Corporate Communications | Success with a multichannel approach

In his presentation to the European Technology Summit in 2013, Poppulo CEO Andrew O'Shaughnessy highlighted the importance of using social networks not only for external communications but within the organization for corporate communications as well.

Before laying out the value of folding social networks into an internal multi-channel corporate communications approach, Andrew took attendees through the main challenge facing organizations in trying to effectively engage with employees.

The growing proliferation of channels in which to contact them. It's essential that the organization doesn't drop existing technology, or favor one - and push everything through one channel. Instead, they need to first understand what they want to communicate before they decide the channel for the message.

"Corporate communications teams need to join the dots between strategy, behaviors and technology, to improve the flow and quality of communication and collaboration."

Andrew showed how integration looks (below) when the internal communications team puts themselves at the center and use technology to orchestrate an effective flow of information and collaboration.

These three essential channels are not in competition, in fact, they each work together. And all have a part to play in ensuring effective corporate communications.

The three: The intranet, the backbone for most organizations as a central repository for information used by employees and the organization. Social, which gives a voice to employees and is where collaboration and feedback happen. And email, the infrastructure such as Outlook and Lotus within the organization for pushing corporate communications messaging.

Here are a few scenario-based examples of how our customers use Newsweaver to direct, push and control the flow of corporate communication channels within their organization:

1. "We have invested heavily in an intranet, and want to leverage its value to employees"- A communication can be pushed out to the employee's inbox, directing them to the intranet.
2. "We need to ensure that every employee has received an important corporate communication" -Pushing out this communication to every employee's inbox, and using the metrics available to ensure the message has been received.
3. "We want to start a conversation around a company objective" - Employees could see this conversation on social networks, but to really power it, email pushes notification of the conversation and pulls employees directly to the conversation to begin collaborating.

With this trinity of channels in place, communicators should be well positioned to create and deliver results and go a long way in fulfilling their corporate communications objectives.