IABC 2011 World Conference Recap

Communicators talk a lot! And that’s a good thing. 1400 communication, marketing and social folks chatted, networked, learned and saw some sights in San Diego last week. The IABC World Conference was full swing in and offered much of the same things in the past, a place to share and learn. I was lucky enough to co-facilitate a session on Sunday sharing three hours of open space to collaborate hot topics and network our butts off. I stayed for the rest of the conference and took advantage of sessions, interesting keynote speakers, and my favorite part of any major event, meeting new people, like-minded or not. 

So what did I get out of the event? I’ve categorized my experiences in bite-sized nuggets for your scanning pleasure. But don’t just read and close the page. Share a few highlights of your own in the comments section. Isn’t that half the point of going to a conference? Share the wealth!

Best lines I heard or overheard:
“Your brand is what your employees say it is.”
“Value is in the eye of the beholder.”
“…prune your garden.”


Takeaways and Reminders
These are key points that resonated with me in the sessions I attended. Most are not new. But they are terrific reminders to be true and stay on point for successful approaches.

• Biggest theme: Make it simple (write in plain, simple language) 
• Integrated communications: Focus on blending plans and tactics vs. a singular approach to marketing, social media, executive communications, etc. 
• Emotional connections: Connect with employees emotionally to drive overall engagement and passion. Make it personal. 
• Drive traffic: Want better adoption? The best way to drive traffic to your site is to put the must-have items on it. i.e. pay stubs, schedules for hourly employees 
• Multiple approaches: One fit does not work for all regions and employees. For example in a sustainability program, employees in Asian Pacific markets prefer group contributions vs. employees in the US which usually prefer to contribute individually. Know the audience and be nimble in your approach.
• Offer outcomes: Understand the outcomes of your communication plans and services so you can focus on offering a service with an expected outcome to clients. This addresses that problem or situation a client wants to tackle. Clients too often are focused on services and something fun without understanding the best approach to solve their problem. 
• Think big about your brand: You really only have one brand. Or at least you should. Even sub-brands are okay as long as they deliver on your brand and promise. Everyone that touches this brand is now part of a brand system. Connect these people and initiatives to drive one brand message. If everyone is working together in a brand system, the message stays clear. And a clear message helps employees understand the company and their role. 
• Find the gaps: Communicators are in the perfect position to spot the gaps in strategy plans. We can look at it from all angles (employee, leaders, and consumer). Find the gaps and point them out. This is usually when communications can connect plans and ideas. 

Happy Improvements
I wrote a post last year recapping the 2010 conference including a few things I’d like to see changed. Guess what, people listened. Here are a few of those things as well as others that I believe worked nicely.

• Case studies: I was happily surprised to see more case studies and real experiences vs. an onslaught of vendors. I walked out of sessions with not only some knowledge, but most of the time with a new contact to share future ideas with. 
• Social media: There were session about it and a lot more attendees using tools while attending the conference. This was the first year I didn’t feel like the ugly duckling (swan…get it?) because I was tweeting and not many others were. Yay for embracing a current technology and rhythm. 
• Digital copy: It was nice to see a digital copy of the schedules and programs. I will admit, I actually do like the printed brochure. But digital was a step in the right direction. By the way, the right direction is listed below in the mobile app bullet. 
• Vendors: It was nice to see a few new vendors. I always like to know about new options. Maybe think about getting a Foursquare, Jive or Yammer there. They make perfect sense! 

Thoughts for Next Year

Call it what you will, challenges, learnings, whatever you do don’t do this again, or just plain that could be even better – all ideas to make 2012 an even better conference experience. 

• Collaboration: I am so glad IABC attendees had the option of joining an online group to share and interact around the 2011 conference. Now I’d like to see a permanent place instead of a one-time instance. Sad but true, the current Ning site will probably fade away. Why not use a place that IABC folks are already visiting, like LinkedIn. Make use of the space and do not create another place to distract. Adoption will also be better. Or if Ning is the ticket, make it a on-going living space in the IABC website. Connect them!  
• Mobile app: Take the digital schedule and resources and turn them into a mobile app. A digital version of the schedule can only do so much. Let me tag my schedule, build one, connect to the online collaborative space, see the twitter feed and more. Build it and we will come! 
• WiFi: You knew I was going to say this, right? I was okay without it this year because we were in the US. But for our non US folks and the attendees with WiFi only tablets, WiFi is a must. Make some magic. 

