Page 209 - Convergent Journalism an Introduction Writing and Producing Across Media

Using Multimedia to Communicate with Employees

of distribution methods. E-mail should also not be used for lengthy
documents. Instead, post the material on the Intranet and send a link
to the material in a short e-mail. Don’t be like the CEO who sent a
150-MB presentation to all 30,000 employees twice!
We must also work closely with our information technology person-
nel to ensure anti-spam software doesn’t interrupt our communication.
As with the media pitch letter, the subject line is crucial to avoid the
immediate “delete” reaction. We need to be concise enough in our
writing to provide e-mails to our employees that require a minimal
amount of scrolling.
Another multimedia option that is frequently overlooked as an inter-
nal communication tool is the listserv or opt-in e-mail. It empowers
employees to control their own communication needs and ensures
that only those publics with an active interest in the subject receive
the information. This not only improves productivity, but also stands
to create a segment within the organization of highly credible, highly
motivated, and well-informed individuals who add immeasurably to
your communication efforts.
Employee blogs have the potential to help the public relations effort 199
by providing another valuable resource. An uncontrolled media, this
potential resource is only as good as the overall communications effort.
Ill-informed or disgruntled employees are not likely to say favorable
things about the organization on their blogs, so they cannot be counted
on all the time. Neither should they be ignored, because they can help
provide the practitioner with insight as to the pulse of the employees.
They are also increasingly becoming a highly credible source for the
media, which further encourages our attention.
Many employee newsletters are going online today, significantly
reducing expenses and publication turnaround. Printing can be expen-
sive, so organizations avoid full-color formats altogether and frequently
restrict their publication to four pages. Producing the newsletter online,
especially as a PDF (portable document format), allows the public
relations practitioner to publish an attractive newsletter without the
expense of printing. Employees who desire a hard copy of the publica-
tion have only to print out the PDF. We will want to stay alert to how
technologically savvy our employees are. To ensure we can still meet
the information needs of all employees, we need to keep some hard
copies on hand.
Bulletin (or discussion) boards provide an outstanding way to
empower employees. Because all employee communication is based