Effective business communications

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The speakers and attendees at the Human Resources Professionals Association of Ontario convention held recently in Toronto offered a wealth of practical advice for communications in the workplace according to Globe and Mail columnist Virginia Galt.

Management consultant Peter Taylor of Peter Taylor and Associates Inc. in Oshawa speaks of the need for face-to-face meetings to communicate about contentious issues:

If an issue is contentious, it’s better to handle it in person. “A face-to-face meeting is probably most important when you are afraid to have it; the more contentious, the more you need to be there,” Mr. Taylor says.

Ms. Alderson says people will often hide behind e-mail when they have unpleasant news to deliver and, like Mr. Taylor, she recommends that the most complex matters be handled in person.

Ms. Alderson says e-mail is effective and convenient for conveying messages and information, but less effective as a communications tool. Face-to-face communication is best, when possible, and telephone contact is the next best option for genuine dialogue. E-mail adds “another degree of separation,” she says. “Communication is a two-way street. Most of what we are doing today is not communicating; we’re simply sending messages.”

Mr. Taylor, who counsels clients on the importance of operating with “emotional intelligence” — including being aware of how one’s actions affect others — says it is much easier “to pick up people’s reactions if you have some sort of live interaction, be it face-to-face or voice contact.”

James Gray, principal of Toronto-based Media Strategy Inc., has some good advice for those of us who are prone to turn to the phone while on the fly:

Ms. Alderson says it is important, as well, to make sure that you are in a time and place where you can give the person on the other end of the telephone your full attention.

Conducting a phone conversation while you are on the treadmill breathing heavily into the telephone, or tapping on your keyboard at your desk, sends a message that you are “distracted, disorganized or disinterested,” she says.

Mr. Taylor says it is important to listen to telltale signs that the other person is rushed or distracted as well. Ask if it is a good time, and whether they prefer to conduct business by e-mail, by telephone or in person. If they say it is not a good time, don’t ignore them and launch into a long discussion anyway, Ms. Alderson adds.

Conversely, it is not always prudent to pick up the phone when you are in the thick of something else. “Be selective” and let voice mail pick up at times, Ms. Alderson says. Avoid, too, the common trap of responding to every e-mail as soon as it lands in the inbox.

Good, practical advice that’s worth remembering and putting into practice.

IABC Communications Commons: Is there an appetite for a "Consulting Principles" forum?

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Shel Holtz tells us that the IABC Communications Commons has been launched. The Commons is billed as a “Blog Community for Business Communicators.”

In his initial posting on the Commons home page, Shel says

IABC’s goal for the Commons is to provide a gathering place for communicators to focus on their own areas of specialization and learn about others. … This is the place for communicators to gather to exchange ideas about their craft, guided by experts in the various, diverse specialties that make up our profession.

IABC membership is not required to read or participate in the Commons. In the spirit of the blogosphere, the Commons is an effort provide open access to some of the thought leaders from within IABC’s ranks. These Commons bloggers will share their wisdom, report on goings-on in their field, and — most important — engage in comments-driven converations.

To get things rolling, we’re starting with three corners of the organizational communications world: branding and marketing, employee communications, and communication measurement. More will be added as we iron out the wrinkles of this network of communication blogs. First on the list for inclusion down the road are media relations and communications creative.

Each of the Commons blogs are group blogs. That is, more than one author will contribute posts. This will add diversity of opinion as well as a broad range of experience and expertise within each subject matter area.

Kudos to Shel, Natasha Spring, Chris Hall and all the folks at the IABC who are behind the Commons. It is a great initiative.

And now a suggestion. One of the best things about PRSA/CPRS membership is the Counselors Academy. The Counselors Academy runs a great program of seminars and conferences on topics of interest to senior communicators and agency principals. I think the IABC Commons could provide a similar service to its members by adding a “Consulting Principles” section that would enable principals and senior practitioners to talk about the principles and practices that the leading public relations consultancies have adopted or are moving toward.

What do you think? If IABC hosted it? Would you be prepared to contribute to this type of forum?

Quacks like a duck. Walks like a duck…

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This courtesy of CBC news.

John Reynolds, the man who co-chaired the Conservative national election campaign, is now offering advice to some of Canada’s largest companies on how to access the government.

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“If I wanted to be a lobbyist – and I had lots of offers to go with some of the major firms in Canada – I would have done that. What we’re doing here is different,” he said.