I end with a big smile and a resounding, “I’m glad I attended”. IABC is evolving and I can see it. I look forward to sharing, learning over the next year and seeing everyone at the 2012 conference. Who knows, maybe I’ll even throw my name in the hat for a session I’m cooking up. Interested?

Keep sharing and connecting!
   

A New Twist on Social Media and Video

I recently stumbled upon this video of a guy (Todd) in NY that found a role of film in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. Not that interesting, right? But then he developed the film and was engagement by what he found - interesting black & white photos that spoke to him. Todd has now started an adventure by one single video, searching for the photographers and hoping to connect. This video was posted on 1/17/2011 and at the time I saw it on 1/25/2011 at 8:07 PM (PT), it had received 1,143,618 views. It seems Todd has created an adventure and an entire new community for more than one million people. Social media and the human spirit are clearly alive. Small actions can lead to large impact. Now let's find these people.

  

How Will I Communicate in 2011

2011 is just around the corner and my thoughts now move toward my next communication adventures. This new year brings new possibilities and challenges. I'm excited to jump in to new projects, share my knowledge, learn from others, and experiment with new styles. Since I'm a "list man", I've started a list of the key targets in my scope to help me plan my year. What can I say, "A type" personality suites me well. So dig in to my list and then share what your're doing to move communications forward. Excited about the new year as well? Then share your ideas and see where we can make changes together.

Work Projects (Disney)

• Launching not one, but three additional employee-focused web-series
• Developing measurement dashboards, capturing all forms of communications
• Creating a new over-arching brand; a stamp of approval; connecting with emotion
• Re-defining intranet sites, by reshaping the spaces, content and user adoption
• Piloting mobile apps and an app store internally - managing marketing and communications.
• Further development in community spaces - beyond just come and chat. Learn, laugh and share! 

Freelance Projects

• Developing a marketing/communications strategy for Willow Tree Bakery. Building brand identity and awareness.
• Who is Christopher Swan? Developing an expanded approach with video.

Speaking Engagements

• IABC/San Diego Chapter - March Speaker 3/16 : Creating An Engaging Communication Video Series
• IABC World Conference 6/12: Open Space: Communicate Now!  Co-facilitating an open forum and think camp for communicators, new ideas and real-life communication issues.

Getting Involved

• Social Media Breakfast Los Angeles is launching. I'm excited to share the word and meet other social nerds. Let's ramble and share the love.
• IABC Los Angeles - The chapter is getting better than ever and I'm excited to get further involved. Speaking, sharing and whatever else moves us.
• Internal Communications Community (at Disney) - This community is growing and I am leading the efforts to bring us together. Only as a community will we change and be a force for the better.  

 
Experiments & Styles

• New video styles: Interview, learning, and promotional.
• Using music and big Hollywood/Intranet-based styles in all new ways for Internal Communications. Entertainment is king!
• Flash mobs and/or real-time meets. Figuring out how employees of walks-of-life embrace unique events, challenges, contests, information sharing, etc. 

So there it is, the beginning of my 2011 Communication "to do" list. I'm excited and ready to do it all. Who's ready to start a new project, join me in a community or share their ideas and projects?  I'd love to hear from my fellow communicating junkies. Share the love!

Checking in at Work: Location-based Services in the Enterprise

Did you “check in” today at the office?  Or maybe it’s not your thing.  Guess what, it is your employee’s thing.  Employees around the world are curious, just like us consumers about location-based check in services.  Now folks everywhere are checking in to your office, retail store, warehouse, and break room. 

Let’s take a step back – why check in at all?  Consumers are finding different reasons - enticed by gaming elements (badges, mayorships), discounts, recommendations and another way to share the details of their day. If you're still new to location-based services, look up Foursquare and Gowalla for a few examples.  

2010 has seen location-based services and options jump in popularity.  At first it was just Foursquare.  As time went on, Yelp and others crept into the space.  Employees seem to be keeping up with the options and kept adding their work location into the mix.  Then real changed happened – Facebook added “Places” check-in with incentives.  Now Facebook users could receive benefits and share all of their locations with the world.  Let’s face it; Facebook is the giant gorilla that is bringing this nonmainstream check-in to everyone’s mother.  Soon mom’s visit to my office will probably show up in Facebook for all of her friends to see.

