Break Content Out of Email Prison and Let Communicators Communicate
Communication professionals have a tough job. The need to identify, draft and finalize communications content is greater than ever. In a 24×7 “always on” world people want more information than ever, and they want it in easy to understand, digestible language.
Whew, the work just keeps piling up. New product announcements, upgrades, customer wins, advanced product uses, partnerships, co-marketing arrangements, new distributors, new market additions, new executives, new sales programs, sales numbers, pricing changes, compliance requirements, updated labels – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much content to create that we never stop putting out more great stuff.
But, we’re not always the ones using all this great content. Often, we’re distributing that out to an army of other communicators. And, distribution is a challenge. Let’s face it, we most commonly rely on one tool to put those golden nuggets in front of user eyes – and that tool is email. Now, after all that work identifying key messages, drafting, writing, editing and gaining approvals, that wonderful content becomes one of dozens of emails the end user receives each and every day.
Email is becoming “email hell.” Too much for most people to absorb, and too much to track. On average each American worker receives 122 work related emails every single day. Scanning and reading these emails takes up 28% of each person’s time.
All that work, and in the end those key messages and other communications are sitting in an email inbox, waiting to be discovered and communicated by the end user. Or worse, that content gets filed into the inevitable email archive that just thrills our legal and IT departments. And with multiple versions, we just multiplied the problem and the hassles for users.
Great content is trapped in email and server prisons. And, our communicators are trapped there too.
Cloud-based content sharing tools can free our content. In the cloud, all users – those inside and outside our organization – can find, access and use content quickly and easily. In the modern mobile environment, our great content can reside in an organized, centralized communications resource center. There, users can find what they want, when they want it, on their smart phone, tablet or laptop. They aren’t searching through all those emails, because their content is right there on their dashboard. Content is targeted at those who need it, and is available 24×7 inside their organization-specific resource center.
By putting content in a mobile web application, users experience a simple Facebook or LinkedIn style interface. Posts are easy to scan, with highlights on the major bullets they need. And most importantly, the content is always there in one place, separated from all the “noise” that is today’s email interface.
Further, now it is easy for the communications professional to highlight the importance of a key message by making it a “hot post” that all key users will see first and foremost for timely content distribution. And if the communications professionals need users to take action on these key messages they can assign “to dos,” and even track follow-ups to see if users followed through on key messages.
“Look in your email” is no longer the way effective communications pros tell users where to find the content needed to communicate. No longer do communications pros need to worry if users found the key messages, or if a user is taking advantage of the current version of important content. All of that is solved by cost-effective, cloud-based content sharing tools.
Let’s release the content from email prison and allow communicators to focus on communicating.
Original Content Matters 