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Welcome to Econnect Communication’s March 2007 newsletter –
‘Keeping it in-house’.
This month, we look at the importance of internal communication
and the value of having clear communication protocols,
especially for large collaborative programs involving several
organisations.
We also include some feedback to our last newsletter, with some
tips about poster presentations at conferences. As usual we
welcome your feedback to this newsletter.
Regards,
Econnect Communication
Jenni Metcalfe, Michelle Riedlinger, Mary O’Callaghan, Sarah
Bartlett, Melanie McKenzie, Tara Thorne, and Shonette Wilder.
In this issue: Keeping it
in-house
Communicating in-house
Communication protocols
Media
releases: no dumping ground
Reader
response: poster sessions at conferences
Surf club
Quotation of the month
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Communicating in-house
By Jenni Metcalfe
Communicators within organisations often get so busy
communicating with people outside that they forget to
communicate internally.
I've often noticed that researchers we work with know there
are professional communicators within their organisation,
but don't know what they do and don't know how the
communicators can help them.
It's important to keep marketing your services internally.
Some ways to let people know what you do are to:
-
offer to present a staff seminar about your work and its
relevance to staff
-
have a simple brochure about what you do or put
something prominent up on your intranet
-
make sure you go to teas, lunches and social events;
informal mingling can do wonders (and you'll also find
some great media stories that way)
-
celebrate your successes in your internal ezine; say
what you did and who you worked with to achieve that
success
-
observe or participate in relevant workshops (e.g. when
we run media skills workshops for an organisation’s
researchers, we like to include their communicators too;
the communicators can explain internal policies to
researchers, and after the workshop they find that they
collaborate better on media work.)
Communication protocols
By
Mary O'Callaghan
Communication protocols can be a mix of policies and
guidelines for communicating about your organisation (or
program), internally and externally.
They help you prepare and deliver all communication about
your organisation or program in a professional manner, i.e.
consistently, with a high degree of quality and by going
through the correct approval channels.
Policies can cover:
-
your organisation’s key messages
-
communicating with the media (e.g. who is allowed to,
how to manage intellectual property, partner
obligations, how to handle emergency media situations)
-
approval processes for media releases/interviews and for
communication products such as published articles
-
engaging with other parties (e.g. partners, Indigenous
communities)
-
keeping funding bodies informed
-
using logos, disclaimers and copyright notices
Guidelines can cover:
-
using the media (e.g. how to find media interest in your
research, why and when to approach the media, writing a
media release, avoiding misunderstandings with
partners/the media, doing a media interview, staging a
media event)
-
preparing communication materials (e.g. fact sheets, web
content, newsletters)
-
presenting your research
-
taking good photos
-
using posters
When do you need communication protocols?
-
when the nature of the work is highly collaborative
-
when your organisation or program has a large number of
partners and researchers
-
when some of the research locations and communities are
in remote areas
-
when there are multiple and sometimes opposing interest
groups and the messages could be easily misinterpreted
Media releases: no dumping
ground
By Sarah Bartlett
Writing a media release is a great exercise for consolidating
messages within your organisation, communicating throughout
different departments to decide stances on issues and the way
they should be expressed.
When writing a release, however, you can often be tempted to
‘dump’ in all possible information about an organisation and
thinly veil it with an issue. Journalists will see through the
veil within the first sentence and skip on to their next email,
effectively wasting many hours of your time.
The key to a media release is to tell a timely, interesting
story, related to the issue you are promoting, in a similar
style to a journalist-penned news story.
You need a relevant, new and interesting topic, introduced by a
catchy lead — something that will capture your reader’s
attention while telling them what the subject is and why they
should care.
The writing must be clear, free of jargon and not read like a
brochure. A few good quotes from relevant spokespeople will give
life to your media release and convey messages in a story style.
Reader response: poster
sessions at conferences
Here’s some useful feedback on our February newsletter,
‘Making conferences work for you’, from a reader with an
interest in poster sessions at conferences.
‘Thanks for your conference tips — they are very good.
Thought you might like to know how successful our revamped
poster sessions were at the soil science conference in December.
There were a few sessions of traditional oral presentations but
most presentations were submitted as posters; these were then
divided into groups of 8–10 based on topic/theme.
In each one hour poster session (and there were many, run in
concurrent sessions over three days), speakers in each group had
two minutes to give the gist of their work in front of their
poster, one after the other — with no questions.
This was very tightly chaired and took around 20 minutes, and
the remaining 40 minutes were devoted to audience and speakers
interacting informally.
The posters were all in the main eating/drinking areas, not
hidden away on the side.
The net result was phenomenal networking and conversation — many
people said they had never talked so much science at a
conference, or met so many people.
We are definitely going to do it again, but we may need to
provide training on what makes a good poster! Do you have any
info on good posters?’
Please do send us your ideas
about what makes a good poster, or a good conference.
Surf club
This Saturday (31st March), do something
different. Take part in
Earth Hour by switching off your lights from
7:30-8:30pm.
WWF-Australia and The Sydney Morning Herald have
organised Earth Hour to ‘show that it's possible to take
action against global warming.’
What was intended to be a Sydney-based event has attracted
so much interest that over 50,000 people from around
Australia have registered to switch off. To register, visit:
www.earthhour.org
Once you’ve turned out your lights, we recommend finding a
nice patch of grass to lie on and gazing at the stars for a
while. How often do you get an excuse to do that?
Quotation of the month
‘The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we
communicate.’
Joseph Priestly (1733-1804) |
