Integrating Technology with the Traditional Shall the 'twain e'er Meet?

Across the business landscape, web sites and intranets are failing. Organizations with lofty goals for their online initiatives are instead recording minimal returns on their huge investments. Reluctant to concede defeat, they pump more dollars into their online efforts, only to see scant improvement in the measures that signify success.

It is easy to shrug off these failures as the efforts of organizations that don't "get" technology, that substitute sizzle and glitz for substance and strategy. The fact is, though, that even organizations whose online initiatives are managed by people who do, in fact, understand technology are finding that the objectives that drove their efforts are not being met.

Failure to integrate online efforts with other traditional media is one of the primary causes of these failures. Far too many organizations can point to a strategic communication plan -- often a, written plan -- that ties communication strategies to bottom line objectives. The plan articulates how the various tactics employed interrelate. And the plan offers metrics to be used for measuring its effectiveness. Then, they add, "Oh, and by the way, here's our (insert name of online tool)."

The newness of the Internet and its related technologies inspires many communicators to forsake what they know about effective communication in their haste to build flashy, attention getting online applications. Seasoned communication strategists have said, straight-faced, that they are constructing intranets because they will save their organizations money associated with producing print materials. (On the other hand, few companies charter communication departments to generate savings. If cost-reduction were the driving motive, companies would eliminate their communication departments, not fund them! The fact is, communication departments are chartered to help organizations meet business goals through the application of communication skills.) Savvy marketers have scrambled to establish a web presence simply because their competitors have web sites. (Yet when was the last time you heard a marketer embark on a video production simply because a competitor used a video in a marketing campaign?)

Effective communication should never start with the tool, regardless of whether that tool is a brochure, face-to-face communication, or an online technology. Rather, we need to start at the end -- the end result of the communication effort. Once the objectives have been identified and the audience analyzed, selecting the tools becomes a considerably simpler task. And how those tools work together begins to fall into place like pieces of a puzzle.

When the tools are orchestrated to achieve an end result, it is far more likely that online tools will be integrated into the mix. Still, a communicator might take a number of integration approaches. Ideally, online tools are so tightly woven into the communication strategy that the lines between online and traditional tools begin to blur. If your audience can't determine where a print publication or a face-to-face encounter ends and where a web site begins -- and doesn't care -- then your efforts are very probably successful.

Use print to drive readers online.

Your print publications can include pointers to relevant material on the web or intranet. Your intranet can feature reminders to review information included in print. Both concepts allow you to use the medium the reader is currently using to heighten the visibility of the other.

Print-to-web is perhaps the most useful of these models. An article can include links to a variety of supplemental elements for which there was no room in the magazine, including:

* The complete text of the interview

* Links to related resources

* Additional photos

* A forum where readers can engage in discussions about the article

In one company, traffic to the intranet increased dramatically after the president, during an all-hands meeting, noted that the intranet was the source of valuable information he had referenced during a question-and-answer session. At Sears, Communication Technologies Manager Sharon McIntosh produces a simple monthly bulletin that advises employees about new additions and features available on the intranet. The result: Traffic to the intranet increases following the distribution of each issue.

You are by no means limited to the print-to-web model. Many web sites are successful in their efforts to get visitors to order print or other traditional communication tools. Investor relations sites commonly invite visitors to order a printed copy of the annual report, and other sites offer to deliver catalogs, videotapes, audio CD samplers, and other offline media.

Publish material of marginal value online, freeing up space in print.

How much time do you spend producing lists of service anniversaries for print? Or birthdays? Promotions? Transfers? New hires? Do you include employee classifieds in your print mix? These standards of internal communication unquestionably have value, but how important are they compared to material that explains organizational strategy, connects employees with the marketplace, or facilitates interaction? With an intranet, communicators have new space they can use for these listings, freeing up the limited print budget for material that lends itself more effectively to the print medium. The anniversaries, company picnic photos, bowling league standings and baby pictures are available to anybody who wants to see them - online, saving the "push" print for the truly important information.

Link current copy to archival material.

Hard disk space is cheap. Paper is expensive. Use your digital archives of your print material to add value to the content you have deemed important enough to put into print.

