Corporate communications ?= internal marketing

Photo by Eric Ziegler

Isn't a corporate communications teams really just internal marketing team? Why don't they act like external marketing teams, using the same techniques?  The ones that I know, have not changed their ways to match the methods external marketing. In some instances, they don't embrace some of the newer ideas and technologies.

Are there reasons why? My guess? The biggest reason is probably that the focus and value provided by these corporate communications teams is perceived to not be as high as the ones that are "driving" people to purchase the products and services of the company. Because of that, they do not get the funding or the encouragement to step outside of the basic tools they are provided.

Unfortunately, enterprise communications teams are probalby more valuable than most people think.  They have the ability to really drive change in the organization, change to processes and new technologies. And unfortunately, they are often left with either the lack of tools to do the job of external marketing teams or the lack the ability to realize that they could be more like the external marketing teams.

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search.

Click through rates (#CTR) and search basics 101

Photo by Eric Ziegler

I recently completed reading and taking rough notes from David Amerland's Google Semantic Search. The books is well worth the exercise of reading. I recommend that you read through the book while expanding your thinking by trying to determine how it might apply beyond what David discusses. While I indicated that I am done reading the book, I still have 30+ rough notes to convert to intelligent blog posts. So sit back and relax over the next several weeks as I review and share my thoughts generated by David's book.

Today's thoughts are pretty simple and to the point. As I read David's book, I realize that I am relearning many concepts that I once knew while learning many new concepts. This post is about click through rates (#CTR) and the impacts that they have on search results. I am relearning CTR and also learned some new thoughts and concepts. What I knew was that CTRs include the number of people that clicks a link to go to a site. What I learned beyond what I knew was that CTR also how long the person stays on the page or site.

And the great thing about this is that semantic search finds value in analyzing the length of time someone visits a site or a piece of content. Semantic search infers that the quality of content is higher when a person reads the sites pages and content for longer periods of time. Basically, the longer people stay, the higher the likelihood the content is quality and the more trustworthy the content should be treated.

And the beauty of this is, that this basic principal applies to semantic search in the enterprise. And such a simple concept can have a very large impact on search results in the enterprise allowing people to find the content that is most valuable and most trust worthy.

Love it - search basics 101.

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search.

Adoption is about helping to find value

Photo by Benjamin Ziegler

In the enterprise, when a new technology is brought in that all employees would use, the challenge is often not with the implementation but convincing all employees to adopt and use the new technology. A great example is an Enterprise Social Network (#ESN). How do you obtain adoption that meets your business needs and goals? Grass roots? Top down?

Often much of the effort of adoption center around some type of marketing campaign. And more often than not, to do the marketing of a new communication technology requires using the old communication technology.  eMail, intranet, etc. are likely the tools that will be used to market the new ESN. These are still important, but are there other ways?

One of the methods to help with adoption is to work with enterprise business units to help them realize the true value of the new tool. Find groups, small teams in the enterprise that will benefit from the new tool. Look for reasons they might not have realized were there to help them understand the true value of the new product. Listen to the employees of that team. Hear how they work, not just how they communicate. Look for opportunities of  how their jobs could be enhanced and then work with them over time to start using new techniques to make their work "betterer".

Perceived Value

Image: from Tim Scullin blog

The other day I was in Disney with my family.  It was great fun, we did almost all of our favorite rides, Haunted Mansion, Thunder Mountain, Pirate's of the Carribean.   Unfortunately we missed out on going on Splash Mountain as it barely got to 60 degrees and we were not brave enough to risk getting wet and being cold.

What I found so interesting as we walked around the park is how quickly some of the lines grew (of course spring break has that effect).  The thing that was so interesting was that they were not the rides that I would have chosen - which was great for us. That got me to asking the question, why do some rides have longer lines faster than other lines.  I believe that one of the reasons is that every person places their own value on each ride.  Some people valued the rides like Winnie the Pooh, while others valued Haunted Mansion, some liked Dumbo while others valued Thunder Mountain.  Each person places their own value on each ride and decides which ones they want to ride first, which rides they are most willing to wait in a long line for, and which rides they just won't ride that day.

This got me to thinking about how employees adopt different technologies, tools and techniques based on the value they perceive they will provide.  For example, I can apply this to the work that I am doing related to driving adoption of activity streams (btw, this is just one example of a large variety of technologies).  As I talk with employees about how they might use an activity stream, some say that it seems just like email and they wonder (aloud sometimes) what value the activity stream provides beyond email.   Some employees never see any value in using an activity stream.  Some know that moving away from email is valuable in some situations, but don't know if the activity stream is the best method.  Some believe a RSS feed aggregator or other technologies are better. Others, thankfully, understand the value right away, but when they start to use the new tool, they find that no one else is using it, which diminishes the value for this individual.

So how do you get people to use the new technology, the new tool, or technique?   There are many ways, and you need to use them all.  Going back to Disney, they use many different methods to entice you to ride their rides (and even to come to Disney World). One of their methods is to nudge people to ride the next ride.  Enterprise can use similar techniques to attract employees to use the new "stuff".

When a nudge is provided, typically the goal is to increase the value that the employees sees in the new tool, or technique or technology.  Or said a different way, the employee's perceived value of the tool needs to increase.  Disney World uses many techniques to nudge people to ride each of their rides.  Most Disney World rides use great visual effects on the outside of the ride.   For example, as you walk into the Haunted Mansion, the people are in character, giving you the "eye" and the line leading into the ride has grave stones with funny things written on them and book shelves that have books that move in and out.   They attract you to the ride using over the top decorations such as the carriage with a ghost horse.

Following the Disney World example, enterprises need to use techniques to get employee to change and use the new "stuff".  To drive this the employee perceived value of that tool, technique or technology must increase. If that does not happen, they won't ever use the new "stuff".  Unfortunately, as you have probably guessed, this is the most difficult part of driving adoption of technology, but it is also the most rewarding.