Why should we care?
An opportunity is presenting itself to connect and share our company culture and the many stories hidden within the halls of our buildings.  The challenge, harness the option and actions to actually mean something beyond “Hey, I’m here”.  I’ve been putting some thought in this new hot topic and have a few suggestions to test in your company.  I’ll be doing the same.

New hire orientation - Employees will rejoice with a new option of learning and interacting with a wealth of company information.  Sitting in a full day of orientation is overwhelming and let’s face it, a bit dry.  Let the employees roam around the company locations while gathering useful information all around them.  Create a challenge and let the employee discovery certain facts and bring it back to the group to share.  Many applications will let you add tips and other information per location.  Employees could learn about where departments are located, what they do, significant cultural points and emergency information. 

Team outings – It’s time to get the team out of the conference room and in new locations.  Lots of companies have outings for departments and teams.  Why not add a geo location scavenger hunt in the mix.  This would be great for team building and learning about new topics.  A product called SCVNGR, provides challenges, points, rewards, and can be customized for your company.  I am also looking at scavenger hunts and challenges to take online communities into the real world.   

Maps & Location – With geo location, comes maps.  Why not try to beef up the employee directory with maps and useful information.  If you’re on a large campus and need to know the name of the building you’re standing in front of, just check in to see the location.  Probably destined to be a favorite, provide suggestions to the best places to eat or host a lunch meeting near the office.  Even in the consumer world, recommendations are far underused. 

Who’s nearby – Imagine a new way to locate and meet nearby colleagues and employees.  If you’re in a large conference (or at another office location) and want to meet a few like-minded folks, just open an app and see who is there.  I easily do this today with Foursquare and Facebook at work already.  Why not step it up and frame it as a networking opportunity.  With some thought and planning, I think this area can be developed further.  

What are you doing? Share your thoughts.
Have you been watching what your employees are doing with these check in services?  Are you starting to think about a plan to integrate a service in to your communication or business plans?  What other ways would you use these services for employees and vendors?

Video Storytelling

Video is everywhere these days. You can find it in blogs, anchoring an intranet, on your phone, really it's anywhere there's a screen. Remember the phrase; a picture is worth a thousand words. I think video is worth a million. We are in the age that communicators, leaders and employees are armed with at least one video capturing device. If you have a mobile phone, chances are you've recorded a video.

What does all of this mean to a communicator? There are key points to be aware of in this trend - we must embrace video, video is still storytelling, connect with the audience and small budgets work just as well as large budgets.

Thoughts & Guidelines

• Communicators must embrace video - don't fear it. Video can be used in a variety of ways to share your message, engage your audience and bring value to your organization. It will be up to you to decide what content is made into a video vs. a written communication. The point is to expand your communication channels. I also keep hearing from other communicators and social media leaders that video will become even more important in communication planning. 
• People love storytelling. Just like when we share a personal story in a presentation or tell an employee story in an interview for the intranet, video beckons for the same type of storytelling. Have you ever watched a good documentary without some storytelling? If it didn't have a story to it, you'd probably turn it off. Same goes for the videos we create for our employees and consumers. For example, if you need to tell employees about a new time HR policy, wrap it up with a story (think a skit) vs. having a corporate leader ramble on for 10 minutes without even shifting his posture. Talking Heads are for the 80's, not today. Also, this concept applies to news-style videos. Look below for an example of a story driven video I created to launch a new employee community.
• Connect with your audience. If you're not speaking their language nor sharing your message in a way that resonates, no one will listen. There are a few ways to connect. First choose a set, dialogue and theme that mean something in your organization. If volunteering is important to your employees, blend charity concepts into your story (i.e. film at a food bank). Now think about your spokesperson. Whenever possible, use employees in the video so they can tell story. If it's difficult to find an eager employee to help, make it minimal. Employees can just be an extra or adding bits of commentary. A nice bonus, this also helps with viral sharing. Lastly, humor goes along way if done right. Contrary to some advice I'd received, I suggest using humor where appropriate. Of course, be mindful of the humor you focus on. Always avoid the obvious items like, politics, diversity, etc. Just think, people watch YouTube videos for a reason - it's mostly to be entertained and laugh.
• Don't worry about your tiny budget. I've started an entire employee focused web-series on a zero budget. I borrowed a camera and used free tools and resources. For example, Windows and Apple offer free video editing tools that I used. I was able to add effects and music. Easy and professional. Success can really boil down to motivation and determination. If you plan well (previous points), find free resources (Google it!) and learn best practice techniques for filming and editing, you'll end up with a something your audience will watch. Believe me, you're not going to hear, "I bet they didn't have a budget". 