Reynolds said a lot of his job will involve giving companies what seems like simple advice – approach your MP if you need to get your point across to cabinet. And although Reynolds may have the prime minister’s private number on speed-dial, he said he won’t use it.

“If a CEO of a company listens to my advice, he’ll be able to get that done, without me having to make a phone call.”

Read the full text of Lang Michener’s release .

Local businesses can project personality through blogs

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Ted Demopoulos makes some good points in Blogging for Business regarding the value of blogs to local businesses.

Search engines love blogs, and can quickly help catapult a local website in the rankings, sending them more potential customers. They can also help turn “dull” into “dynamic” (or at least less dull!) and encourage repeat visitors.

Many local businesses are relationship based, even more so than Internet and 1-800 businesses, and the personal nature of blogs can help increase the feeling of knowing Joe Blow @ Seacoast Tub and Tile, even if we’ve never met him. This increases the likelihood that people will stop by and make a purchase.

Some local business people are likely to wonder what they could write about. In approaching the content of their blog, they should remember that they are the “experts” in their business area. If they mix this expertise with a passion for their business, they can write about things that will be of interest to the consumer such as new products, specials, examples of good customer service and ways in which the local business tries to make itself special.

Technorati Explore: a promising new search tool

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Technorati has introduced a new tool that should prove indispensable to public relations professionals and others interested in identifying the opinion leading conversations within a specific professional community.

In State of the Blogosphere, February 2006 Part 2: Beyond Search , David Sifry introduces us to the concept of the “Magic Middle” of the attention curve. Technorati currently counts about 155,000 people among the Magic Middle, which Sifry defines as bloggers who have 20-1000 other people linking to them. Sifry says that the Magic Middle contains “some of the most interesting and influential bloggers and publishers that are often writing about topics that are topical or niche … – these are blogs that are interesting, topical, and influential, and in some cases are radically changing the economics of trade publishing.”

Technorati’s new Explore tool uses these Magic Middle bloggers to point to the leading edge of the online conversations among communities of interest.

Given that there’s a lot of interesting topical posts by influential or authoritative bloggers in those topic areas, we formulated an idea: Why not use these authoritative bloggers as a new kind of editorial board? Watch what they do, what they post about, and what they link to as input to a new kind of display – a piece of media that showed you the most interesting posts and conversations that related to a topic area, like food, or technology, or politics, or PR. The idea is to use the bloggers that know the most about an area or topic to help spot the interesting trends that may never hit the “A-list”. We call this new section Explore…

These middle tier blogs also define communities of interest in the blogosphere. Its easy to think of the blogosphere as a cacophony of voices spread out over a big long tail distribution. But Blog Finder and Explore help resolve these thousands of blogs into topical, relevant communities of interest that interlink, refer to one another and often wrestle with ideas, discuss them and move them along. People often ask, “what blogs should I read?” And often times a good answer is, “you should read the posts from the leading blogs in topics that of interest you. Blog Finder and Explore make this possible for the first time on a wide variety of topics…

My test search of the top 20 posts in the Explore: pr category yielded a list that included posts by Steve Rubel, Scott Baradell, Phil Gomes, Lee Odden, Josh Hallett and Jeff Jarvis.

Technorati Explore strikes me as a very useful tool that will enable PR professionals to focus in on the discussion in our community.

Corporate blogging growing from the inside out?

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Stephen Baker suggests that corporate blogging is much more extensive than common measurements may indicate. In a Business Week article, The Inside Story on Company Blogs, Baker reports that “corporations are using [blogging] software to revamp internal communications, reach out to suppliers, and remake corporate Intranets.”

He points to McDonalds and Connondale as examples of companies that have been introducing blog software to enable employees distributed through large operations to contribute information. Now that these internal applications have proven themselves, Baker wonders whether companies will extend blogs outside the company to their customers. Before they can do this, they will have to overcome corporate caution and fear of loss of control.

Baker concludes:

Companies interested in opening up branded blogs to the broad public face plenty of risks. Opponents of the company could use them to spread criticisms or nasty rumors — and the host outfit would face the wrath of bloggers if it were seen to shut down or censor customers’ entries.

Conversely, if criticism appears on the blogs, the company can learn quickly and respond. For such giants as Wal-Mart (WMT) and McDonald’s — both subjects of blistering documentaries recently — such an early warning system might prove to be worth the gamble.