Year: 2011

Follow, Filter and Fold Together

How to use Twitter as a research tool and manage information overload

Catching ideas. Vivid Sydney Launch.

Sydney is doing its best to create information overload through May and June. With the Vivid festival, Creative Sydney, AMPlify festival, Sydney Writers Festival and TEDxSydney (just gone), Sydney Film Festival and a mass of related events, noone has any excuse to be bored.

With so many events, how can you keep track of the things that might be relevant to your industry or creative pursuits?

With Twitter and paper.li it can be quite easy. If you haven’t dived into the Twitterverse, this is the perfect opportunity to do so – with a purpose.

Follow.
Choose the organisations, companies or individuals that are of interest. There are a couple of ways of finding them on Twitter. The first is to search Twitter directly. This can be relatively simple for some organisations, but there can be so many different accounts, spellings and other factors that it can take time to track down the right one. The second, easier way is to go to the websites of the organisations of interest, find their official social media links and follow those.

Filter.
There are some great tools within twitter that you can use to begin filtering information so that you get more of what is of interest and less of the noise.

Lists. Taking a moment to create some categories for the accounts you want to follow will provide benefits down the track. You can then create a list for each of these major topics. For example, a communicator might choose to have a few lists such as:

  • Agencies
  • Thought Leaders
  • Clients
  • Media
  • Associations
  • Colleagues

As you find new Twitter accounts to follow, take the time to add them to one or more list categories.

Hashtags: The next essential Twitter tool is the hashtag. Take the time to explore and watch how those accounts that are of interest and see what tags are used.

Conferences and the ‘livetweet’. Livetweeting is one of the greatest aspects of Twitter. While there is seldom any substitute for being there at a great conference or event, finding and following the right tags for the event can be a great source of potted wisdom, triggers for new contacts and links to great information sources.

Find the official hashtags for the events and organisations that are of interest. You can create and save these searches.

Fold it together
There are a number of tools that let you aggregate this information.

Twitter clients. There will be a twitter client to suit you depending on your systems, mobile, aesthetic preferences. Hootsuite and Tweetdeck are two examples. These applications will allow you to view lists and searches easily.

The personal touch. The range of Twitter clients are excellent, but how do you make it a little more fun. paper.li is an excellent resource that enables you to specify lists, twitter accounts, search terms and hashtags and create a ‘newspaper’ from the tweets.

You have significant control over the content and can then share this information in a range of ways – via email, tweet or webpage. It integrates with Facebook as well as Twitter, so you have a great range of sources from which to draw.

There is a degree of ‘randomisation’ – not everything these sources produce will be included every time. It is still a great way of bringing together the collective content of all the sources that interest you in one space.

BrainBusiness is an example, sourced from the range of organisations, speakers and events underway across Sydney over the next few months.

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A simple plan…

The simple guide to creating a communication plan I posted at WikiHow has notched up over 2000 visits.

How to Create a Communication Plan

from wikiHow – The How to Manual That You Can Edit

A communication plan is a road map for getting your message across to your audience. The plan is an essential tool of marketing, human resources, corporate affairs and public relations management. Spending time planning your approach will improve your ability to achieve your desired outcome.

Steps

  1. Know why you need to communicate. What do you want to be different as a result of communicating?
  2. Consider who you need to communicate with. Make a list of your potential audiences.
  3. What do these audiences think about the issue or topic now? How can you find out? Make a note of what you know or what you need to do to find out.
  4. Define. What do you want your audience to KNOW, THINK or DO as a result of the communication?
  5. Write your key messages for each audience. These may be the same for each audience, or you may have to consider addressing their differences. Remember the purpose of your communication.
  6. Decide when you need to deliver your messages. Your timing may determine how you need to communicate.
  7. Decide how to deliver your messages. If you are trying to generate awareness, written communication may be enough. If the message is complex, or controversial, you may need to plan for more interactive approaches including face to face communication.
    • Who will deliver the message? How will you prepare them?
    • What resources are required?
    • How will you enable feedback? How will you know that your audience has received the communication?
    • How will you know if they have understood, acted on or changed as a result of the communication?
    • How will you follow up if additional communication is required?

