A Communication Audit. This is a comprehensive, systematic evaluation and analysis of your company’s communication. A communication audit unveils what is truly happening as opposed to what is thought to be happening. It:

• Encompasses the activities conducted in a communication assessment and its resultant findings (although here it is more robust).
• Identifies the people who create the messages and information being communicated.
• Evaluates the clarity and value of the communication.
• Critically looks at the various methods of communication (such as Web sites, newsletters, emails, blogs, videos, and other publications, as well as interpersonal skills and managerial communication), pinpointing problem areas and identifying successes.

A communication audit must be thoughtfully planned and implemented, and the results carefully assessed to achieve the greatest impact.

The Scope of a Communication Audit. You can focus on a number of communication areas to evaluate and analyze. This focus can be the broad-based communication for the entire company or for an individual division or group. It can be a specific communication method (such as interpersonal communication or your internal Web site) or for a specific vehicle (such as your corporate publications).

Sometimes the scope of your company’s communication is simply too large. Breaking your communication efforts into smaller, more manageable chunks enables more targeted, accurate findings. Your scope simply depends on what you want to achieve in a particular timeframe.

The exact scope of an audit depends on your company: on your particular problems and needs.

When to Conduct a Communication Audit. Communication audits are always helpful, if only to keep up with the needs of a changing staff and a changing business climate.

If you have never conducted an audit, now might be a good time especially if your company has grown substantially. When a company experiences any substantial growth, communication channels tend to break down—what once worked becomes antiquated and stresses its ability to carry the ever-changing and ever-increasing amount of information.

Communication audits are indispensable when a company is undergoing any significant change to your business, such as when you experience a layoff or change in staffing; merge with or acquire another company; implement a new technology; launch a new product, service or line of business; enter a new market; or any other disruption to your everyday business operations.

In these cases, the results of an audit can identify those key communication areas that are vital to your moving forward as smoothly as possible whenever your company experiences these inevitable transitions.

A Communication Plan. This plan takes the findings of an assessment or audit and defines a plan of action that enables you to communicate better. A communication plan has four main parts; it:

• Clarifies the quality of your communication by summarizing the comments garnered through conversations with employees.
• Evaluates the effectiveness of your communication vehicles and channels, as well as the messages and information being communicated.
• Recommends steps for improving communication and making it more effective, including specifics on methods, channels, and personnel.
• Outlines a timeline—both short-term and long-term—for implementing the recommendations.

A Communication Plan, thus, maps the roads you can travel to communicate better and attain the resultant benefits.

—Rich Maggiani

[Note: This post is one of our position papers originally published in 2012.]

Since the most successful companies communicate well, understanding how your communication is working and how it might work better is critical to achieving this success. Flawed communication leads to misunderstandings, misinterpretations, mistakes, low morale, higher turnover, decreased sales, and lower market valuation; whereas effective communication leads to lower turnover, greater contributions, increased total shareholder value, and stronger market valuation of your company.

Communication is a complex process with many potential pitfalls that can be identified and corrected.

There are two methods to determine the quality of your communication; a:

• Communication Assessment (a short, pointed process)
• Communication Audit (a comprehensive, far-reaching process that encompasses the activities of a communication assessment)

Both strategically evaluate and analyze your company’s communication; both form the basis for a Communication Plan. A communication assessment is a fixed-cost alternative that quickly gives you a bead on your communication efforts, which helps you determine if you need to spend the time and money necessary to conduct a more comprehensive communication audit.

A Communication Assessment. This closed-end, short-term process focuses on the quality of your communication: how employees at all levels feel about your internal communication, its content, and the distribution vehicles.

A series of interviews, focus groups (including, perhaps, implementing a version of the world café), surveys, and questionnaires conducted with employees from across the company (various departments, management and staff, recognized leaders and informal leaders) elicits a cross section of thoughts, information, and ideas. Key questions elicit responses about what these people know about the company, what they do, what they see is important about their job, and how it affects the company’s mission and goals. It discovers what people know, what they don’t know, and what they are unclear or misinformed about.

The expertise of the people conducting the assessment enables a deeper grasp and evaluation of responses, ultimately painting a more robust and accurate picture. These interviewers must develop the appropriate questions to elicit worthwhile answers, and be available to conduct the assessment in a short timeframe.

