Episode 2: Increasing Productivity Through Internal Communications

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Webcast Presentation: Increasing Productivity Through Internal Communications

Learn how to increase the effectiveness of your entire organization by keeping them up-to-date with internal podcasting. Before you can market externally effectively, you must have all your ducks in a row internally. Podcasting is normally thought of as an external medium, but is one of the greatest tools discovered for internal communication. In this program you will learn:

- The challenges companies currently face as they relate to communications
- Benefits of implementing an internal communications program
- Most effective tools for internal communication
- The process for producing an internal podcast
- The benefits of working with MobileCast Media on internal communication

Program Transcript

Host: Are you looking to improve employee morale and productivity? Welcome, I'm Jodi Weidler and we're here today with John Houghton, CEO and Founder of MobileCast Media to talk about how companies can use podcasting for internal corporate communications. John, the economy is in recession, companies are downsizing. With this as the backdrop, what do you see as the problems in today's work environment and why are so many companies interested in improving internal communications.

John: Well the problem, Jodi, is there is so much uncertainty in today's work environment. There have been layoffs, people have taken on larger workloads - the people that have stayed behind - they also have to further worry about whether they're going to in fact loose their own jobs. They've been reorganized and now they need to be realigned with the new strategy and new corporate directives. So it's very important to hear from management about what those directives are, how they should be moving forward and it's a great opportunity to encourage and motivate the workforce. Very similar to how Roosevelt did in his fireside chats in the Great Depression; how he was able to encourage and reassure the public. That's what management needs to be doing today for their work forces.

Host: Yes, management certainly has a tough job right now keeping employees motivated. What are some of the benefits of implementing an internal corporate communication program?

John: The benefits of internal communication are improved morale, improved employee productivity, and also that you have imparted the knowledge necessary for employees to execute their functions. It's critical in this day and age that domain expertise is imparted to the organization, that subject matter experts are getting up and sharing their knowledge with the rest of the organization. Not only because people love to learn, but it helps them understand what the organization is doing and gives them better insight into how the organization is solving problems to generate revenue. And speaking of generating revenue, the most important group to keep educated and to communicate with is sales, because they're the ones that have the numbers to execute against.

Host: Yes, I think we would all agree that whatever a company can do to motivate and retain good employees and boost morale, seems like a good idea. What tools exist and what is the best vehicle for internal communication?

With the advent of new media, there is now a vehicle that is most effective for internal communication and that is podcasting. Podcasting is nearly instant, it's inexpensive, and most importantly, it allows communication, high fidelity communication, using the natural human voice and that can be very motivating. Something about the human voice and when you impart likeness, it allows for emotional connection. When you talk to advertisers, they're all looking to make emotional connections with their audience, because if you make that emotional connection between a brand and consumer, you're much more likely to get a buying response. It's the same with internal communication. You're trying to make an emotional connection so that you can convince, so that you can motivate, so that you can get employees doing what they need to be doing and make them feel part of the organization and believing. That is possible in carrying the human voice and not so likely in print. I don't think Roosevelt would have been nearly as successful in comforting the nation through the Great Depression if he did it through print.

The other thing about podcasting is it allows for time-shifting, meaning, you don't have to be at a certain place at a certain place at a certain time to consume the media. You don't have to be at your desk at 10 am to listen to a webcast. You can listen whenever you want. You can download, you can push to mobile devices. You can listen while you're exercising, you can listen while you're doing household chores, while you're commuting, while you're on the airplane. It allows you to extend your day. I'm always looking for ways to get more things done, to multi-task. I'm not looking for ways to add more hours to the day, but to make those hours more effective through multi-tasking and that's what podcasting does.

Because we're competing when we're listening in outside environments, we're competing with outside noise. And because we're competing with that noise with the podcast, it's very important that the podcast be high quality. When you're driving 65 miles per hour down the road, some of the podcasts that are produced these days, you can't even understand the words. They're not intelligible because the quality is not sufficient, so it's very important to try not to do phone recordings to keep the quality up. A high quality program that's well produced, that has good production values is not only easy to listen to but it builds audience because it's more appealing (even an internal audience has to be built). If it's broadcast quality, if it's radio quality - people listen to the radio all day, but they don't listen to webinars all day because webinars tend to be boring and low quality where as radio with production values that's been thought through. People listen to that stuff all day - people watch TV for four hours per night. So if you can approach those production values you can build audience rather than turning off audiences with low production values. So production value are very important.

Host: Podcasting certainly seems like a great way to communicate with employees. What's the process for producing a podcast?

The process for producing and internal podcast starts with planning. We sit down with the client, we understand the objectives and we design strategies and tactics for communicating with the organization. We also pick a format for the podcast. There's the monologue format, the interview format and the documentary format. Each one has its associated costs and level of effort on the client side. They also have varying levels of audience engagement. The goal here is to create a compelling program and not to create a boring program. So after that comes the site inspection where we go to the conference room where the podcast is going to be recorded. We make sure it's up to standard in terms of low HVAC noise, the acoustics aren't too live because that's not good either, and also there's not too much ambient noise. Most conference rooms can be appropriated for recording but we have to just check it out before hand.

Then comes the recording session and one of the mistakes that a lot of people make in the recording session is they put one microphone in between two people and that's a big mistake because when you don't have a microphone up close and it's far away, you're getting a lot more of the sound of the room. A conference room is not a recording studio - it doesn't have good acoustics. You get a lot of ambient noise and the things that we talked about. You're not going to hear the voices very loud compared to that ambient noise so that's a big mistake people make.

