Why read it when I can forward it?

An enterprising writer at Slate commissioned Chartbeat to do an analysis of how--and whether--site visitors read articles on his site.  Look at the good graphs that accompany the article to get your own sense of the results.

It wasn't very surprising to learn that people skim online content.  People have been skimming content ever since there was too much content; in a business, a whole lot of content can be continually provided by a matrix of leaders, managers, corporate communicators and thorough HR specialists.  Those explanatory memos you spend days circulating for review and revising?  Nobody's reading them--not all of them, anyway.  It's why experienced communicators help you drive your most important points into top-level content or summaries.  You don't thin out a forest by planting more trees.

The surprise was that, in social media at least, people are forwarding or linking to articles they haven't read in their entirety, or in some cases haven't read at all.  The headline or the concept alone seem to be enough to get people to click Share.  For this cohort, people seem to want to be seen as contributors more than they want to be seen as actually knowledgeable.

This may be (yet another) cause for hand-wringing among people of a certain generation.  My view is that businesses should understand it and put it to use.  Sharing is good.  It's that third-party endorsement that is still a precept of good marketing.  Here's the question: How can you provide Sharers with the type of content they need to be both knowledgeable enough and excited to Share?  Hint: It doesn't look like From / To memos with the Subject underlined.

At least start by thinking single screen, above the fold.  It isn't that people are too lazy to scroll; it's that you've made them too busy to scroll with all of the stuff you're sending them.

Have you taken a minute to think of concrete ways to analyze your cluttersphere and create measurably effective communications vehicles?

Image courtesy of vegadsl / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I didn't read your e-mail

Got an internal e-mail blast in your upcoming employee communication campaign?  Hold that thought.

The death of e-mail has been hoped for and reported more than it has actually occurred; but if current trends continue, next-gen employees are going to continue to turn in the direction of platforms they find more efficient, more effective and less likely to fill an overflowing e-box.

This brief recent item from the Boston Globe is anecdotal but revealing.  Among the trends?  Declining to put e-mail addresses on business cards.  And—surprise—a plea to use the phone, instead.  Part of this is natural selection for technology: e-mail was far too skinny a horse to load up with all of the uses to which it's been put.

Here's the question: As the trend to personalize technology continues, what technology platforms will employees trust and expect to deliver executive communications?  You probably won't want a 4-minute video of the CEO pushed to your cell phone.  Will you mind if it's a link from your Twitter feed pulled from your mobile app, instead?

Corporate communicators use internal media and platforms because they are there, controllable and measurable.  But personal messaging from relevant individuals (managers, team members, liaisons in other departments) seems to be rising in favor and credibility, so much so that some of the other channels are being actively ignored or deleted.

Which leaves you where?  How will you test for and determine communications methods that have the highest value for employees?

Image courtesy of Phaitoon / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The next expectations of your workforce

 

In all of the wide discussion of "business use of social media," we've finally reached a maturation point.  The comparisons with Facebook or even LinkedIn are gone.  We now have some specific terms of success--collaboration, meritocratic contributions, reduction in email--that point directly to productivity gains.  What remains is either to wrestle SharePoint to the ground and bend it to our will, or to actively look for more elegant platforms that sit well on enterprise servers.

McKinsey Quarterly has put out the above video featuring Don Tapscott, who will be part of the World Economic Forum this week and has published an insightful TED book, Radical Openness.  He's making a career midwifing companies from old information flows and barriers to new knowledge pathways.

Implicit in this analysis is the understanding that your workforce is showing up in your organization with expectations for input, collaboration, and access.  Does your corporate culture encourage those values or thwart them?  And do you understand the changes that will be necessary in traditional, top-down employee communications in order to participate credibly in this new environment?