To be of the greatest value, these responses must be honest. This is difficult to obtain if employees feel their responses might be used for other purposes or might not remain confidential. Objectivity and trust are paramount to obtaining honest answers since anonymity is critical.

From this information, a picture of where communication is clear and where it is cloudy and confusing emerges. The results of a communication assessment determine the need for a communication audit.

—Rich Maggiani

[Note: This post is one of our position papers originally published in 2012.]

Employees feel disconnected in companies with poor communication. Why effective communication is needed in a workplace without it:

40%: Employees who feel disconnected at work.

67%: Workers who do not identify with or are motivated to help the company attain its business goals and objectives.

25%: Employees who show up just to collect a paycheck. (1)

49%: Employees who feel their company is open and honest in its communication.

55%: Employees who feel that senior leadership only talks at them, but doesn’t listen to them.

51%: Employees without a channel to communicate up the corporate organizational chart. (2)

Benefits to companies that communicate better. Company that communicate effectively enjoy these statistical benefits over firms with poor communication:

30: Percent increase in market valuation. (3)

57: Percent higher in total return to share-holders than companies that communicated least effectively.

4.5: Times more likely to benefit from employees meaningfully connected with the company.

20: Percent who are more likely to experience lower turnover rates. (4)

1: Number of Communication Plans that a company must implement to achieve effective communication.

Succeeding with better communication. From an employee’s perspective, effective communication encompasses these elements:

• Open and honest exchanges of information.
• Clear, easy-to-understand materials.
• Timely distributions.
• Trusted sources.
• Two-way feedback systems.
• Clear demonstrations of senior leadership’s interest in employees.
• Continual improvements in communication.
• Consistent messaging across sources. (5)

Source Notes.

1. “U.S. Job Satisfaction Keeps Falling, The Conference Board Reports Today”, The Conference Board. 28 February 2005.
2. “Study Offers Insights on Effective Communication from the Perspective of Employees”, Towers Perrin. January 2005.
3. “Connecting Organizational Communication to Financial Performance—2003/2004 Communication ROI Study”, Watson Wyatt & Company. 3 November 2003.
4. “Effective Communication: A Leading Indicator of Financial Performance—2005/2006 Communication ROI Study”, Watson Wyatt & Company. December 2005.
5. “Study Offers Insights on Effective Communication”, Towers Perrin.

—Rich Maggiani

[Note: This post is one of our position papers originally published in 2012.]

Consider these questions to better determine how well you are communicating.

• Are your employees at all levels talking to each other?
• Do your strategic groups know what each other is doing?

• Is there a breakdown in communication—the information only goes so far, but from that point on, everyone makes it up as they go?
• Is there animosity over the perception that other groups simply don’t contribute enough to the company’s success?
• Does your staff know exactly how to proceed, or are there conflicting ideas?
• Are expectations clear?
• Are departments duplicating efforts while other tasks are left undone?
• Was your communication once flawless, but now that you are growing and changing quickly, these communication channels just don’t work anymore or are filled with static?

Communication fails as a company grows and changes. As a company grows—whether through sales or acquisition—communication becomes more of a challenge. What once seemed so intuitive, now seems like such a struggle. The breakdown of communication channels is common. This is not an isolated phenomenon, but rather a pervasive issue with growth and change.

There are size thresholds where communication becomes problematic: approach that size and issues arise. For smaller companies this happens when you just don’t know everyone in the organization any more, or staff come and go and you’ve never met them. For larger companies, the increasing size just doesn’t fit into your infrastructure causing things to slip between the cracks. For extremely large companies, employees don’t know all the countries around the world with company offices, much less what they do at those offices. There is just a sense that everything is just too distant.

Miscommunication results when channels breakdown. To compound the problem of weakening communication channels, employees at all levels unwittingly communicate schizophrenically—especially managers and company leaders. A specific message about policy discussed on Monday changes by mid-week. Appeals to raise the bar of integrity are counteracted when actions fail to support this imperative. Or decisions passed down through the chain of command take diverging routes as managers and leaders at each level obfuscate the meaning, diluting its impact.

