Employee Communications: Internal Branding = External Success

August 31, 2009

It’s a simple equation. Internal Branding = External Success.  Employee communications programs should embody the brand and foster a culture of communication that rallies employees around the mission and business goals of the company.  Yet many organizations neglect internal communication.  With an economy in the tank, some companies feel that employees should be happy to have a job.  But when things are bad, employees need to be hearing frequently about the true state of the company, what management is doing about it, what it means for the individual employee. Read more

Please Let Me Change My Email Address!

June 16, 2009

I subscribe to many (maybe too many) online newsletters, magazines, newspapers and blogs. I enjoy receiving them all and I would like to continue receiving them. But why won’t they let me change my email address? My new company name is Write Speak Sell and my new email is jpaladino@writespeaksell.com. Not surprising, of course. Read more

Juicing Up the Annual Report

March 11, 2009

Spring is coming and so is the avalanche of annual reports that public companies send to their shareholders.  And, as usual, most of them will be as dull as dishwater.  Think about it.  When was the last time someone told you he had curled up in bed with a good annual report to read?  Not likely, unless sleep was the primary motivation. Annual reports can be real dullards. Read more

• Try Different — Seth Godin

  The usual mantra is to 'try harder'. Trying harder is impossible when you're already trying as hard as you can.

  But you can always try different.

  Years ago, I was creating trivia questions for a product we built for Prodigy. We had a 99% accuracy rate in doing the questions. Which was great, except there were 1800 questions in a batch, which meant 18 wrong each time, which was totally and completely unacceptable. These were honest mistakes, made by smart people working as hard as they could.

  No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't do better than 99%. So we switched our system completely and did it in a totally different way. Same number of people, same number of hours, 100% accuracy.

  If it's not working, harder might not be the answer.

• Blog Tags

  annual report Blog brand Brand advocates Branding Business Communication CEO Change Communication Communication channel communications Communications Strategy Crisis Communications culture of communication employee communication Employee Communications Employee Engagement Employee Recognition Employees as Brand Advocates Google IBM internal communication internal communications jeannette paladino Jeff Simpkins Key Messages Letter writing Mashable Media Interviews Motivation Nonverbal communication Passion Personal branding Planning Problems public relations Social Media Social Media Strategy Thank You Notes training Trust Twitter viral community Write Speak Sell Writing