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communications
I've been thinking a lot about communications, both with respect to politics and my job. Here's a list of eleven things that every company and non-profit should make available, on its website (via login, probably), for subsidiaries or chapters or departments to use. These eleven steps will go a very long way to ensuring organizational memory, consistency of branding, and an easy way for under-funded sub-entities to look like their grown-up parents:
- At cost website namespace, templates, and hosting - ie: xxx.organization.ca or organization.ca/xxx, on a giant CMS and via cPanel, infrastructure permitting. Yes, cPanel is not just for the big boys anymore. Yes, I'm saying that every company should be in the hosting business. Why? Because it's ridiculously cheap to buy resale space on banks of servers, it's just intimidating to think about. If the company can afford one web developer, they can do this with not much additional overhead.
- A website template in Wordpress, Drupal, and Blogger.
- In an ideal world, all chapter content should be automatically available to the organization as a whole, and in a format that everybody knows, to ensure continuity after so and so quits or whatshername gets too busy to update things anymore. The best way to do this is with option #1: a giant CMS, or at least space that the company can peek at now and then.
The problem arises when, inevitably, the organization gets some web developer who really wants to put on their resume that they designed the website for their local chapter of the Brotherhood of Pigeonhawk Breeders or Ernst & Young or whatever. This person, who has just enough tech savvy to be dangerous, will inevitably throw around acronyms like "AJAX", "CSS", etc, and convince somebody in charge that their chapter/department is unique so they really, really need their own website to host the pet technology of the web developer. They're special, and not like the other departments/chapters because they have X members or are in a situation of X demographic anomaly, or whatever... The key point is that they absolutely, totally, completely need to go it alone.
This will happen, and when it does, there needs to be lots of policy and guidelines around branding to allow the website to follow general look-and-feel while still being aggravatingly independent.
- Conversely, this may be necessary because Head Office has gone on the wrong track, picked a horrid CMS that nobody can use, or has an overworked web developer who can't service the influx of requests for tech in a timely fashion, or the servers are overloaded and there's no money for more infrastructure. So it needs to be as easy as possible for sub-organizations to follow look-and-feel and basic branding so they can do it themselves instead of being tethered to a sinking content-ship.
- In an ideal world, all chapter content should be automatically available to the organization as a whole, and in a format that everybody knows, to ensure continuity after so and so quits or whatshername gets too busy to update things anymore. The best way to do this is with option #1: a giant CMS, or at least space that the company can peek at now and then.
- Photoshop headers, swoops, ticks, gradient backgrounds, and stock photos for website and print materials. Essentials include:
- an icon set
- bullet points
- a starter CSS file and XHTML page
- Any other small but essential graphical elements that make up the organization's branding
- An InDesign and Publisher newsletter template
- An InDesign and Publisher newspaper (b/w) and magazine (color) ad template in a few sizes.
- A one-page "Come to our great xxx"-type flier template in MS Word, InDesign, and Publisher
- Logos in all colours and reverse-outs (this is duh territory, but hey)
- T-shirt templates (seriously!)
- Sample letters-to-the-editor, memos, and letterhead
- An email address, chapter@xxx.organization.ca, for placing on communications (if it's a non-profit or similar organization where boards change their members more than Paris Hilton changes shoes).
- A form where organizations can post events and news to the main website and access an RSS feed of same.
Except for #1, this is all stuff that the organization should already have. And #1, a basic CMS, is something they should have. cPanel hosting is a nice-to-have, to at least keep content, if not in the same format, at least in the same locally accessible space.
That's about it off the top of my head. Can anybody else think of anything more?
Comments
Make the use of all of these things optional. There's nothing worse than being constrained by some committee-approved design concept.
Yep. That's why I advocate making as many graphics available as possible - even down to things like stock photos and swoopy-bits. Because lots of the time, people like the general ideas, but just not the implementation. So the easier you make it to add the organization's elements to the design, the more likely you are to get something that looks at least familiar to the viewer as related to X.
I tell my clients to think in terms of a subdivision in a nice neighbourhood. Not all of the houses were built using the same architectural drawings, or the same landscaping, or even the same colour scheme, but you can still tell that they were designed at the same time by the same developer. It's in the best interests of a company to make sure that stucco colours and basic style match - no 18th century Tudor houses in our Art Nouveau development, plz - while letting people change the floor plan to suit their weird lifestyles.
But what gets me is that a lot of organizations actually make it difficult for their departments to even copy their graphic design, even if they WANT to! This is usually an oversight - lots of things produced off-site by contractors, or whipped up by various admin staff, and there's no central repository or contact. It's just such a waste of capital and duplication of effort. The power of networks should be able to fix this easily, but it's only rarely being harnessed well.
Speaking to your last point, I wonder when our employer will get around to actually making the visual identity stuff available online instead of on a 5+ year old CD that's never been re-issued? ;-)
LOL. Indeed. Actually, what got me thinking about this was the QNET group meeting that's happening in September. :)
Hmm,
This appears to be a framework for a lot of things, not all of which should necessarily fall under the explicit realm of communications. Yes, a content management system is vital for communications but it's HOW things are communicated, not WHAT things are communicated. I know you've taken on a lot of roles yourself, some of which are a cross of IT and Communications but seriously, some of these things should remain separate.
That being said, a manual or mandatory training for the CMS should be included in the list. New people *need* this and never get it. I've watched new staff at various companies go through this one a lot. Some people get put in charge of websites that know nothing about websites, and many other items that you'd expect they'd have to qualify for.
Also, the guy who wants to make a chapter page is a funny example. As much as this should not happen, you are correct - it does, and these kind of people need to be shut down - the site should already include the tools necessary for chapters to manage themselves properly and extensively.
Finally, the one big thing you're missing here (and this is utterly essential) is a Brand Manual. Ideally an item like this would have many things inside, but instead of writing it out, have a look at the BBC brand manual:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/branding/manual/index.shtml
Good post!
-D
Thanks, Davin, I'll add that to the list.
I disagree, though, that content and content management are separate, at least in principle. Information management is the key here - organizations do not manage their information well, because people still think of communications as discrete items rather than as pieces of ordered content that a semantically-aware system can index and process. If there was a way to Dewey-decimalize everything digitally without a CMS, OK. But there isn't - knowledge management systems are SO BAD and they require tonnes of duplicate effort. But most things in a company will end up on the web as a communications item eventually (I'm not drawing a distinction between intra/internet for this purpose, but I'll admit that it is crucial). So why not make the medium the message?
We'll have to agree to disagree. I know many job titles that are more than able to generate content but not able to manage it, and vice versa. I have been in the structures, managing - and also been at the other end of the spectrum. I had many colleagues not capable of the cross-over but very good at what they did - be it writing or the management of information. We're talking librarians versus writers here - in my opinion there is quite a distinction.
Hmm. Give me a few days, I'm thinking about it :)
(And yes, it's true, I've taken on a lot of roles, because I am CRAZY. But I think it gives me a unique, nerdy perspective =)
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