Messages about the state of the company change, sending staff in varying directions to the point where they end up in many different destinations. Off-hand remarks are misinterpreted and undermine trust.

Miscommunication can occur at all levels of a company. This kind of communication, of course, leads to confusion and misunderstanding, takes up valuable time while everyone tries to decipher the real message, and leads to shrinking morale.

Absent any overarching statement of vision and values and image, absent any clear channel of communication, absent any method for engaging in a shared multidimensional dialog, managers and leaders up and down the organizational chart are free to interpret any message and its meaning.

Effective communication is clearly stated and singular in nature. A Communication Plan must clearly state the company’s brand and mission in words that can be understood and internalized by everyone. It must inform every employee about where the company is going and how it is doing.

A company’s stories must be truthful and honest; they can’t be mere claims using strong powerful words. The emotional value behind the words and the means of how the words are delivered must not only ring true, they must be true! When that happens, a focused strategy emerges, energizing everyone to arduously pursue a common goal of success.

—Rich Maggiani

[Note: This post is one of our position papers originally published in 2012.]

Successful performance means bringing together the best resources for serving future needs with a company’s capabilities, investing in the these resources, then constantly measuring and managing the results. To best bring these resources together, you must communicate effectively. And for that, you need a plan.

A Communication Plan relates the a company’s brand, image, mission, values, and goals to all employees, informing them of what the company does and for whom; the benefits it offers and the problems it solves. It describes communication channels that facilitate the exchange of information and ideas among your board, executives, management, and staff. It is a strategic discussion about the very core of a company: how it operates, what it stands for, what it delivers. This discussion must be robust enough so that everyone related to the company speaks with one voice, one mind, one purpose: a focused, clear, articulate message.

Creating and implementing a Communication Plan. One way to create and implement a Communication Plan on your behalf is by applying four communication principals: Enlighten, Convince, Motivate, and Align. These four-steps provide the framework for creating and implementing company-wide communication where everyone actively participates.

When creating a Communication Plan, address the particular challenges to communicating effectively in your company. To better evaluate poor or nonexistent internal communication, look for ways to change how you talk about problems, to truly assess and analyze these problems in a new light, and to generate new and innovative solutions.

Examine the relationship between organizational structure and specific communicative practices, how communication practices by various levels of hierarchy establish, maintain, or change the message and, ultimately, the culture. Anticipate communication deficiencies, and use these discoveries as a means for facilitating organizational development and innovation.

In a Communication Plan, draw the map that enables you to create a company dialog. Be sure to implement simple, clear communication through the most effective channels so that all employees can easily access, understand, and distribute the necessary information. Devise a clear overriding message that embodies your image and values.

A well-implemented Communication Plan has many benefits. Effective internal communication, implemented through a thoughtful plan, allows employees to feel comfortable with the company and contribute to its vibrant culture. And it’s this vibrant culture that leads to the many benefits experienced through effective communication.

• Your company is able to distinguish itself enough to attract and retain the best and brightest employees.
• Your company has a strong sense of culture, one that employees help create and want to participate in.
• Employees feel comfortable enough to not only recognize and accept change and growth, but to participate and lead it.
• Employees can readily see how their contribution impacts the company and its performance.
• Employees at all levels engage in a dialogue to become intimately involved in the company and its daily interaction with its customers.
• Employees can readily see they are working for something larger than themselves, some greater cause, and thus can see the effect of their efforts on the bigger picture.
• Clear communication engenders a strategic discussion about your company and its industry, leading to continuous improvement and innovation that anticipates and addresses market needs.

To attain these benefits, your communication must be authentic, aligning words with actions; it must be real, having a human touch; and it must use a language, a voice, that everyone can speak.

—Rich Maggiani

[Note: This post is one of our position papers originally published in 2012.]

A Communication Plan defines a process for communication among all employees at all levels. It is a strategic method of getting everyone involved in the company, its growth and evolution, and ultimately its continued success.

A Communication Plan is based on strategic goals, aligned and focused, and results in increased revenue and profitability, more robust innovation, and marked organizational stability. It unites everyone—directors, executives, managers, and employees—in your company toward this strategic goal with a shared purpose.

