Make your Information worth Paying Attention to, or Be a Spammer

There’s a saying that every party has an egotistical drunk at it. If you look around and don’t see one, it’s probably you.

The same goes for corporate spam. If your communications aren’t seen to be truly valuable by the people you’re trying to reach, it’s probably spam.

Is that really how you want your organization to be perceived?

Steve Rubel talks about his taxed attention, and how he has to cut back on his news sources, the leads he chases down, and other ways to gain back some semblance of a normal life from the legion of social media interruptions to his week.

This same challenge has faced every employee of every company that has a communications team throwing information at them, or an unfiltered stream of e-mail, intranet posts and other junk flowing at them from everyone in the company, and many outside sources, to boot.

We only have so much time. But more importantly, we only have so much attention.

The time management gurus recognized this years ago, and have been promoting ways for individuals to stay focused and cut the distractions out of their lives.

Your company’s job is to make sure what you provide your key audiences is essential rather than a distraction.

If you’re not adding value with almost every item you throw in front of your audiences, you are pulling them away from important work. And when they decide to throttle back on their attention, they’ll filter you out, unless you’ve already become a trusted source of useful information and insight.

That’s the goal you should be reaching for. Any publicity campaign can get the attention of an audience, if enough brute force is applied. But when that fleeting moment has passed, is your company or service viewed as valuable by your target market? Is your company or non-profit organization seen to be a credible source to your most important audiences?

Those are the metrics you should be measuring. Otherwise, you’re probably well on your way to being perceived to be a distraction.

Not many of us include in our performance objectives that we want to diminish our company’s reputation and reduce its perceived value as a source of information. So why don’t we act accordingly?

Previous posts:

• Actions Can Sabotage Corporate Responsibility Programs
• Corporate Darth Vader Asks: Why are we doing this?
• It All Starts with the Company Goal

Tags: business, attention, steve rubel, spam, corporate communications, audiences, value, perceived value, metrics, public relations