Internal External

Not everyone appreciates the difference between Internal Communications and External Communications, either as a Department, or as a medium.

External comms often all about the dot com website, but that probaby comes under the remit of the Marketing Department, so, gods help us all to understand what they're on about!

Another aspect of Ext comms is the ubiquitous Press Release. Written by the Press Relations people, the humble PR is published in prime view on your dot com website, and also sent out to various agencies in the vain hope that 'someone' out there is interested. The striking thing about PRs, is that if you're an interesting company within the industry, and if you're producing interesting products, then the less-interesting websites out there will indeed pick up your PR, and often within just minutes of your publishing it.

This will then bomb the Google News service with your name and news. Fabulous.

But, what about those differences between what is written for the External Audience, and what is written for the Internal Audience (namely, employees)?

It's a big difference. There's content to consider, language use, and voice.

What am I going on about? Well, content wise, we cant go round telling employees everything that's happening in the company! Heavens no! It would be chaos! Opinions are like guns; everyone has one, and few are afraid to use them.

No, we can only really publish things internally (on intranets and via all-employee emails) that we have already published externally. In other words, we assume that our employees are going to blab our sensitive, Share Effecting internal news to the Red Top Newspapers, and thus cause a share-price slump.

Language and Voice wise, sheesh, wouldn't it be good if we actually used adjectives and superlatives to make our written work interesting? Wouldn't it be good if we wrote in a clear and concise, yet interesting way so that our busy employees could 'get the message' - feel engaged - and then get back to work?

It is my sad opinion that Press Releases and Marketing Spiel do none of the above, and simply alienate common workers and make the company and our work seem distant and of no concern to the workforce.

So that's why we have Internal Communications Departments to ensure there is interactive, interesting, clear, concise, information for the staff, written for internal people, written for internal people.

One Year On

Oh my gods! Oh my word! (litterally)

I've been here one whole year, and I'm still working out what my job is!

I must say, I seem to be embedded now; people are far less surprised when I say 'no' to them, and are far more understanding when I rip their incomprehensible copy apart and rewrite it for them.

It's all going well really, and I'm interfacing with the External Comms Dept. more and more too, meaning I must be trusted!

I *did* recently apply for a 'bigger' job at a smaller company, but it turns out they can't afford me; I have ££ needs you see! But apart from my boredom which sometimes makes my thoughts wander, I do love my job in everyway, so, may well still be here in another year.

Wikipedia Internal Communications Page

I created the Wikipedia page about Internal Communications, and thankfully, some other people have sorted it out and expanded it.

You should too!  A "Wiki" is a web page that can be edited by anyone and everyone, without even logging in, so come on, help us spread the word and share information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_communications

Writer's Block

Today I'm writing an article about WiMAX and an article about cancer.

At least I'm supposed to be, whereas in fact I'm surfing, emailing, blogging and generally thinking of other things.  I'm letting you know in the hope that my confession will alleviate my feelings of reluctance to put fingers to keyboard.

You are what you do. I am a writer by virtue of my writing, and so I simply must get on with this, or else there will be deadline's missed and I'll look less competent than I'm supposed to look.

When is a Web not a Web

When it is no longer made up of web pages, that's when.

The web and our intranet is made up of html web pages, it is the interlinking of web pages that creates a ‘web’.

Web pages are the ideal medium to communicate written and graphical information; yet, there are times when other file formats are needed on the web.

• Microsoft Office Documents:
  Word and Excel files might be published on our intranet when there are Forms and Templates to distribute.


• PDFs:
  might be published when official documents need distributing. PDFs are designed for perfect printing and reasonable screen reading.

The usefulness of the intranet is damaged when PDFs and Word documents are published when not needed.

Before publishing a PDF or a Word file, ask yourself; “is this for printing, or is this for reading online?” If it’s for reading, the information should be published as a normal web page.

Damage

How people use the intranet is important; as publishers, we are not the most important people! Our readers are.

By publishing a PDF or a Word document when a web page would be more suitable, we create more work for the reader, we may find that PDFs of Word documents slow their computers down, which, while not terrible, is frustrating when they clicked a link expecting a super-fast web page to show.

Let Them Know

When publishing a PDF or other file, let people know, show them that it is a PDF and tell them how big it is.

Don’t use normal hyperlinks; people expect hyperlinks to link to other web pages, that’s a fact.

Example:

Download the Case Study [PDF: 640KB], for more information.

Never: Read the Case Study for more information.

And NEVER: Click here for the Case Study.