Communicator

Content
In this Social Media Era,
is Still Key to Successful
Employee Communications
With the start of a new year and in fact, a new decade upon us, it’s natural to evaluate what communication
tools and vehicles have been working successfully and what technologies have enhanced our ability to
provide value to our stakeholders. Yet, one of the industry’s leading employee communications gurus says
communicators need to take the “corporate” out of corporate communications, and replace it with “creative.”
Focusing on people
According to Crescenzo, employee communications
typically talks about the three Ps: Policies, Programs,
and Procedures, including necessary but usually dry
topics like corporate initiatives, wellness, and safety.
The way to make employee communications more
engaging is to find the fourth P, which is “people.”
Corporate communicators need to see themselves
as storytellers. Crescenzo believes any organization
in the world, no matter how small, has interesting
people doing interesting things. Communicators
should harness these stories to create more
interesting content.
“Content is more important now than ever,”
says Steve Crescenzo, a veteran corporate
communicator with 20 years of experience,
“however, communicators are just taking the
same corporate content—boring press releases,
bad photos, and poorly written stories and
they’re pushing them out through new social
media vehicles.”
Based in Chicago, IL, Steve is one of the U.S.’s
leading experts in employee communications.
Voted the number one seminar leader at
IABC’s International Conference in 2008 and
2009, he believes that social media demands a
different way of communicating. “It needs to
be more conversational, more real, and more
focused on people—there needs to be more
storytelling,” says Crescenzo.
Replace “corporate”
with “creative”
Creating valuable, engaging content is one of
the biggest challenges communicators face—
no matter what vehicle they use.
Audiences have many online choices: interactive
sites like The New York Times, podcasts on
every subject under the sun, not to mention
the multitude of social media sites such as
YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. And then
the audience has our stuff: dry, dull, safe
and boring corporate content. It doesn’t stand
a chance when it comes to grabbing our
audience’s attention.
And this is where communicators make one
of the biggest mistakes. Instead of using these
new tools to move away from the same old
boring corporate boilerplate language and
cookie-cutter copy, we simply repurpose the
dry corporate content and push it out using
new social media tools. The result? No one
pays attention to it.
Crescenzo believes it’s because we focus on
fighting the wrong battles. “Communicators
fight the battle of the deadline and the battle of
the approval process—what will get through
with the least amount of edits in the least
amount of time. In the meantime, we lose our
biggest battle—readership—and that’s a high
price to pay these days.”
How to sell it to executives
Some people have argued that it is hard to convince
corporate executives to use social media as a
communication vehicle.
“Communicators make the mistake of falling in
love with the new tools,” says Crescenzo. “They try
to sell their tools to their leaders, instead of
approaching them from the business point of view.”
The way to sell social media to executives, Crescenzo
suggests, is to demonstrate how social media can
help the organization achieve its business and communications
goals, and solve problems. This requires
communicators to look at things from a business
perspective, instead of from a social media
enthusiast angle.
Crescenzo will be in Toronto to present his one-day
seminar, “Creative Communications: Taking the
Next Step,” on February 26, 2010. Loaded with
dozens of case studies and best practices in creative
communications from small and large organizations
throughout Canada and the U.S., Crescenzo is
hosting a sneak peek professional development
event exclusively for IABC/Toronto members the
day before on February 25. Stay tuned to e-Lerts
and the website for registration details.
Emma Huang is a Toronto-based public relations
professional with a decade of experience as an
international journalist.
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January – February 2010 Communicator http://toronto.iabc.com/