Specifically, a Communication Plan identifies:

• The types of communication that most benefit your organization.
• The people involved in sending, receiving, and contributing to this communication.
• The best channels—written, audio, video, electronic, verbal, interactive, and others—for creating and transmitting this communication, and an action plan for implementing these channels. These channels allow for clear communication up and down the corporate organization chart (from directors and executives, to managers and employees, and back) and among all divisions, groups, and colleagues.
• A time table for how often information is communicated. Regular communication is one of the many keys to success.

What constitutes effective communication. Effective internal communication gets—and keeps—everyone on the same page with your values, image, brand, mission, and goals. Focusing on these aspects ensures all employees know:

• What the company does, and comprehends the entire scope of its products, services, solutions, and benefits.
• Where the company is headed, and how its products and services, coupled with innovation, keep the company moving in a positive direction.
• How the company is doing financially, as well as projected revenues and profits.
• How their work helps the company succeed.

A singular, purposeful message. A well-crafted Communication Plan, expertly implemented, allows you to quickly adapt to change and growth; it strengthens your position in the marketplace. As a company, you benefit from a clear sense of purpose, a laser-focused message, and a strategy to distribute your message, both internally and externally. When your external target market receives your message, they respond in a positive manner, helping fuel your growth and contribute to your bottom line.

This focus works for a number of reasons and has many benefits. Everyone in your company gets and contributes to the same message using the same voice. Clients and prospects receive the same message in their interactions with employees.

Within your company, one hand knows what the other is doing. Employees not only understand, and appreciate what other departments, divisions, and groups are doing, they also know what the people in these organizational structures contribute to the company. Employees see the big picture and better under stand their place in it. They better comprehend where the company is going, and the benefits it brings to your customers as well as to them.

This is a powerful motivation and an unstoppable force both within your company and in the marketplace. Customers know what you stand for, creating a clear image of who you are and what to expect from you: greatness. This focus allows your company to not only stand out from the din of too much information, but also to rise above it. This focus replaces uncertainty with clarity: a clarity which you define and communicate. For if you do not define your message—your brand, image values—outside forces will and it will not be the one you want out, nor would it be accurate or consistent.

Effective communication enables you to speak with one carefully crafted message backed by real action and commitment. Only this type of true message strikes deeply, withstands constant testing, and endures.

—Rich Maggiani

[Note: This post is one of our position papers originally published in 2012.]

Effective communication performs a core corporate role, vital to your company’s financial capacity as well as to your overall success.

This success encompasses many measurable factors:

• Increased market valuation.
• Increased shareholder value.
• Greater connection and commitment from employees.
• A more robust and inclusive corporate culture.
• Proactive involvement that drives corporate change and growth.

In essence, effective communication drives business results that lead to success.

Increased market valuation. Effective communication is one of the leading indicators for financial performance. Research shows that, over the first years of this century, companies with the most effective communication attained a 30 percent increase in market valuation. This is almost 20 percent higher than companies that do not communicate effectively.

This holds true for both publicly-traded as well as privately-held companies.

Increased shareholder value. Effective internal communication benefits your shareholders. Over the early 2000s, research demonstrates that companies with effective communication strategies experienced a 26 percent total return on investment to shareholders. This total return is 57% higher than companies with less effective communication. (By comparison, companies with the poorest communication experienced a 15 percent decrease in market valuation.)

Greater connection and commitment from employees. Employees work for more than just money. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves, to have meaning in what they do, to know their work contributes to a larger cause.

Companies that communicate better benefit from employees who feel more connected, more committed, and better understand how their actions contribute to a company’s success, which dramatically reduces turnover.

An effective communication strategy reinforces employees’ realization that they are critical assets to the company. Ultimately, employees are more inspired.

A more robust and inclusive corporate culture. Clear internal communication channels that create a dialog among all employees using a single company voice and that use technology in this exchange make everyone feel more in touch with the company. This is especially true for new hires. New employees feel connected to the company’s culture and immediately begin applying their efforts to the overall success of the company.

As companies grow, their culture can become scattered through the forced decentralization that must happen to keep up with a more complex business structure. Effective internal communication helps even the largest companies feel like a smaller, more comfortable, more secure place to work and fosters a sense of participation and contribution.