Tips

  • Be really clear about why you need to communicate. This will be important planning the who, how and when.
  • To help capture the information, you can use a table with the following columns:
  • Audience | Outcome | Message | Approach | Timing | Delivery | Measure/Follow Up | Resource
  • Know your audience. The better you understand their priorities, concerns, issues and environment, the greater your ability to target your messages to them.
  • Know your messages back to front.
  • Be creative in how you access your audience. Go where the fish are – if your audience are online, communicate online. If they are working on the same floor as you – gather together and talk.
  • Focus on what your audiences need. It will help you identify and develop your messages.
  • Remember that you are communicating all the time – a communication plan needs to be consistent with your usual activity.

Warnings

  • Be candid, open and honest in your communications.
  • If you are unsure of something, do not bluff – clarify and commit to following up the information.
  • Don’t use the ‘scattergun’ approach and send a whole lot of communications in the hope that some will stick.

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Create a Communication Plan. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Are you ready to collaborate?

Kayleigh O’Keefe of the the Communication Executive Council recently published a thought-proving piece on the territorial debate about ownership of communication as it relates to the agile enterprise. It is a good representation of the two camps that communication leaders often align with – ‘domination’ versus ‘collaboration’.

I’ve worked with organisations where collaboration was as natural to the culture as breathing, and others where collaboration was seen to herald the arrival of the apocalypse.  My response to Kayleigh’s piece is based on seeing the extremes:

“Perhaps some of the communicators in ‘camp comms’ are those pioneers who fought hard for a seat at the table in tough environments. Organisations get better outcomes when they consist of communities rather than camps.

As organisations strive to find the edge in terms of innovation, agility and performance, collaboration will become a core differentiator. It delivers more sustainable outcomes, builds capability and is fundamentally engaging.

Mature, strategic communication functions are in a unique position to model collaborative capability without resorting to resource-depleting internal competition.

Drawing on skills in consulting, engaging, involving, coaching, facilitating, negotiating, listening, amplifying and sharing, mature communicators have the opportunity to foster and build collaborative organisations.

However, be prepared:

1. Collaboration takes longer – the first time. But as it is practiced, the skills, behaviours and culture that form the bones, muscles and fuel of collaboration start to adapt and become match-fit. Join camp collaboration early – before your organisation is in a capability crisis. Start ‘flexing and stretching’.

2. Collaboration must be more than a mindset. There is an inherent paradox involved in effective collaboration. Organisational collaboration must begin with intent, but it only ‘exists’ through activity and outputs. Something is created by shared intent AND skill AND effort – collaboratively.

3. Know your organisational limits. Everything we know about communication and leadership starting at the top is even more important for collaboration. Senior/exec/C-Suite open and authentic collaboration is the price of admission. If they can’t co-create, the chances of successfully building a collaborative capability approach zero.

Collaboration is a skill that organisations can practice and must learn in order survive for the long term.”

We need role models to show the results of collaboration in organisational terms. I am co-chairing some of the sessions of Melcrum’s Employee Engagement Summit in Melbourne next week. I find it promising that there are parties from all the camps among the case studies: communication, change, human resources and C-level leaders are represented, sharing their stories. I’m looking forward to hearing them.

Sharing

Camp Collaboration

Authentic leadership when it counts

In her final show as guest host of Radio Nation Life Matters, Angela Catterns convenes an excellent program about leadership.

Using the recent example of Queensland Premier Anna Bligh’s performance during the Queensland catastrophes as a springboard for discussion, Angela is joined by studio guests Rosemary Howard Director of AGSM Executive Programs and  Catherine Harris from UNSW.  The session includes an interview with former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, and thoughful talkback comments. Covering social, political and business leadership, the discussion summarises a number of the themes and challenges for authentic leadership. Definitely worth a listen.

Podcast and transcript
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2011/3146774.htm
Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/RNLifeMatters?ref=ts&v=wall#!/RNLifeMatters

Anna Bligh’s authentic leadership during the January crises set a benchmark for authentic communication. IABCNSW is hosting a professional development lunch  on Crisis Communication with guest speaker Brisbane City Councillor David McLachlan on 30 March.  Details here: http://www.iabcnsw.com/calendar/15/41-Crisis-Communication-in-the-digital-age.html