Real-life Example

Using all of these key ingredients, here's an example of a video I created for the launch of a new employee-based community.

Now what? Share your feedback.
Are you creating videos? What have you learned? What was a success or challenge? Or, are you just starting - what questions do you?

Community Overload: Overwhelmed with Too Many Options

Finally there’s an online community at the office for me to share my ideas about employee benefits.  Oh nice, now there’s a community to talk about healthy options as they apply to my employee benefits.  Hmm, here’s another invite to join the community for employees to talk about work life balance.  So now I have three communities just to talk about benefits at work?  What about the other communities I’ll want to join to share my ideas about my job, or locating information and other work-related interests?  Will I end up belonging to a hundred communities just at work? 

Employee-based communities and groups are being created everyday around every subject at the office.  That is unless the company and the community/communication manager has a strategy for natural community growth.  That’s a big IF. 

If you’re a company that has recently implemented social media tools that allow for communities or groups, then you’re the prime candidate to be affected by this problem.  So let me dissect this community overload problem.  Companies (and certain employees – early adopters, mandatory participation folks) often jump in to the community space, building and creating without much planning.  There’s no roadmap, organizational structure, business function grouping, business flow grouping, etc.  All of the sudden, communities are created for anything under the sun and even worse, there’s no hierarchy or structure.  Companies literally end up with duplicate communities for the same discussions and sharing of resources.  Community creators mean well, but the magnitude of available communities ends up being overwhelming and many of the spaces lack interaction and useful information.  Sound familiar?  It’s the same story of a bad intranet from a few years ago that we all know so well - too many sub-pages with static information.

Fixing the problem before it starts

So how do you go about not letting this community weed patch overgrow and smother the real social garden you’ve dreamed up?

1. Get to know your organization:  Take a step back and holistically review your company to find the common and natural threads.  For example, if your company is segmented by different businesses, yet has HR Business Partners residing in each business, create a community for all HR Business Partners company-wide.  This way, all of the HR Business Partners can share and network throughout the company, not just within their business unit.  Remember, communities allow for great networking based on shared interests.
2. Create a plan:  Start with a long-term strategy and then create a plan for today.  For the long-term, think about what you want to see in a year or two from now.  Also, what value do you expect to grow from creating over-arching communities?  Once you’ve determined what you want in the long haul, create your short list plan of tactics to get you started.  Plans that include month-long objectives work best for me in projects like this.  I suggest starting one or just a few communities and getting those right first. 
3. Connect the dots:  Just like when you create organizational charts for your company, build a similar template for your communities.  Which communities will be on the top?  What will the sub-communities be?  Communities can be more than just connected top to bottom.  Connecting communities by relation is also helpful.  Related should be used when a community doesn’t speak to the same subject of another community, but may share some of the same ideas or concepts.  This will help employees find other spaces of interest.  Think of that phrase we always see when registering for a conference, “You may also be interested in”.
4. Who will create the communities:  There are two schools of thought here.  You can choose to let only a select few community managers own the process of setting up communities.  If you do, I suggest building in a process for employees to request new spaces to share and chat.  If employees are not involved in creating their own social world, you’ll have less engagement.  The other option would be to let all employees create communities.  The negative here is a giant mass of communities that may not work.  The positive to this option is possibly more employee participation.  I would challenge you to find a happy medium. 
5. Be nimble:  There will undoubtedly be communities that have not been set up.  In fact, it should be part of your plan not to know everything.  You should be asking yourself, how will these communities grow and stay current?  As community requests are received or the current community structure seems out of shape and misguided, take a fresh look at your social garden.  Maybe you need more of one thing vs. another.  It’s normal to adjust and tweak as you go.  Just like your company, your communities will take new directions.    

As you can see, it’s not rocket science at all.  Of course, these are my thoughts based on my experiences.  I’ve seen bad examples and I’ve seen some good successes.  The real trick is creating a strategy, laying out the community outline before you start to build, and be part of the success.  Repeat after me, plan and be nimble.