That's the approach taken by Network World, a trade magazine aimed at computer network professionals. Many publications offer online archives of their print content, but they do little to help users take advantage of them beyond providing fundamental search capabilities. Network World, on the other hand, bundles archival content (along with some other links) to current content through its "DocFinder" system.

DocFinder is an alternative search capability of the magazine's web site, Network World Fusion (www.nww.com). Readers of the magazine who find a DocFinder logo accompanying an article can type the associated DocFinder number into the web site's search field and retrieve related material from the archives. Here's an example:

The December 20 issue of Network World featured a front-page article about a hacker attack into the eToys web site, Typing the associated DocFinder number - 6034 - into the text field on the Network World home page took readers to the web version of the article, along with a series of links to related articles, These included pieces related to eToys, a variety of articles on security issues and hacker attacks, and other articles by the author of the eToys feature. All of these articles are stored in the archives, but imagine how difficult it would be for a reader of the print article to use a search engine to cull them from the entire database of every article ever written for Network World. Through its careful integration, the magazine makes it easy for people interested in a topic to extract related information from the archives. (The page also included information on how to contact the author, and the ability to offer feedback about the article.)

Let readers engage with subjects and authors of print articles.

Reading is a passive, one-way experience. If the subject of an article expresses a viewpoint that is contrary to the reader's, the reader can only sit in exasperated silence, imagining how a confrontation might proceed. If the subject raises questions in the reader's mind, the reader has no immediate means of seeking answers.

Internet technology makes it possible for publication editors to expand the scope of printed material by offering subsequent online interaction. The San Jose Mercury News was one of the first publications to capitalize on the technology, inviting readers to participate in live chats with the subjects of articles, such as Pete Wilson, then-California governor. Wired magazine has made similar offers, promoting in print the availability of authors of articles and their subjects on specific dates for interaction with readers.

Expand existing offerings in ways that wouldn't be possible without the Net.

EDS, the high-tech consulting company based in Plano, Texas, has had an effective face-to-face program for years. Dubbed "Town Hall," it ensures that traveling executives make time to meet in person with employees at the location they are visiting. The company's communicators had already found an intranet application for Town Hall: Questions and answers recorded at each session were posted on the Town Hall intranet site.

But Jerry Stevenson, who recently left EDS where he worked in communication technology, found the face-to-face nature of Town Hall limiting. Yes, it was critical for executives to be seen, and for employees to have the opportunity to ask them questions. But only employees at the site where an executive was physically situated could participate. Wouldn't it be great, he wondered, if any employee, anywhere, could ask an executive a question during a Town Hall session?

Stevenson adopted chat-room technology so that an executive could conduct a virtual, online Town Hall. These interactive sessions have not replaced the traditional face-to-face Town Hall sessions; they have supplemented them. (The transcripts of these sessions are archived on the Town Hall intranet site, along with the questions and answers recorded at the face-to-face sessions.) The key to the integration effort was to make the chat a new feature of the existing program, rather than launching it as an entirely new technology-driven program. (Many companies have done exactly that, promoting their all-new, high-tech "Online Executive Chat Series" or what-have-you.) Hence the focus is on the substance of the executive-employee engagements, and not on the technology that makes it possible.

Build media convergence into your site.

More and more tools are under development that technically integrate your site with other media. One customer service-technical support site was built to help customers solve their own problems with the company's products. Expecting that some customers would be unable to resolve their issues, though, the company provided a clever feature. A customer can type in his telephone number, then click a "CALL ME" button. A heartbeat after clicking the button on the web site, the customer hears his telephone ring. As soon as he answers the phone, he is connected with a live customer support representative.

Opportunities to merge tools such as this onto a web site are expanding as rapidly as the technologies are developed. Webcams represent one of the older means of converging long-standing media -- video -- onto a web site. Most Webcams offer questionable value, but Toronto provides its citizens with a site where clicking on any of several hotspots on a freeway map instantly produces a live video stream of traffic on that freeway at that precise moment.

In both instances -- the telephone connection and the traffic-cam -- the web simply becomes the intermediary connecting the user with a non-web medium.

Build the web into your value chain.

Rather than expect your web site to be an all-inclusive alternative to other media, you can use elements of your web site to serve as a step in a sequential process you would like your audience to follow. Consider, for example, a company that manufactures a line of digital cameras. To attract a large audience to its cameras, this company advertises in a variety of magazines, including the many photography magazines on the market.

