Good to hear from you!
Here's how the audio blog works at Farmers. Remember, this is relatively new: we're working on our 5th message. You should probably know something about Farmers and the Chairman. Martin D. Feinstein, Chairman and CEO of Farmers, worked his way up from claims rep. Farmers is the only company that he's ever worked for. He's tough, a straight-shooter, his live Q and As are a favorite of agents and employees, and he answers hundreds of e-mails from agents and employees every week. Everyone addresses him as Marty.
An editorial team -- a couple people from communications and one from marketing to represent agents -- after solicting input from anyone and everyone, nominates 2-3 topics. The chairman chooses -- often a topic we have not proposed. They seem to be skewing toward the strategic. (So far the topics have been -- announcing the blog and why we're doing it; reports on YTD performance and how we stack up against the competition; the Florida hurricanes and what it means to our finances; asking employees and agents to "test drive" a customer rewards program for the holiday and soliciting their feedback.)
We draft a message. He records it. Since he travels so much, we have the recording set up through a toll-free number.
The blog has a limited shelf life: The message is up two weeks and only two weeks. It's not archived and not downloadable. (The message has scrolling text for the hard of hearing. It's also accessible by phone toll-free.)
We get dozens and dozens of e-mails -- responding to the topic and bringing up issues from benefits to rates in a particular local market. Marty responds to them. If he doesn't answer them directly, he forwards them to a senior person to answer. The expectation for response is 24-48 hours.
I don't think we can say how it's doing. For each message, half the employees listen; three-quarters of agents listen. Each message generates between 50-100 e-mails. Many attaboys. But some surfacing pretty important issues. It takes time, but because it's the chairman's message, it doesn't have the many layers of approval -- just one layer. And it's a way of introducing some intimacy into communications.
That's probably way more than you wanted to know. But if there are any questions left . . . please forward them my way.

DATE: 10/22/2004 08:34:1P PM
How do you judge the most popular? We have a couple internal audiences -- agents and employees, both internal. They like different things. The agents like the quarterly magazine... print rules! The weekly Web edition, not so much. We are experimenting with a biweekly audio message on the Web from the CEO -- and the agents have taken to that. All credit to the CEO, who gives good message and encourages e-mail feedback then responds personally.

DATE: 10/22/2004 33:93:9P PM
Deborah:

I was actually going to give you a holler and ask about this "biweekly audio blog." Can you please share with the group about how it works, what kinds of messages he does, etc.? I think it's fascinating.

Steve

DATE: 10/27/2004 82:52:9A PM
Hi-
I work for a nonprofit healthcare org and our popular communication vehicle is a monthly employee newsletter which is a 4 page, two color piece with a collated insert.

I attended the Strategic Employe Communication Vehicles conference in Chicago last month (it rocked, by the way) and my colleague and I have been inspired to start revamping this newsletter, and also to try using our intranet better for communicating. In order to do this, I would like to take a survey to see if staff even look on our intranet site and if they want to see more interactive items on the intranet. Does anyone have any sample surveys they might have used to analyze their printed or Web publications? If so, will you be willing to share with me? Thank you very much!

DATE: 11/01/2004 10:11:2P PM
Rhonda:

I'll look around and see what I have around here.

Steve

Steve -- I work at an airline -- lots of different work groups, locations and diverse work schedules. Some have no computer access, except a departmental one for employees to share.

We use our intranet quite a bit, but it is still not the place you go to for breaking news. It's more an information-based vehicle. We also use a weekly e-newsletter which is the primary info piece. And e-mails are used for getting info out on new routes, service or other significant news.

But no print. Except for the non-computer departments, who have to have the e-mails printed and posted on the bulletin board.

And most of our customer communication is through e-mail and our Web site which works very well.