Organisational communications in 2010s
April 11th, 2010 - by: Jukka Helin
I originally wrote this in Finnish here, but thought it´d be nice to share it here as well. This piece is about my insights to the change in PR and communications caused by the more social and open communications environment ie. social media.
Evolution of organizational e-communications
The evolution of web powered organisational communications in the last 20 years can be summed up in the following.
1995-
Communications officers collected the contents for web publishing from the experts within the organization and gave them to the programmer, who turned the content into html and updated the web page.
2000-
Welcome the content management systems that gave the communications experts the power to publish web sites themselves. Still communications stayed centralized.
2010-
Welcome open forums, where the experts themselves participate and interact with their respective audiences. Organisational communications becomes dispersed and more open.
From centralized to dispersed
Organizational communications is no longer centralized. More and more employees find themselves taking part in professional discussions in open or semi-open forums. This dispersed communications creates numerous small streams that create the big river of organizational communications.
It’s obvious organizations are no longer in the position, where they can singlehandedly control their public image. Brands belong to the consumers and public image is defined outside the PR departments direct sphere of influence.
This is something that Nestlé learnt well during their latest PR accident, this time on Facebook.
Communicators turn to consultants
The slide from centralized to dispersed changes profoundly the role of communications personnel. Fragmentation creates the need for education and encouragement; communications officers need to become facilitators for other personnel and prepare them so that they know how to engage in the right forums, with the right attitude and the correct message.
This is the only way to control the public image of the organization in an open communications environment. And it also creates the need for the communications department to collaborate intensively with the HR.
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How search engines work
February 7th, 2010 - by: Jukka Helin
Searching for information is easy, just type what you wanna know in to Google and it’ll take care of the rest. But what to do, if you’re the one, who has the best knowledge about a certain topic and you want to make sure everybody gets your information instead of someone else’s?
It’s the question that starts the engines for the quite prosperous SEO industry that takes your money and converts it into better ranking on search results pages. SEO experts are useful and can help you a lot, but it doesn’t hurt to know a little about the topic yourself.
This is something I wrote a couple of years ago in my previous work at Optinet. The original was published in Finnish. In addition to translating it, I’ve shortened the article a little and added some updates. It’s really non-tech and directed for the occasional content producers, who aren’t tech-savvy and don’t know in too much detail how the internet works.
Search engines are simple
In principle search engine is really simple. It has just four parts: index, crawler, evaluator and user interface for taking input and showing results.
Index is like an inverted dictionary. It contains all the words and it knows on which sites those words appear. Example: the index contains once the word romance and under that words’ metadata is stored all the locations where romance can be found.
Crawler is a program that leaps from site to site using links and it indexes all the content it finds on the way. Crawler feeds the index with new and updated content.
Evaluator is a program full of different algorithms. It digs the index and tries to find the best answers for the question the user asks.
User interface is the search box and the results page you use when searching for information.
So all and all it’s quite simple. Put those four parts together and you’ve got yourself a search engine.
Search engines are complex
First, the index is huge. Imagine, it contains all the words in the world, in all the languages. Second, it knows all the sites that have a certain word and the cotext in which the word appears. Third, it’s not just words the indices contain, it’s also places, people, video, audio and their relations.
And fourth, the evaluator is even more complex. It’s a collection of fine tuned algorithms that measure hundreds of variables on a given site to provide the best answer for the query.
This is why search engines are complex and why you occasionally need an expert to put your rankings in order.
What you can do?
As I mentioned earlier, search engines thrive for providing best answers to your questions. When you remember that, it’s easy to get the basics right in your search engine optimatization. Try to provide the best answers, and let the search engines do the rest. If you really have the best information, search engines, and users, will find it and spread it.
How to do it?
Imagine that the search engine is like a busy reader, who has to go through a pile of newspapers to find the the most comprehensive article about climate change. What does the reader focus on? Simple: sections, headings, sub-headings and references.
The search engine does exactly the same. So you’re well off, if you’ve got the headings, titles, links and anchor texts right and understandable on the page. These are the most important things when optimizing your content; and there is a general consensus about them.
Know your audience
Finally, it’s extremely important to understand that you are not producing the content for search engines, but for the users coming to your site. Inbound links from other websites are valuable when you want to boost your site’s rank. So make sure people have a reason to link to your site, and when approriate, ask them to link.
Find out more
Interesting exclusive from Wired magazine on how Google refines it’s algorithms
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How internet is changing non-profit organizations
January 23rd, 2010 - by: Jukka Helin
I recently held an one-day seminar to people responsible of communications in big Finnish trade unions. The topic was “How to make social media part of communications in unions”.
As I was preparing for the seminar, it became clear I needed to explore the topic little deeper. Just pointing out different channels and technologies of participation wouldn’t suffice. So, in the end the seminar was about how internet and social media in particular is changing the foundations of how non-profit organizations operate.
I held the seminar in Finnish so the slides are in Finnish as well. When I get the time I’ll check into translating them. This seminar was more on the theoretical side of social media, so I’m hoping that I’ll soon be able to hold a sequel, where I could go deeper in how things happen in practice.
