#024 Tools, Tips, & Ideas to Improve Your Organization's Communication

If there's one thing that can make or break your team during a crisis, it is communication. Revela and Chatterkick come together for one last crossover episode on the topic of communication. Communication needs evolve during a crisis, so the frequency of your communication needs to increase. Not to mention, the verbiage and tone of your message need to change. Beth and Michelle share experiences, tools, tips, and some ideas for your organization to steal.

Learn more about Revela.
Learn more about Chatterkick.

Biggest Takeaways From This Episode

Allow your team to ask open, anonymous questions.

Create a way for your employees to ask anonymous questions. Answer every question to the group in the most transparent, honest approach that you can. This will help build trust and share access to the most up-to-date information as the questions and concerns arise.

How Chatterkick Does It: Chatterkick created a Typeform that allowed team members to submit any question regarding Covid-19. We shared a video on how to use the Typeform, confirmed its anonymity, and shared all of the questions and answers in our team chat platform.

Keep these audiences in mind!

Internal Communication - Employees
External - Prospects & Customers
Investors - Board Members, Champions, Advocates
Employees' Families

Don't forget about the 4th audience: your employees' families.

It's easy to prioritize communication internally in the organization. Be intentional about what you're showing in images. With COVID-19, show safety and the actions you are taking. (distancing, sanitization, masks, etc.)

How to show transparency and be a storyteller on social:

Give your team members the mic! Let them do social media takeovers to show their new workspaces, new communication, connections and collaboration
Ask team members who aren't in marketing if they can take ten photos on their cell phones.
Take a photo of thank you cards, celebrations, team meetings.
Talk about your employees and celebrate them!
Collect the stories of your day-to-day. Jump on a Zoom, RingCentral, WebEX, and record a Q&A or story.

Tools:

Use your phone. Take vertical and horizontal content.
Foodie App
Snapchat - Take a video with a filter
Instagram - Boomerang, Filters, Effects
Use your web conferencing software
Use Mailchimp or email tools to measure employee email opens, clicks, etc.
Facebook Group for employees or LinkedIn groups
WorkPlace from Facebook
Text Messaging platform

Transcript

This text below is a straight-up audio transcript of the episode. In our humble opinion, we think the audio podcast sounds much better in its original form. We have not edited the transcription below so there are indeed some grammar errors (some quite funny, in-fact).

Welcome Michelle. Thank you. Glad to be back. Yes. So we... For our listeners, if you haven't listened to the previous two episodes, we highly recommend it, but we're really looking to collaborate and we've been fans of Revela Group for many, a long time. But we're really going to talk today about communication as it relates to a virtual team and, um, you know, how do you make sure your employees are listening and hearing and so we're going to talk more about that today. So let's just start out, Michelle, tell me a little bit about your organization, how you guys, so you guys have a team of six. Yes, yes, yes. How do you guys communicate just on a regular basis? Well, so, and we've all pretty much worked within our space, right? We have flexibility when we need to work from home or something a lot directly at client sites and so forth.

Well communication, really originally. So pre all of this [COVID-19] was, you know, typically email and phone and text. And now that we have all done remote and working in different places, we have really stepped up on using teams in Office 365 and we had it, we use it a little bit, but now it's, when we need something just get on teams and real quick call whoever it is. And we're sharing screens and we're teaching things and it actually does their degree has been really good. Oh. When, when looking at how we can collaborate using that. So that, or Zoom obviously kind of depends on the number of people we have. We've used zoom for a lot of trainings, virtual trainings with clients. So that's been a tool that we've had and we've really, been able to take advantage of that prior to this, but we didn't use it internally.

Right. And, we've, we've all gotten a lot better with that type of communication. So we kind of... And I would say it wasn't intentional, but yet you kind of identify, we're going to use email for this, we're gonna use teams for this. And then teams, we're gonna only direct message or we have a Revela team as a group. So we have those different things identified and how we use those. And then we obviously pick up the phone as well. Kind of depend on what's what, what we're talking about, what's going on. So I would say those are going to be our key key modes of communication. How about you? How about you all at, at Chatterkick? What are some things, are you guys doing different or more? So we've talked a little bit about this, but we were pretty set up for remote work prior to kind of the world shutting down.

