February « 2011 « PulsePoint Group – Communications Management Consulting

Points of View is our blog dedicated to exploring the critical corporate communications issues of the day through insights and videos of Fortune 500 business and communications execs, industry insiders and our team.

Google “Cleans Up” Search Results

Brittany Aguilar
February 28th, 2011

Last week, Google announced a significant change to the way it determines search results. The change is supposed to place more value on sites with original content over sites that aggregate content or repost from other places. Google claims that this change will impact about 12 percent of searches.

Google frequently makes changes to its algorithm (the mathematical formula that Google uses to determine search result order), but these are usually small tweaks that only impact a few websites.

Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts explain in a blog post on the change,

“We can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down. Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.”

Hurting Aggregators

While it’s understandable that Google wants to improve its results, this change isn’t without controversy. Many website owners rely on traffic from Google’s search engine, and these changes can make it very difficult for them to maintain their business model.

Most of the sites that are seeing a decrease in traffic are “content farms” or aggregator sites. These sites pull content from across the web and house it in one place. Many of these “content farms” display content on a particular subject and provide a real value to the online community (ex. Techmeme). These sites often have their own algorithm for determining which content to place on their sites. Google may see these sites as competition since they often replace the need for a traditional search for the latest news or content.

Beneficial for Content Creators

Ultimately, this change is a good thing for companies that invest in quality content creation, because Google is placing greater value on that content. This also means that it is important to regularly produce quality content. For companies that have a unique expertise, Google is helping you out because you are now an even more important part of the “healthy web ecosystem” that Google seeks to promote.

This won’t drastically change the way in which you optimize you web content, but it does mean that you should focus on providing more original content if you want to rank well in Google.

Tags: Content Creation, Google, Search, SEO
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Unlocking the Social Enterprise

Jesse Jacks
February 25th, 2011

There has been a lot of debate on the pros and cons of “empowering” employees in the enterprise by allowing them access to social media and collaborative tools in the workplace. What can the enterprise gain from allowing full access for all its employees? What are the inherent risks involved and how can they be minimized? How much is enough? These types of questions are what most organizations we work with are struggling with as they come to realize they must embrace the digital revolution.

This week on Harvard Business Review’s blog, Andrew McAfee poses two questions that are currently staring down most organizations: What kind of company embraces the social enterprise and what are the effects of embracing it?

For a long time the answer to the first question seemed easy: the trailblazers, the progressive companies whose corporate cultures weren’t afraid to try new things. These were the organizations that embraced the social enterprise. But those times have ended. Organizations now choose to be conservative in their dealing with social media and collaboration at their own peril. We have firsthand seen the “old guard” drop its guard and embrace the digital realm, to great effect. The highly regulated industries such as Pharma and Finance spring to mind as examples where organizations are breaking new ground in what is possible in a formerly guarded social enterprise.

But what really transforms the enterprise is the ability to get in touch with the knowledge currently underutilized in the organization, or as McAfee refers to it, “doing a better job of knowing what you know”. This simple yet difficult premise is exactly the type of skill that the most innovative internal collaborators like Procter & Gamble, IBM and Dell have built successful social enterprises on. The social enterprise stirs up collaborative efforts on a scale rarely harnessed by most organizations. It’s fascinating to think of the capabilities some organizations currently possess without being privy to it.

As we move towards a standardized model where collaboration and digital drive how the organization thinks internally, the more examples of successful social enterprises we will see. I think a younger workforce will demand it. Young professionals are digital natives who will tend to believe there is something wrong with an organization that hasn’t embraced social enterprise tools. As such, I think the most interesting examples will come from those formerly guarded industries where innovative ideas will be required in order to not fall behind the new standard.

I suppose we will have to wait and see what the social enterprise’s effects on these organizations will bring.

Read the original blog post here.

Tags: Collaboration, Social Media
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“Translating” Innovative Ideas for Clients

Jesse Jacks
February 9th, 2011

As a strategic consulting firm, counsel is only as good as it is palatable to our clients. Some might interpret that as requiring that we supply strategic insight that adds value to our clients. While that is at the core of what we do, it isn’t what I am referring to.

What I mean is that a great idea can’t penetrate an organization if it isn’t delivered in a way its people can readily understand. If this sounds simple, you are right, it is. But the fact remains that too often great ideas and their potential impact on the organization are plagued by clumsy deliveries. The hand-off of a great idea from the professional service firm to the client should be treated as important as the idea itself, its future impact on the organization depends on it.

How many innovative ideas fall by the wayside not because they weren’t able to make a difference to the enterprise, but because the execution of their delivery was ignored? It’s an impossible question to answer, but it makes one wonder how different things could be had someone taken the time to carefully consider the concept before presenting their idea to the client.

Some things to consider when transferring a great idea to a client might include framing the end result in a way the client understands. Working backwards from a desired outcome to the idea itself isn’t a novel idea, but often times we take for granted the fact that we understand the impact the idea can have on the organization, while the client might be looking at it from a different point of view. But even this might not be going far enough. It makes more sense to work alongside the client in communicating the idea in a manner that their team can easily comprehend. So why is it that we don’t practice this more often?

This week on Harvard Business Review’s blog there is a great post on “Delivering Your Innovative Ideas” by Michael Schrage. He shares with readers his own experience in working with Procter & Gamble’s R&D team and watching as one of their managers “translates” his ideas for the team. Understanding how the client views your idea is every bit as important as how you envision it. If there is any chance of a great idea turning into the change that it was meant to lead, then this translation is every bit as important as the creativity that inspired it to begin with.

