For Your Approval

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For the last four months I've been the interim managing editor of a biweekly employee publication, leading a team of contributors from across a big company. I helped my client launch the company-wide newsletter, which replaced six regional publications.

We just published our ninth edition, a  16-pager packed with news, features, great photos and not-so-great photos, lists of new hires, service anniversaries and retirements, a person-on-the-street interview, project updates, the results of a contest, and so on.

Being a newsletter junkie, I look forward to getting the first box of papers delivered from the printer. There's something primally satisfying about the smell of fresh ink on the page.

As I held the latest edition in my hands and thumbed through it, I thought to myself: this is Web zero point zero. My hands and eyeballs are the still the most sophisticated browser on the planet. For every employee who picks up the publication, it's going to get 16 page views, to put it in webspeak. Even if only half of the employee base picks up the publication (which is more uptake than many online newsletters get), that would be 2,000 readers times 16 page views, equals 32,000 page views per issue.

Even if the reader just glances through, maybe reads a few headlines and cutlines here and there, lands on one or two stories and reads them, that's already more communication in a five- or ten-minute browse than most intranet sites can accomplish in a week, if not a month...if not ever. And it's easier to read than a glaring computer screen.

As my friend David Murray says, the employee publication is no longer a news vehicle because of the speed of online communication, but it's still relevant because it's often the only physical manifestation of a company's brand, its values and its culture.

I agree. And good old ink on paper is still one of the most effective communication channels in the corporate world. It's a shame so many companies still cling to the notion that the print employee publication is a thing of the past.

A social network for communicators

Last week my friends at Ragan Communications quietly launched a beta version of a new social network for communicators. The web portal, myragan.com, is similar to other online communities like Facebook and Linkedin. Once you sign up with a username and password (membership is free), you have the ability to identify and build a customized online directory of friends, trade instant messages, join special-interest groups, etc.

The difference is that it's designed specifically for communicators -- and, even more specifically, for the thousands of people in our field who pay attention to Ragan's many arms and legs, including newsletters, conferences, workshops, manuals and blogs.

It's a good idea, and looks like it will be a worthy extension of the Ragan brand/empire.

The challenge Ragan and all the other social networking sites are facing right now is that there are so many of them. Right now I have usernames on Skype, Linkedin, Facebook and Myragan, plus of course I spend time keeping this blog going, not to mention trying to work for a living. It's no wonder my barbecue podcast is on hiatus. I'm feeling social media burnout, and I'm far from being a super-user.

But I don't think this is a huge problem for Ragan, because we're still in the "early adopter" stage of all this stuff and the majority of people don't participate in these kinds of things...yet.

It's too early to say whether proprietary social networks will all survive in their current form, or become swallowed up by meta-networks that will be many things to many people. But in the meantime, Ragan has started one heckuvan online party for communicators, and I invite you to join in the fun.