There's only supposed to be one microphone per person or guest speaking and each one has a pop filter on it to catch the plosives because otherwise you can drive people crazy with the booming of the base of their speakers every time they say "P" and you pop the microphone so you have a pop filter for that. It's important to have an engineer that sets up these microphones and makes sure everybody has proper microphone technique. That everybody's not too close and not too far and they're not moving off microphone as they get excited when they're talking. And that also the engineer stops the recording when something's going wrong, such as somebody is rolling a pencil or kicking the table. It makes a big sound in the recording. If nobody's monitoring that and it gets in, once the guests leave and the recording is over, you've got to get your guests back somehow. The recording has to be thrown away basically. So that's why we always have an engineer to setup and monitor the recording.

It's also important not to use phone conversations. When you're trying to use the opportunity to convince and create emotional connections, you can't make a very good connection over the phone versus in person. When you have high quality microphones and high quality gear, it's almost like being there in person. You can carry a lot of fidelity. That's lost over the phone. For the cost of a phone recording, for just a little bit more, we can actually put a person onsite. We have engineers in the major metro areas, we do what 's called a tape synch. The guest and interviewer get on the phone, they do their interview. We have live microphones in front of each of them. Later in post-production those two are married and it sounds like they are being recorded high quality in the same room.

Then comes editing. This is the point where we assemble all of the different "takes" of a performance. Let's say someone wanted to try to respond to a question three times to get their best performance. We put the best performance into one complete piece and that's the podcast. We submit it to the client for their approval, they'll either have some comments, say change this, change that, or we want to re-record, or whatever the case may be. So we get it so it's just right and then it gets approved and it goes up on the internal website, it's released. People download it. They download it by right clicking and downloading into iTunes. It gets pushed up to their mobile device such as their iPod or they can listen to it right at their computer.

Host: Well that sounds like a great process for producing a high quality podcast. Why should someone choose MobileCast Media to help them with their podcasting program.

John: Well I think a lot of people like the experience that we bring to the table. I got involved in my first internal communications project at Siemens Pyramid in 1995. We created an audio program for sales force training. We also put it out on the internal web site as a streaming audio program via Real Media Server. And so, we (MobileCast Media) were also one of the first podcasting companies to offer podcasting as a service to corporations. This was nearly four years ago when most people hadn't yet heard of podcasting. We bring a lot of experience in these two important areas.

Also going back to my schooling, I studied communications and business, so it's a dedicated area of study for me and a dedicated direction. I think what a lot of people also like about MobileCast Media is that we save a lot of time for them. They can come to us with an idea and we're a turnkey operation. We can make the rest of that happen for them. They also like that we provide a lot of direction. We can help them flesh out a project, put the meat around it, help make it happen with minimal of guidance, and that also saves them a lot of money.

Robert Fenstermacher, Aruba Networks, Head of Global Education Marketing

"I think in the end we were very happy with MobileCast Media. They were able to save us a lot of money. The production quality was very high for MobileCast. We liked the fact that it was turn-key. They did everything from start to finish. MobileCast was able to ask the right questions of us and point us in the right direction. So really, with providing minimal input, MobileCast was able to take on a lot of the creative process, which was very useful for us because it took less time for me to actually sit through each piece of the production schedule."

Paula Elmore, Nosal Partners, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), and Senior Partner.

"We were delighted with the MobileCast Media team. They were on time, extremely professional and delivered tremendous value for our investment."

Susan McConkey, Chief Information Officer (CIO), San Francisco Opera.

"The MobileCast Media team is terrific. On time, within the budget, and of the highest quality."

John: A lot of people get excited. They want to produce their own podcast. Maybe they're a marketing manager or higher. But what they don't realize is that with their fully loaded headcount, the amount of time it takes them to learn how to deal with audio, how to edit audio, they could have paid for four or five podcasts for us to do it rather than having them do it and reinventing the wheel and doing something like editing audio, which takes a long time, is a cumbersome task and it actually take a long time to learn and do properly. So a lot of people don't do a good job and put out an inferior program. It takes a lot of time to learn how to it when they could have been saving a lot of time and money. So that's what a lot of people appreciate about us, those who choose to outsource this function.

On of the core values of my company is that we value integrity. I had people say, "we don't care about your integrity, we just want the lowest cost and we want you to produce our programs for the lowest cost." A lot of corporations don't realize their liabilities when they're dealing with a company that doesn't have scruples, a production company. There are a lot of production elements that are commonly used and rights need to be cleared. There are stock photos stock sounds that go into podcasts; stock photos and stock footage that go into video productions. Less scrupulous companies don't clear those rights, don't pay for those rights, and so the right-holders invariably come back months or years later and sue and collect for damages. It's a big problem in the industry and some people aren't aware when you're dealing with production companies is that you're trusting somebody with publishing rights. That's why integrity matters and it's one of our core values.

The other thing that we can help companies do is create creative and compelling content. That's something that's very important because anybody can produce a podcast, and what people don't realize or they soon realize maybe a couple of months after it is released: if it is poorly produced, or if it wasn't compelling, not many people listen to it. Not many people take the time to listen to it. We help companies create compelling content.

The final thing is that we have fast turn around. We can go from an appointment to record, to having a podcast released maybe a day or two afterwards, and so we have a very quick turn around time because we have efficient processes and we have experience in making thing happen.

Host: Those are all great reasons to go with MobileCast Media. Say a company wanted to get started in podcasting, what should they do?

John: Best thing to do to get started is to call us. Call us, let us know your ideas, whether they have been thought out or not, we can help you understand the levels of effort, whether it's a good idea, bad idea - help you get started. Even if you don't end up using us, we'd love to talk to you about your project and help you get on your way, so we look forward to talking to you.

Host: Thank you John and thank you for joining us. We've been talking with John Houghton, CEO and Founder of MobileCast Media. If you're interested in improving your internal corporate communications with podcasting, please call MobileCast media, at 1 800-508-8155. That number to call is 1 800 508-8155. Call now.

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