You can read Schrage’s account of the team at P&G interpreting his idea here.

Tags: Communication, Innovation, Tips
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Instilling Practical Innovation in the Enterprise

Jesse Jacks
February 4th, 2011

Much of the recent discussion surrounding innovation in the enterprise has been geared towards consumer-facing aspects of the business: crowdsourcing new product ideas, engaging the consumer in experiential marketing, or even asking the consumer to develop advertising or mobile applications for the business.

While these are all innovative ways to engage the consumer and garner some relatively cheap attention, business leaders often find themselves relying on “tried and true” examples of innovation, rather than harnessing it from within their organization. We often work with clients on internal crowdsourcing projects to great success, but as many of our clients and staff here at PulsePoint Group will tell you, the most glaring obstacle is often times the lack of an embedded approach to harnessing innovative thinking and practices within teams or throughout the organization. Sometimes the organization’s biggest hurdle to embracing innovation is simply not knowing how.

Businessweek published an article this week on GE’s five-year-old “Leadership, Innovation, and Growth” (LIG) initiative, employed by the company as a vehicle to jump start innovation and growth from deep within the organization. The initiative focuses on practical ways leaders and employees can instill traits within the company’s culture that foster the type of environment needed for organizations to get the most out of internal innovation projects like crowdsourcing platforms. Co-authored by GE’s VP of Executive Development and Chief Learning officer, Susan Peters, the article shares six practices GE has implemented within their organization as they work towards developing a culture where harnessing innovation is not a part of an exercise or project, but rather a way of running the business.

As innovation plays an increasingly important role across all factions of the enterprise, organizations that are able to create a culture that works, thinks, and executes with an eye towards the human aspects associated with an “innovation ready” culture will surely come out ahead of those who do not.

You can read Peters’ and GE’s execution roadmap here.

Tags: Crowdsourcing, Innovation, Leadership, Social Media
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The Weekly Pulse: 2/2/11

PulsePoint Group
February 2nd, 2011

A recap of the previous week’s POV posts:

2/1: Can You Be Both a Tactician and a Counselor? (PRWeek): Research among CEOs and line-of-business executives reveals that the single-most common criticism of communications professionals is that below the CCO level the function is primarily occupied by tacticians. A common result: when divisional or business unit leadership meet to discuss strategy, the PR person — perhaps other than the CCO — is often left out.

1/31: Extend Social Media Beyond Communications and Marketing: We’ve seen many companies struggle with the question of who “owns” social media. In one sense, you are communicating to customers, so it must be a marketing function. But, isn’t marketing usually “paid” and communications “earned?” If so, most social media profiles are “free,” so it must be a communications function! Well, we’ve seen the most successful social media companies embrace both and use cross-divisional teams to find manage the space.

1/28: Crowdsourcing, Innovation, and … the Home Shopping Network?: Anyone who watched the President’s State of the Union address this week may have noticed the many times he used the word “innovate” throughout his hour-long speech. The morning after, many op-eds complained that for all the talk of “out-innovating” the rest of the world, the President didn’t provide any concrete examples of how he envisioned America achieving this. According to a new article on Mashable, 2011′s focus on driving innovation may have an unlikely leader in the Home Shopping Network (HSN), as their new crowdsourcing project suggests.

1/27: A Case for Social Media Access at the Office: It’s an oft-discussed question in many IT departments and beyond: should employees have unrestricted access to the internet (including all the social networking they can get their hands on) while at work? A recent SocialCast report suggests that there might just be a productivity bump to be had from such access.

Tags: Add new tag, Crowdsourcing, Internal Communcations, PRWeek, Social Media, The Weekly Pulse, Tips
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Can You Be Both a Tactician and a Counselor?

Bob Feldman
February 1st, 2011

Originally Published PR Week, January 28, 2011 (subscription access only)

Research among CEOs and line-of-business executives reveals that the single-most common criticism of communications professionals is that below the CCO level the function is primarily occupied by tacticians.

A common result: when divisional or business unit leadership meet to discuss strategy, the PR person — perhaps other than the CCO — is often left out.

Are most PR pros really not capable of engaging at that level?

Unlikely, but here are a few thoughts.

First, every CCO needs to be honest with his or her evaluation of talent. The most critical time is when hiring is done. If we’re candid, we often do hire tacticians. After all, we need to get things done.

We also tend to hire from a common pool, that is, people from within our profession.

The consequence often means a talent pool that doesn’t have the same academic qualifications and /or serious business experience as other staff functions.

Bottom line: Hire smart. Raise the bar. And, as the business we’re in gets increasingly sophisticated, there are plenty of high-ranking B-school grads, for example, who would welcome a career in our profession.

Second, and this is a tricky one, it just may be difficult to be both a tactician and a strategist at the same time.

Let’s be clear: We need to do a lot more than provide counsel. We need to get stuff done. The greater the demands and the higher volume of output, the more communications staffers get buried in the day-to-day. That may be reality.

But getting stuff done is a given. Flawless execution is a table-stake. No one earns a reputation for just doing what’s expected of them.

(more…)

Tags: Commentary, PR Education, PRWeek, Talent
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Archive for February, 2011

Google “Cleans Up” Search Results

“Translating” Innovative Ideas for Clients

Can You Be Both a Tactician and a Counselor?

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