These ads, however, offer limited real estate where images captured on one of the company's digital cameras can be displayed. To expand the range of images available for review, the print ad directs readers to a web site where many more images can be stored. Customers could conceivably view images linked to the camera model, the lighting conditions, indoor or outdoor photography, portraits or landscapes, and a variety of other criteria.

Kodak takes this approach, although its digital picture gallery limits viewing to the camera model with which the picture was taken. The same images are available, of course, to consumers visiting the web site to study digital cameras.

Expand the definition of a communication vehicle.

Remember the old Certs breath-mint commercials? "It's two, two, two mints in one!" It's a philosophy that could apply today to web sites and their relation to other communication tools.

By way of example, let's look at a book. Many books introduced for sale in bookstores and through online retailers have associated web sites. Almost without exception, though, these sites are designed to promote the sale of the book. A recent book that promotes the idea of corporate journalism over strategic employee communication, titled "Beyond Spin," is promoted at www.beyondspin.com. Visitors find author bios, the book's table of contents and bibliography, a listing of the case studies included in the printed book, and information on buying the book (see review on page 40).

Seth Godin's book "Permission Marketing" is promoted with only a single-page web site at www.permission.com. A few quotes from positive reviews accompany the ability to submit your e-mail address, in exchange for which you will receive the first four chapters of the book free in your inbox. It's clever marketing, consistent with the theories articulated in the book, but it's still just marketing.

Compare these sites to www.blursite.com, the site developed in conjunction with the book "Blur: The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy." In the book, the authors claim that successful competition in the Internet age will require organizations to create products that are indistinguishable from services, and vice versa - that is, that the line between a product and a service will by necessity be blurred. Their web site serves as a case study of what they mean. The site's welcome message proclaims that the site is "our means of transforming a simple product, a book, into an online, interactive, customized, learning and upgradable offer."

The site allows the authors to offer updates to the material in the book, provide quick overviews of the book's contents, offer checklists for readers to use when implementing the book's ideas in their own organizations. Another section allows readers to submit examples of how they blurred their business - with prizes for the best examples (many of which will, undoubtedly, appear in the next printing of the book). Prize-winning entries are published on the site. Discussion groups enable readers and the authors to engage in dialogue about the contents of the book. Recently, the authors added a section on healthcare, providing insight into how healthcare is blurring its businesses. Separate discussions and case studies are featured in the healthcare discussion.

Is it a book, or is it a web site? The answer is, of course, yes. The distinction between the two has been blurred, to the benefit of the reader.

Build tools to make offline Life easier.

How can a tool on the Internet or an intranet make life easier than the tools that facilitated the same activities before the introduction of the Net? Any number of organizations -- outside the communication function - have started to develop innovative answers to these questions. On the World Wide Web, you can book an airline, hotel or rental car reservation and get a confirmation without having to make a long-distance phone call or listen to annoying music while waiting on hold. You can order everything from computers and software to books, furniture, music, chain saws, apparel and artwork. You can pay bills and obtain customer support.

The intranet has seen the development of an equally impressive list of tools. Using the company's network, employees can enroll in your healthcare plan, manage their retirement accounts, order office supplies, conduct a performance appraisal, requisition a new staff member and order logoware from the company store.

These may seem quite a far cry from the kind of work in which communicators are engaged. There are, however, several reasons communicators should consider getting involved with such projects:

Even a simple form communicates a message to the person viewing it. Principles of communication should be applied to the execution of the form.

These tools can enhance overall communication. The benefits enrollment form and the online version of the enrollment booklet are inseparable in the mind of the user. Thus the form becomes a part of the total communication effort.

Tools such as these help a web site achieve the critical mass it requires to become a genuinely valuable resource to the user. Consider BizTravel at www.biztravel.com. The content of the site is the equivalent of any print-based travel magazine. But it is the integration of the magazine with an online travel service that builds the critical mass necessary for users to find a full spectrum of value on the site.

Shel Holtz, ABC, is principal Holtz Communication + Technology, Concord, Calif. He is seminar leader for IABC's Writing for the Wired World series.