Proactive involvement that drives corporate change and growth. Effective internal communication has a positive effect on changes in the marketplace and in your industry. Employees adjust quicker and have a greater impact on changing business conditions, allowing your company to keep pace with this change, to grow, and to lead.

Most employees are adverse to change; they get too comfortable with the way things are, the status quo. Yet organizations with effective communication experience strong support for change and growth from management and staff when communication is at its most fluid.

Effective communication sparks a change in behavior, and more closely connects all employees to your customers. Ultimately, effective communication powers your company and proactively drives business performance to a higher measure of success.

—Rich Maggiani

[Note: This post is one of our position papers originally published in 2012.]

Social media has forever altered the way we communicate. Blogs, tweets, wikis, social networks, professional networks, online news wires, RSS technology, podcasts, videocasts, and other social media tools necessitate a revised communication strategy.

You can employ these social media tools for a myriad of reasons:

• Communicating with employees and empowering their collaboration.
• Engaging your customers and prospects to attain the results you desire.
• Building your reputation and brand, and shaping your perception in the marketplace.
• Influencing behavior, increasing awareness, and growing a community of supporters.

Social media is fragmented and personal, and yet is a more effective means of communicating. Information is garnered from many different sources; you are no longer in control of all the messages.

Understand the five C’s of social media. All social media share a common set of characteristics, the five C’s: conversation, contribution, collaboration, connection, and community. Through social media, people state and discuss their thoughts and opinions, their experiences and expectations, and their perspectives about your company, your employees, your products, and your services. How you engage in this dialogue fuels your social media community, toward ill will and goodwill.

Grow your communities and engage them. You must manage your social media communication to achieve the greatest benefit from your company’s efforts — essentially the collective efforts of your executives, management, and staff. Your target audiences are now your communities. You must engage them.

Set guidelines for interaction. Since messages can come from anyone in your company, setting guidelines is wise. Employees must be responsible and respectful, consider their obligations to the company (especially about disclosing confidential information and keeping the right of privacy), speak with authority only when appropriate, and maintain common decency in their language and word choice. Policies can attend to participation in enterprise and employee blogs, social media networks, and online communities, perhaps even setting time limits so that staff don’t get so involved that they shirk their daily responsibilities. All of these issues, and more, must be addressed in your social media guidelines.

Measure and monitor social media channels. You must listen. This is key to setting your strategy for participating and responding and planning. You listen by measuring and monitoring.

There are dozens of tools, sites, and companies that help you listen. Some are free, some cost; some are effective, some a waste; some complicated, some simple. With this myriad of choices, contemplative investigation and analysis are needed. For instance, while there are numerous methods to monitor Twitter, success is not so much about the method, but about the characteristics of what you monitor so that you achieve meaningful results.

Blogs, of course, come with built-in monitoring tools, accepting comments from anyone and allowing you to reply. But do you review comments before permitting them to be posted? Such are the strategic decisions that must be made.

Establish your communication goals. While it’s true that you no longer control the entire message, you can establish your communication goals and create strategies to send messages you want heard. Use your blog, your web site, and your responses to convey those messages. A well-written, polished news release is appropriate for established media channels. But trust in corporations has eroded. More human, seat-of-the-pants, open and honest messages are received better through social media channels.

Your return on investment. When properly implemented, social media enhances your company’s brand and reputation, and ultimately your bottom line. But first, you need guidelines and a plan with clearly identified goals and strategies for an enterprise-wide effort that delivers measurable, positive results.

—Rich Maggiani

[Note: This post is one of our position papers originally published in 2012.]

Still, I found keeping up with social media to be difficult at first. Over time, I’ve developed a process that works for me (most days, at least). Before I get into details, let’s back up a bit to consider the larger perspective.

First, let’s talk rationale. Why engage at all? Two big reasons. One: social media is one of the primary uses of the Internet; it has exploded over the past few years. And two: your engagement can enrich your professional career.

Second, let’s talk strategy and answer a most relevant question in communication: Where are you going? Define the overriding goal for your social media presence, then make sure that everything conforms to this goal. For example, because I am an independent communication consultant, my goal is to be perceived as an enlightened, knowledgeable expert. I know this is a lofty goal, but it certainly gives me something to continually pursue. In that respect, George Bernard Shaw has motivated me when he wrote, “I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.”