The best thing by far in the seminar was that people we’re really excited. Everyone was talking and sharing their experiences. There are big things coming in the future, when non-profit organizations take their natural place in the participatory media environment.
It’s just question of time; and us partners helping them find and try the right methods and tools.
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Case: Designing high conversion e-commerce site
January 13th, 2010 - by: Jukka Helin
I started working on Yhdistysavain in the spring of 2008. It’s a CMS-based service for small assosiations. I had the chance to be part of the team that developed the product. After the product launch I took the lead role in marketing the service for the end buyers and unions that could buy the product for their local associations.
In 2008 we started off the marketing following the golden rule of web development: “Perfect is the worst enemy of better”. The product was a new opening for the company, and we weren’t quite sure, what would be the best way to contact the customers. So we decided to do small steps in several directions to see which would yield the best results.
We did this for a few months in 2008 and after analysing the results, we knew pretty well how to tackle the product marketing in 2009. Most important lessons that we learned were:
- We needed a good visual guide to be able to market effectively
- We needed a high-performing web site for selling the service
We collected good data from the first customers, so we knew well how to talk about the product; what were the customers expectations, needs and wishes, even the hidden ones. The things we lacked were the solid marketing tools.
Doing the design and concept
First I called graphic designer Mikko Hiltunen, with whom I’ve worked previously. He was my choice from the beginning, because I knew that in addition to graphic design he’s a really good illustrator as well. After getting kick-ass visuals from him, I started designing the concept for the new product web site.
The rim was high for the site, because it was the only place where the customer could buy the product. Even if everything else would go perfectly in marketing, but the site would fail, we’d have zero sales. The key things in consideration while doing the concept were:
- conversion rate
- SEO
- paid traffic from search engines
- data collection and testing for further improvements
I received a lot of help from Antti Peisa and web designer Viljami Salminen, who did the final design and programming for the site. Together we decided to do a plain and effective site that goes straight to the point. We started boosting the conversion rate by putting call to action links on every page. Most of them lead straight to ordering. Additionally, I did a lot of copywriting to make sure the texts were easy, informational and convincing. This site was no place for marketing BS, our customers want straightforward info.
SEO is a big deal on the site, considering that a good amount of traffic come from organic hits. We designed by hand the most important landing pages and I collected several inbound links on those pages from other corporate sites and from our partners. The same landing pages were useful as entrance points for paid traffic from search engines.
The new Yhdistysavain site was launched in September 2009 and the results were instant. The overall bounce rate tropped by 20 points, and the conversion rate was and is improving. But we’re definitely not done yet. We’re on the process of streamlining the site based on the data we’ve been collecting. In addition, I’m interested in exploring how to use social media in B2C-marketing.
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Case: Company identity and concept design
January 10th, 2010 - by: Jukka Helin
We started to develop the identity and appearance for our new company Avoine. The work started from scratch and we only had two months before the launch.
We started searching for a good design agency able to help us out against a tight dead line. After a short but intensive search period, we concluded that the guys at Werklig we’re up to the task. And right we were, they did an impeccaple job.
With the agency we started to draft out the company identity and a visual look to go with it. Avoine provides web services and membership solutions to the biggest associations and unions in Finland; that’s a sector where values are in the core of existence. And the new identity had to reflect the value-centric and devoted people working for the new company.
So the discussion started, and we recognized the most important values to identify the new company. Openness and the desire to enter a dialog with our customers rose above the rest. To succeed in the dialog, we had to focus on the needs of the customers instead of our own offering. That simple understanding became the core of the company identity and all its appearance: web site, marketing methods, ways of communicating; the lot.
There is more to come on how we bring to life the company identity, but I’ll give some insight here on the web site concept.
Doing the concept design for avoine.fi
The company launch was in 1st of January 2010, and I started to draft out the concept with Antti Peisa in the beginning of December. So there wasn’t much time to play around; but we weren’t gonna be satisfied with “good enough”.
In short, we wanted to do something totally different from the usual company pages that list the products and services of the company. Not like there’s necessarily something wrong with that approach, but we felt that it just isn’t a good way to fulfill our devotion to openness and dialog. So we came up with a simple and beautiful way of listing our offerings.
The concept
Instead of talking about products and services we designed a front page call to action navigation that lists with one word the most frequent questions our customers have, when they approach us. The words lead to a landing page that provides an answer to that question or problem, topped of with a customer case to clarify. Only under these landing pages can you find the products and services that we provide. And even then; we do not speak of the products as they were important in themselves. Their value springs from the value that they can offer the customer, and that is made clear in the presentations as well.
In addition, we wanted to show that we’re serious about openness and dialog. So we put on the front page a feed from our customers sites showing the relevant news in the field.
After the initial concept we proceeded with the layout. Werklig gave us good instructions on how to build the visuals; so we called our web designer Viljami Salminen from Optinet to bring the web site to life. Viljami only had couple of days to design and program the site, and he did superior work.
There’s more to come, and I’ll post it here in due time. In the meanwhile go and enjoy the site: www.avoine.fi