Signal to Noise Ratio

How much signal can you get out of a message when there is too much noise. Did I lose you? While signal to noise ratio is typically a electronic communications issue, signal to noise can also be a problem with communications. How many companies do you know that when they communicate something to its employees, that they all heard it. Too often that message is sent using only one channel, the intranet, or an email. But to do communications really well, communication must occur over multiple channels over a period of time. And of course, too often it not good either (too much noise).

Why? I believe a section in David Amerland's book, Semantic Search, can help shed some light. No matter the channel used, every message sent and received has three basic pieces, the emitter, the signal and the receiver. Let me use a simple internet example. The person that tweets, is the emitter, the tweet is the signal and the receiver is anyone that is following the "emitter".

Depending on the channel, the noise to signal changes. An email signal to noise ratio is different than using a intranet content. To be successful, the emitter needs to take the amount of noise on the channel into account to ensure the message is received clearly and concisely.

In addition, the channel that is chosen needs to be chosen carefully. As with internet marketing, there is many ways of getting a message out (commercials, twitter, facebook, print, etc.). As with the internet marketing, the enterprise communications team needs to choose the correct channel(s). Choosing the correct channel(s) over a specific time period is critical to ensure that the message is received by as many employees as possible. And remember, sometimes noise can obscure the message, especially if the emitter is someone that sends too many messages out to its audience.

This note was inspired +David Amerland book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 2129.