Now that the foundation is set, let’s talk process. I spend at most 20 minutes each morning on social media. It’s time that I can more easily fit into my schedule if I do it first.

When I open my browser, I double-click a folder I created that bookmarks my pages on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and my Toward Humanity blog. This causes each bookmark to open in its own tab. You can set up your folder anyway you want (for instance, Europeans might want their Xing page to open). I could have set my browser to open these pages on start up, but I only want to open them once, and creating the folder enables me to control when they open. Once open, I spend some time on each one.

There’s so much to do on these social media sites; here’s a list of ways to engage on the three that I use most often: LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Choosing different ones every day allows you to diversify and actually is more fun.

LinkedIn. You can appreciably enhance your experience on LinkedIn by adding applications. Currently, I use Reading List, Events, Polls, WordPress, SlideShare, and Tweets. I will refer to these in the list below. Consider these as well as all the other LinkedIn applications. (While I don’t subscribe to it yet, I’m intrigued by Google Presentation.)

• Review your profile summary and consider editing it to ensure its accuracy.
• Write an update and share it on Twitter (the first 140 characters, at least).
• Review the People You May Know section and invite five to connect. Or search for people to invite as connections.
• Scroll through your All Updates feed and find something that inspires you. Then do something: Like it, leave a comment, send a message, share it; click a link in the entry and investigate it. If the entry was also tweeted: retweet it, favorite it, or reply to it. Or click the hashtag (if there is one) and check out those tweets. Doing just this can easily consume your 20 minute allocation.
• Write a recommendation for someone.
• Ask for a recommendation for one of the entries under Experience and Education in your profile. Consider working toward at least one recommendation for each entry.
• Join a group (or leave a group you are no longer interested in).
• Click a link under your LinkedIn Today headlines; read and comment on the post. Today’s interesting headline was: “What To Say on LinkedIn When You’ve Been Laid Off.”
• Review the people who have viewed your profile recently. Consider connecting with them.
• Follow a company or engage with one of the companies that you already follow.
• Add a book to your reading list; be sure to write a comment to accompany the book. Watch someone’s reading list in your network. Check out a connection’s reading list. Of course, if you have written a book, add it!
• Browse the events of your connections, comment on one, RSVP to one (as Attending or Interested). Today, in my profile, there is a free Webinar: “Better PDFs with FrameMaker-to-Acrobat Time Savers.” I’m interested!
• Add an event that you are planning to attend or present at in the future.
• Check out a presentation on SlideShare. Comment on it, recommend it, favorite it.
• Answer a question; ask a question.
• Start a discussion in one of your groups.
• Read and comment on a group discussion. (You can tell a lot about someone by what they write in their comments, so consider your words and tone.) Like the discussion. Follow the author if you find them particularly provocative. With enough activity in a group, you can become one of the group’s weekly top influencers.
• Peruse the promotions in a group; see if there are any that interest you. (Not all groups have a Promotions tab.) Again, comment on it, like it, follow the author. Or post your own promotions.

Twitter. Get the most out of your Twitter experience by carefully choosing the people you follow—unless, of course, you want an audience for your tweets, then you probably want to get as many followers as you can. Just make sure that you balance the number of people you follow with those that follow you.

And, consider this division of your tweets: one-third about your industry; one-third about tech comm and your company; one-third about you.

• Tweet something every day. You can get ideas by reading what others tweet. I get tweet fodder from various email lists I subscribe to plus STC’s News & Notes.
• Tweet about what you are reading (for example, an Intercom article or column), what you have learned, what you are doing so long as it is important to your followers (such as a conference you are attending, or a webinar or presentation you attended).
• Include an appropriate hashtag on your tweets if you want: #techcomm and #stcorg are good ones to use. Use #stc12 for tweets concerning the 2012 Summit in Chicago.
• Find and follow ten people whose tweets would fit your goals.
• Tweet an inspiring quote.
• Scan your Twitter Timeline and retweet something interesting.
• Reply to a tweet or send a direct message to its author.
• Create a list and add people to it. This makes it easier to follow the tweets from a certain group of people that you decide.
• Follow someone else’s list for a while and read their tweets.