And so we haven't had a lot of technology barriers. A few people had to kind of come in and get their desktops and maybe their laptops weren't made for the kind of work that they were doing at home. But once we kinda got that figured out, we really focused next on keeping open communication, making sure that, you know, we probably over-communicated which has its own challenges. But I think, you know, we've done a couple of things that other business businesses could probably leverage. And one of those is just allowing questions in an open space and transparent. Letting people ask anonymous questions. We call it our COIVDQ and we kind of show our teams how, that they, it's, it's really anonymous. We promise and you can ask whatever questions that you want. And then for our clients especially, and even probably for us, you know, as we start exploring what going "back to work" looks like, I think it's really, really important that we, I understand this what I'm calling the fourth audience.

And what that means is it's not just your employees that you need to make sure that they feel safe, but it's their families because they're worried and we're all worried about each other. And there's a lot of anxiety that comes into that thought of like going back into an office or going back to a restaurant or wherever someone works if they haven't been out of their home for six weeks. And, you know, I think we've always as marketers or as branding partners, even just as business owners, we've thought about internal communications. How are we speaking to our employees? That's one. We've thought about how we've spoken externally to our prospects and our customers. And we've thought about that kind of third audience who are your investors or people that are invested in your business? So that could be board members, that could be just your champions and your advocates.

But it's that fourth grouping that most of us haven't even thought about. And how do you help your employees understand that they're feeling safe and then their families. And what that typically may look like when you're using social media tools is be very intentional about what you're showing in images. Like is it a background that you can tell there's distance? Do people have masks on? Is it very obvious visually? Is it very obvious in written form? What precautions and ways your organization is supporting your team? And I think it's really important that we put that information out there across all the channels. It's supportive of your team and it celebrates them for all their hard work and the pain in the butt that it is to wear a mask. And it also I think builds that camaraderie and just shows your prospects and your, you know, your advocates, how important and the priority you're putting all this.

What kind of response have you have you gotten? Because that exact topic is some things that we've been talking about with our clients and that, that fourth one because we are very worried about our loved ones, right. And we are worried about, well they're worried about us and, and in that verbal effect into our other, our families that we don't immediately live with. And I know we've had conversations with using social media, with video pictures, you know, getting the messages out there because we have a lot of clients that they're still going to work. Work is normal, it really didn't change much and but then a lot of them will still have remote. So we've got work as normal for a group of people. That's a different stress then you've got, we were remote and I was just having this conversation about, well you know, I haven't been back in the building in eight weeks.

I have no idea what they're doing different. I don't know. I know they're working, they're really busy actually. Right. And you know, that's the piece I'm really curious. This is how, you know, how are people responding to, to this, these suggestions on utilizing social media to promote these are the changes, you know, these are videos of what it looks different now so people know in advance what, what kind of response are you getting from that and kind of buy-in. So I think that your biggest storytellers and are your employees, right? And so sometimes we don't give our employees the mic though. And that's what you need to do. You need to do what we call takeovers. And that means letting them log into your Instagram account one day and just say, here's a day in my life. This is how I'm practicing social distancing or that I'm taking care of my, my team and my colleagues.

That's something really easy. Another thing that you could do to really showcase that is, you know, a lot of people would raise their hand and they want to be involved, but they just may not be in marketing. So ask, just ask your team, Hey, does anybody that's at the plant right now have an opportunity to take some pictures, tell them to take 10 and pick the best one. That way you don't have to worry about all the background stuff. I've seen amazing social content come out of some manufacturing companies right now, like so amazing. And what they're doing is they're telling the story. So they got a thank you card from their team members. Take a picture of it, like such a like appreciative thing that is very heartfelt and you know, has a lot of that sentiment. Talk about your employees.

