really, really hurt!

Anyone else have any opinions on these tools? Which ones do you prefer?

Do any of the following points describe your organization?

* Employees are experiencing email overload
* There is limited upward communication at your organization
* There is inconsistent communication between managers and their teams
* Excessive ad-hoc communications are sprouting up everywhere
* Managing the timing of your internal communications is challenging

Or, do you need to do any of the following at your organization:

* Find a creative way to communicate to Generation Y
* Increase staff involvement in the business, and in your communications about the business
* Have a better means in place to measure the effectiveness of your communications

Did I just write your job description?

Well the good news is that you’re not alone. Even better news is that there are some creative tools available to help you deal with these issues.

Customized information delivery is all the rage right now. Nearly every website you go to gives you an option to cherry-pick which information you want to see on a regular basis, and RSS feeds allow you to subscribe to that information, so it is sent to you as soon as it’s available. Brilliant, right? Well, what about internally? Does this method always work?

After all, if employees are allowed to pick which information they want to see, are they really going to pick anything from corporate communication?

There may be immediate information that you need to get in every employee’s hands—and make sure they read it. Or, there may be some employees not familiar with how to cherry pick information, let alone subscribe to information and get it sent to them.

So, what’s the alternative? Email? Print? Well, yes. And in many cases these methods are effective. There is the issue of clutter, though. Every focus group I conduct, this is always a problem. Messages get lost in the clutter.

Well, a company called Cut Through Communications has found a creative solution. It’s called Snap Comms.

Snap Msg Tools small Snap Comms is comprised of seven different tools—from alerts, screen savers and scrolling tickers to e-magazines, blogs and quizzes–that allow you to customize messages for different segments of your audience, and then push those messages right to your audience.

Take a look at the case studies that were sent to me from Snap Comms. These give us great examples of the way some organizations are currently using these tools.

• Read the PDF: iHug case study
• Read the PDF: Quit Group case study
• Read the PDF: Vodafone case study

After talking to Paula Cassin, the Snap Comms representative based in Los Angeles California, I can see some clear benefits to using these tools:

* Snap Tools give you a creative way to get your message across to your employees without getting lost in their email in boxes.

* As many of you know, measurement is my specialty. We recommend making sure there is a measurement tool for every communication effort you create. How else will you determine if it’s worthwhile? These tools have built in measurement that allow you to see how many people have opened, read and responded to your messages.

* It’s easy to customize messages and these tools according to your audience needs. Targeted information usually equates to messages that get heard and understood.

* Snap Tools give you an effective way to communicate urgent messages and information.

As with all communication tools out there, there are also some cons:

* I can easily see how it could get really easy to get “snap tool crazy.” Without a structured plan in place that will outline who, when and how you will use these tools, this tool can probably get easily overused, and only add to the clutter. Make sure every communication effort serves a purpose and feeds into your overall communication plan!

* I’m a Mac lover, and unfortunately, there is currently no Mac support. Why can’t we all just get along? I’m told that Mac support is on the way in the near future, though.

* Currently there isn’t any mobile technology available yet. Seeing as more and more people can’t go two minutes without checking their Blackberries and iPhones, this is definitely a huge component that is missing. I’m told that there are plans to create mobile phone applications in the near future.

So, what do you think? Can you see where these tools may be beneficial in your organization? Are you someone who has actually seen or used these tools and can tell us about your experience? If so, drop me a comment! I’d love to hear your thoughts.