Facebook. While I use LinkedIn and Twitter almost exclusively for business and professional endeavors, I use Facebook mainly for personal issues. So why include Facebook as part of my professional social media presence? It gives me an avenue for pursuing a personal part of my life. And besides, even with Facebook’s privacy settings, in reality, everything you post can be viewed some way or another. I “friend” a select group of people for my Facebook account, and certainly enjoy their repartee. Besides, Facebook enables me to have a bit of fun.

• Update your status. Think about doing it every day.
• Add a couple of new friends.
• Scroll through your News Feed and share items of interest. (I particularly enjoy this.)
• Add a new photo or two.
• Post on a friend’s page.
• Ask a question.
• Post an event.

Of course, there is a lot more you can do, but this list ought to keep you busy. Choose a few to do everyday. And reap the benefits of actively engaging in social media.

—Rich Maggiani

[Note: This post originally appeared in my “Social Media Insights” column in the December 2011 issue of Intercom, the magazine of the Society for Technical Communication (STC).]

Valid questions, I thought. So I explained.

Project Management. A LinkedIn group would allow everyone to exchange information and to discuss issues openly. We could all see who else was involved in the project, and we could review everyone’s background. That would allow us not only to appreciate each other more, but also to call on the most appropriate person for a particular topic. We wouldn’t have to know each other’s email addresses; we could just communicate through LinkedIn. And everything discussed on the project would reside in one place where we all could review it and access it from wherever.

The group would be members only. People would have to request to join, and I would pass any names not associated with the project to the project manager before I allowed them to join. Ultimately, it would give us all a sense of purpose, ownership, and camaraderie.

I could see that the project manager was ruminating on that a bit, so I waited. What he said next brought a smile to my face.

“If we are going to use LinkedIn to better manage the project, what about using another social media tool for topics that demand more immediacy, like Twitter.”

“Actually, using Twitter is a great idea,” I said. “We could create a hash tag for the project and communicate using that. We’d be able to communicate quick messages to each other, and,” I added with a smile, “it would allow everyone else to watch an interchange and comment when they have something of value to offer. That increase of knowledge sharing can only enhance the final product.”

He mulled that over for a moment, then said, “Okay. Let’s do it.”

Most participants were reluctant at first, mainly because they had never worked on a project this way before, but they all eventually got onboard. Some are actually intrigued about how it will go and anticipate using social media for future projects. At the very least, using social media has brought a sense of togetherness to the project.

Managing projects is just one way that technical communicators can use social media. What it requires, of course, is that you set up a LinkedIn account and take the time to fully describe your professional self.

Engaging in the Greater Conversation. Another way to use social media to stay competitive is to contribute and learn from the greater conversation. This enables you to get outside your box and engage with other technical communicators from around the world. You can also watch trends evolve, which can help you ride the crest of future developments as they unfurl—a true measure of surfing the net. If you are not seeing what you need, start a discussion and see where it leads.

Begin by joining the following Facebook groups:

• Society for Technical Communication, https://www.facebook.com/STC.org
• Technical Communication, https://www.facebook.com/ontargetcommunications

Many of you have already joined the Society for Technical Communication’s LinkedIn group (one of the largest with over 2,500 members). Join your local STC chapter’s LinkedIn group as well as relevant SIG groups. Be sure to set your “digest email” setting to “daily digest email” for “delivery frequency” so that you’ll see activity every day. Join some of the other technical communication groups as well.

And while I find much of the Twitter stream meaningless, I recommend following the #stcorg hashtag. Search for hashtags once, then save them for future use. STC’s feed generally contains up-to-the-minute information about STC goings-on and other information relevant to technical communication. It is really a wealth of information.

Set a reasonable amount of time every day (I spend about fifteen minutes every morning) reading through the discussions that seem most pertinent to you and contribute when you can.

The social media conversation has truly changed—forever. To stay competitive, you must participate.

—Rich Maggiani

[Note: This post originally appeared in my “Social Media Insights” column in the June 2011 issue of Intercom, the magazine of the Society for Technical Communication (STC).]