Like are they working with a dog that pops in the background? Like that's cute, that's funny. Take a picture and let them tell that story. And just start collecting those stories and push them out on your social accounts. It works, I promise. And those type of human interest photos and videos, they will get traction, they'll get traction by lots of different audiences. And if you do it consistently and with intention, it, it really does lift your business in many ways. So I think that that's one thing that's really important for all different types of businesses to do. And you know, a lot of the marketing and administrative departments are working remote and everybody else is not. And so you got to get creative and that typically means giving the mic and the camera to, you know, people that are on the front lines. And I love, you know, I love that idea of giving the mic and I'll let them take over and, and we don't, I personally, and tell me if I'm totally wrong in this one, but you know, I think in the time that we're at right now, is it okay to use my cell phone?

Is it, you know, my camera, my cell phone? Is that going to be good enough or to go buy a whole studio? So what's the, you know, what, what are the tools that someone needs to take over? What, what does that involve? So cell phone cameras, perfectly fine. A lot of like plants do not allow cell phones within their production floor. So you're going to have to work through that and maybe make an exception or maybe, you know, decide how that's going to look internally. But your phones are perfectly fine. a couple of things to remember is you know, vertical video is great. You can use vertical video, uh, depending on what platform you're going to post it on, and maybe do one vertical and one horizontal and then send it over to your marketing team or you can post it directly.

And then, there's a couple of apps that I really love. One is, it's, I talk about this app all the time. It's my favorite. It's called Foodie. Um, but it's free and it has just really good preset filters because if you're going to use a little photo editing, what you're trying to do with filters is not make it look fake. So if you have a picture and it's like, whew, her teeth are really wider than you know, it, it looks a little bit off, like that's a little too much of a filter. So just try to take a nice picture, and just if you need a little editing or if it's a little dark, like those are the small tweaks, but less is more when it comes to editing photos.

And don't be afraid to use the apps within your phone. So put a Snapchat filter on somebody and have them, you know, talk about their day. It's sometimes lightens it up a little bit. It's great for social and you just save that on your phone and then you can go and upload it to the other platforms. Even if you don't have Instagram or if you don't have Snapchat. You can still use those platforms to create content. Wow. That is, you know, the barriers are 90% of the battle. It's not actually creating the content and writing a sentence. It's all the things that get in the way. Yes. So it's funny cause I asked this question of you, but you work with our team, right? And I know when Jess and Court and Ashta have their time with you first, they're so excited and they come back.

So jazzed by the way, uh, and then Courtney is teaching us different things that you're teaching her on how to use it. And it, it's funny because at the end of the day, we have absolutely no excuse on why we don't do these. We get in the away. It's like we'll make up an excuse or I don't want to be behind the camera. I'm used to taking pictures all the time. I'm not used to being on the other side. Right. And I was like, you want me to do what? Okay, fine. I'll do it. And then I go do it. I'm like, Oh, don't like it. Do it over. Do it over it. Right? And it's like, we just got to relax and get out of our way because I think it's so powerful and there's so much that we have access to. And with your guys', you know, direction and guidance, it's, Oh gosh, this guy's unlimited Courtney.

You know, we'll come back with, Oh, we got to do this, we got to do this, let's post this. I need someone to do this. And I'm like, okay. Yeah, I, I tend to get people over information. But I, I think one of the things that it always has been, and I think that this whole world of COVID and, um, just communication has changed it more so than I've seen in the past. But it's, social media is not just about marketing. That is just a, it's a platform. It Is a tool. It's about messaging and communication. And if you can get off of the marketing side of things, it really does make a difference. In terms of what you can do. No, no worries. This is part of a video, right? As a very, if you're only hearing this, and not watching the video here because she didn't move enough in her space.

But, anyways, I do think that approaching internal and external communications as one is probably, you can have different strategies to it, but the platforms are the same and your customers care about your employees and your employees care about your customers. So sometimes they think we overcomplicate things a little bit. And we don't really try to use the same tools that we would use in marketing with our employees. And a really good example of this is I had a client come to me the other day and they're like, I have a lot of employees. It was like 200 employees. And they're like, I just don't know who's like, I'm sending a lot of information, we're giving people updates, I'm trying, I'm trying to be transparent. I'm trying to, you know, give everybody day to day updates. I just don't know who's getting them, who's reading them.

