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Snap – Internal Communications Solutions.
Hot Tips for Internal Communicators
Keep it simple and don’t get wowed by technology
Just because the technology can do it doesn’t mean you should do it
Who is in the driving seat? Should your project be driven by what your business needs or by what the
technology can do? A communications driven project, should be about improving communications. It is
obvious that you will need to work with IT as part of a cross-functional team. They can assist your
planning with creative ideas and knowledge about what the technology can do. But don’t get hi-jacked by
the IT team’s enthusiasm for the latest hot technology. It is the Comms team that should drive a
communications project.
For example, RSS enabling your Intranet is often recommended as a great way to keep staff informed of
new Intranet content. However, communications practitioners are finding that RSS is not always the
‘silver bullet’ it is touted to be. One issue that arises is that it requires staff to opt into the feeds they are
interested in. The reality however, is that often staff have limited time and/or interest in specific subjects
(despite needing to know about them to be effective in their jobs), and fail to opt into feeds. In addition,
as with most automated processes that don’t involve real people, the process can break down, meaning
new feeds appear after every simple change to a site (e.g. a simple amendment such as a spelling
change). This can cause frustration and information overload, and drive the users, who have taken the
time to opt into feeds, to opt out again...fast!
SharePoint is also a useful tool but it requires power users and IT staff to have a considerable amount of
expensive training. “Without at least two well-trained people, a systems administrator and a
developer/programmer - your odds of finding yourself in chaos are fairly high.” If SharePoint isn’t for
you, most of its functionality can be achieved via simple plug-ins to your existing Intranet at a fraction of
the cost and complexity. For example, Google sells a plug-in server that can provide good search
functionality.
Try these Snap tools
If you outsource some of SharePoint’s features to Snap, you will find simple, cost effective solutions to
complex problems. For example:
Snap Ticker allows administrators to easily create and send scrolling ‘news headlines’ with click-
through capability to members of their teams and/ or a wider employee audience. This keeps staff
informed of new information on the Intranet that is relevant to them. In addition, it allows
administrators to push out existing RSS feed sources, so if your Intranet is RSS enabled, you can
remove the step requiring users to opt in if required.
Snap Blog provides cost effective, user friendly blogging capability and is a good way to involve staff.
Snap Blog is a tool built specifically for secure employee communications purposes and has only the
features that internal communicators need and consider important. It is easy to use, with
comprehensive search features meaning maximum usage and value for staff.
Find writers in your business who can produce engaging, interesting and relevant content. In
addition, if your CEO or other senior managers have the skills, it can be a great way to raise their
profile and build engagement across the business.
Snap Forum is a good way of enabling staff to engage in online discussion covering pretty much any
aspect of the business. The structure and behaviour of Snap Forum makes forums easy for busy
readers to scan or search for key information. Handy reporting tools such as the time spent on-line
by individual users mean that the productivity concerns expressed by managers over such
communication mediums can be managed and addressed.