Executive blogs have the potential to be a genuinely powerful communication vehicle, but in our experience from countless intranets, they seem to frequently miss the mark. Here are a few observations which will help you improve the impact of blogging in your organisation. Thanks to @neil_jenkins for additional materials.

Observations from failing blogs

• Tend to be about the execs, but rarely by the execs resulting in a loss of important credibility. Readers need to believe that the words come from the purported author.

• Often an extension of other internal communication routines, resulting in them covering somewhat similar materials to internal news briefs or worse, press releases. Blogs are unique vehicles and should carry unique materials.

• They read like a diary (unsurprising given that’s often how they’re created). The result is that they often read like your children’s holiday report back (“on Monday I did…. On Tuesday I met with …”)

• They never ask for feedback from the employees. Lacking feedback loses one of the main contributors to a successful blog. A CEO’s blog is a virtual conversation with employees and we all know conversation is a two-way street.

Source: www.business2community.com Posted by admin 2 days, 1 hour, 45 minutes ago

The company intranet is kind of like the middle child in a family. W..._The company intranet is kind of like the middle child in a family. We care about it, but its siblings usually get more attention. In this scenario, the siblings are external websites and social media channels. Websites always seem to get the makeover and the budget allocations when push comes to shove. Since social media is the last born, it’s the pride and joy of the company and leaders are focusing on this fun and energizing medium.

What many companies and leaders do not understand is that the intranet connects employees with the company and is an important engagement tool. Engagement equals happy employees, less turnover, increased innovation and savings on the bottom line. These things matter.

The following sections represent the basics of the latest intranet trends and aim to get you thinking about ways to make your intranet more engaging.

Source: bit.ly Posted by http://christopherswan.myopenid.com/ 58 days, 5 hours, 47 minutes ago

Executive blogs have the potential to be a genuinely powerful communication vehicle, but in our experience from countless intranets, they seem to frequently miss the mark. Here are a few observations which will help you improve the impact of blogging in your organisation.

*Observations from failing blogs

Source: intranetizen.com Posted by admin 81 days, 1 hour, 50 minutes ago

If customers get the first click right they have twice as much of a chance of completing their task than if they get it wrong.

Nobody likes taking a wrong turn, particularly when it’s your first turn. If you have travelled 10 kilometers in the wrong direction, then it feels like you are travelling back 20 kilometers.

Linking is the foundation of the Web. It is its key distinguishing characteristic. It is what makes the Web the Web. The essence of linking is navigation. The essence of navigation is helping someone get someplace. A link is a signpost, a promise.

Source: my.intrateam.dk Posted by admin 90 days, 2 hours, 26 minutes ago

Recent developments in HAT software herald an exciting possibility to add much needed versatility to today’s CMS systems. In future we may be able to manage content for publication to nearly all our different publication channels all from a single program …

Source: writingfortheweb.tumblr.com Posted by MDavison 96 days, 10 hours, 25 minutes ago

A recent poll we conducted showed that employees want more how-to content on intranets. But how do you design an intranet that puts “how to” content at the center of your strategy?

Having been involved in a project to implement a task-based intranet using SharePoint, I’d recommend the following five step approach:

1. Identify and prioritize tasks that will be supported by the intranet
2. Identify other content types required to support these tasks
3. Identify the relationships between the content types
4. Design templates for each content type
5. Design multiple navigation paths to enable staff to easily find these tasks

These are described in more detail below...

Source: www.cmswire.com Posted by admin 99 days, 3 hours, 27 minutes ago

If you were to look at a homepage of an average intranet, you would likely see a mix of industry articles, corporate news and announcements. While this information is nice, it is not what most employees want to read, a recent poll says.

What do employees want? "How-to" content, says Andrew Wright, manager of the Worldwide Intranet Challenge. Wright conducted the poll to determine what type of intranet content employees think is the most useful.

Stop plastering news articles all over your intranet's homepage. Employees would much rather read practical information, according to a new poll.

Source: www.ragan.com Posted by admin 107 days, 1 hour, 28 minutes ago

I personally do not make it public knowledge when its my birthday. I get embarrassed by any fuss and am conscious of the fact that I am no spring chicken anymore. Though when I saw the following Tweet in my feed last night I thought it was a wonderful idea.@vj2w Feel special. My Intranet is customised to wish me HB. Nice touch.

I retweeted this post and commented that I thought is was a great idea. Wouldn't be too hard to implement and it would be appreciated.

Another of my Intranet tweeps...

Source: diga2230.blogspot.com Posted by admin 128 days, 3 hours, 17 minutes ago

Curation is a relatively new trend online, and is absolutely vital to an organization; not an option, organizations must start looking at curation as a core activity.”

Content curation is loosely defined as finding, filtering and sharing valuable content with context with others. To see content curation at work, see the new, updated Delicio.us, or Storify.

Read the full story at Intranet Blog

Source: www.intranetblog.com Posted by bee 129 days, 3 hours, 26 minutes ago

During a recent talk on content curation, I showed a page from American Electric Power's intranet that included news about the company from external sources. Several in the audience wondered how the communicators at AEP curated that content, so I asked Internal Communications Director William Amurgis for a quick rundown. Instead, he replied with an email that was good enough to be a blog post—and William gave me his permission to turn it into one.

William Amurgis Director, Internal Communications, American Electric Power:

We've explored automated feeds over the years, and found them to be either too inclusive (too many redundant or irrelevant stories) or too exclusive (missing key stories or sources). So, we assign someone the task—which takes about an hour a day, or less—of searching for relevant news from the external media, and re-publishing the news on our intranet.

We have an agreement with an organization that permits us to republish from many sources, including major newspapers, magazines, and trade journals. We also use various alert systems and e-mail subscriptions to help with the story discovery.

Source: holtz.com Posted by admin 141 days ago