And I said, well, there's an easy email service for that. You can use MailChimp, you can use HubSpot. There's lots. And if you do it that way, there is a way you just look and see, well we have 20% of our people that are not opening our emails. So we've got to find another way to communicate. And maybe that's text message. Maybe that's social media. Maybe we put all of our employees in a Facebook group because it gets it out of their email if they're getting a ton of emails or if they're in the plant and they're not, they don't get emails. So I think that there's some different ways to approach those communications and these tools are here. Many of them are free, many of them are extremely low cost and it's just, you gotta put them, put them together a little bit.

So that you can communicate internally. Just as much as you need to externally. All right, next question I have for you Michelle, is what do you think about, like what have you seen from your business community, when it relates to the people that have not used social media in the past? Are they realizing now that it is a thing? Are they using these tools or do you still feel like it's kind of set to the side of like, well, I got too many other things on my plate? I would say that the latter. So, you know, working with groups, some are very social and know the different tools and have different strategies on how to use them to communicate internally and externally. And then we have the other group who don't utilize it. Right. And that's, they're still struggling. They're still, they haven't adapted.

They haven't necessarily gotten on board yet. I'm having conversations. There would be a few that have, said, Oh wow, maybe we should start doing this and maybe we should change it up a little bit. But, more than not have really haven't taken advantage because like you were saying, when on the social side, so many of those tools don't cost us anything. It is our time. And how do we use that strategy to say, I'm just not going to push emails out to my people, but we're going to, we're going to do, you know, we're going to have an email, we're going to go Facebook live, we're going to have a group in Facebook, right? We're going to do some, maybe some things on, on Instagram. Maybe Instagram is more educational, but looking at those different means of, how we can communicate and really use them to do our best to be in front of them.

I do believe the ones that were struggling before or really didn't buy into it before, from what I've seen in conversations is they're still still struggling with that piece. Maybe tip of their toes and dip their toes in a little bit, but I'm not where, where they really should be and how they can really best improve those connections. And it goes back to the survey. You know, people want to feel connected. Well, I'm going to feel more connected if, if I used to work with a group, you know, our team is split now, some remote and some still working as normal. Right? I don't get to see them anymore. They don't get to see me anymore. And we can utilize a little social media to show those videos, you know, have some bring in some interviews or you know, just a question for the day, how they're doing and post out there.

Where now we can feel a little connected or we can all be live on Facebook and what does that look like? Right. Or Zoom or whatever it may be. So I, I have seen, I have seen people, I would say adapt more to zoom or teams more than anything. The rest of those are the rest of the options that are out there. And there's so many that, that piece I haven't, I haven't seen people really jumping on board with that and we've even struggled. So we'll do, with our groups, we'll do Facebook groups and then we've tried to LinkedIn groups because, well, some organizations don't want you on Facebook. Right? So a way to keep our groups together. I started creating LinkedIn groups where now you just find the group and, oh there's my people, right? If you know that worked with classes with and it's, it's, it's still a professional tool and we were still struggling today to get people to get engaged on those.

You'll have the people that use social media or that, you know, utilize it that way. And then you have the ones that haven't jumped on board yet. And when we meet again or we come back together, I'll say something like, Oh, I haven't been out there since before last time we were together. Right. Okay, okay. How do we, how do we, how do we push them? How do we help and what have you? What, what ideas or suggestions do you have for those businesses that haven't jumped off the diving board yet? You know, off the deep end to really embrace these, these tools that we have available. So I think that step one is one of the things that is the biggest problem across the board. We see this issue all the time and I talk about it and it's not exciting or fancy, but it's your administrative account access.

You need to get it in order because if you don't have access to your Facebook page, to your Google My Business account, to your website, all of these things you need to keep together because it should not live with one person in your organization. You need just as like, you know, who has the keys to your office, you need to know who has your digital keys. And we give away a free like asset management thing. It's just a Excel spreadsheet that says this is the account, this is the URL to the account. This is who has admin access. And that makes sure it's part of your off-boarding process. Thanks for your passwords. Get changed when you, somebody who had access leaves your organization. But, with all of these layoffs that have gone across the board, people are turning to social media. So these accounts have a high influx of comments and messages.

It's just like this perfect storm of disorganization. And so step one is get all of your account access information in one spot. Step two is if you are trying to use social media for internal communications, just as much as external, you need need, need to make sure that your employees, no how to access your accounts. Because you would be surprised that many of businesses have like three different pages on Facebook because one was old. You know, it's, you need to let them know this is how you go. You click on this button, you hit, you know, this is the URL and do it in one of your meetings. Say everybody, we're going to like the Facebook page today if that's where we're putting most of our messaging. And then the second part of that is you can actually, have a marker that says it's a setting and Facebook, that's the see first.

So have your employees put their business, your, your company as a see first, and you'll be more likely to be in that newsfeed. And you don't have to worry as much about the Facebook algorithm filtering out and sorting out all the messages. Because a lot of people will be like, well, I liked the page but I never see your stuff. Yeah. Around that. It's right by the little like button on your page. It's tricky to get to, but you can put see first and that will allow those people to see that content. That's a little trick. Yeah. I would say the final is just be human and over-communicate and use social media to do that. You should definitely have alerts on the name of your business if you don't and know what is being said about you on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook. Because what's going to happen is things start to open back up is the employment game is going to be messy, right?

It's going to be messy. Hiring, it's going to be messy. Hiring people back. There's going to be a lot of emotions that come into it. I didn't like the way I was terminated I felt this, you know, there's so much of that happening and this is what business owners are going to have to deal with. So you need to communicate in multiple ways and multiple channels. So that you do, you connect that you make that connection, you make that feeling that we've talked about and your employees and team feel supported. And social media is just the communication tool that makes that happened? Yeah. Well, and you're so right with, you know, things are going to be really messy. So keeping managing that information, that that's flowing through it and what people are saying and one using it, that's going to help you, but at the same time we have to kind of what, what, what are some of those and maybe unfortunate things or feelings, right, that get expressed on it.

And how do we handle that? I had just seen something yesterday and my first thought was, whew, what's the damage control? I believe they had really good intentions with what happened. We can't control the feelings part of it. We can, we do our best in this hype in this time. But, it's, it's how do we get, how do we manage that and be respectful of their feelings? Show compassion, right? Show some empathy and but making sure we do something because doing nothing sends a whole new message. And I don't think a business wants, you know, a business owner wants people to feel that, that you don't care about your people. I mean, I know I purposely, if I see things that I know are happening in a business and I don't believe it doesn't align with my beliefs and how they treat their people, I'll choose not to, not to purchase or not to use them as the vendor or whatever it may be.

And you're so right with that whole, it's gonna get messy and will, it does already messy, but it's just going to continue. Right. And getting that, getting those things in line, how we're going to use it, how we're going to use it to promote this is the place to be, which I think kind of goes back to our values. Going back to those norms of our culture, how we want our people to treat each other, to get stuff done. Marketing that out there on the social media to, to help people see who we are and how we're working through this and how we're supporting our employees. And there's so many different avenues to do that with. So yeah, I just think it would be such a tragedy. And I see this happening, that really good businesses with good intentions start falling and failing. And it could have been solved with a well-written email to their employees.

It could have been solved with a phone call. Like we're seeing these little bubbles of crisises stop pop up and okay, it's not that the business had that intention. It's just some person took one piece or it wasn't communicated to them and they thought they were terminated because of X, Y, Z, or you know, it's just all of those stories are so heightened right now. So if I would give business owners one tip and all across the board, it's just get started. I don't mean started by setting up account. I mean started by posting, get communication out, be human. Don't write in all caps, just have somebody proof it. But a well-written email or a video message to your team, lean on your communication strengths, whatever form that may be, and get it out there on a regular basis. And hopefully that will set it business's up on it on a good starting point anyways. Yes, I couldn't agree more. Most definitely. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us again, Michelle. I really appreciate it. And, we will do one more episode with this collaboration, so stay tuned. Sounds good. Thanks. Thanks.

BusinessChatterkickJune 16, 2020crisis communication, covid19, flexibility