Google Apps for Work - Manual (Page 36)

Phase 1: Core IT
36
Complete the communications plan | Best practices
Edit the sample communications plan so it’ll work best for your
company and your user community:
•
Include your internal marketing activities. You identified ways to
promote Google Apps among your user community when you
created your internal marketing strategy. Coordinate the timing of
these promotions with all of your other project communications by
adding your internal marketing activities like road shows or swag
distribution to your communications plan.
• Incorporate targeted messages or events for special user groups.
Review the summary of your user community. What change
management tactics did you identify for special user groups?
Example: If you’re doing a series of small events for executives, make
sure you tell them how you’re going to support their groups’ unique
needs. Put these messages in your plan.
• Adapt the plan for your company. If you can’t hang posters because
of company policy, remove that item from the communications plan.
If you have a monthly newsletter everyone reads, add an item in your
plan to get an article in that newsletter before Go-Live.
• Focus on the user. Take a look at the number of messages you’re
sending to certain audiences. Do they have all the information they
need? Are you sending too many messages to one group and
oversaturating them with information? Think through the information
experience of each of your user groups. Modify it so the
communications tell the full story without overwhelming them.
“Resist the temptation to rely only on
email for communications. It’s tempting
because it’s easy to reach a large
audience quickly. The down side is that
it’s easy to ignore, and many people will
ignore it.
Highly visible artifacts such as posters,
banners, and tent cards will start the
buzz. Your message delivered
by executives and managers will be
listened to.”
—Dave Lyon, Director of Change
Management, Onix Networking
Onix Networking is a Google Apps Enterprise
Partner based in the United States.
Incorporate your project brand into your messages Learning from Solarmora, a fictionalized company
Andy’s team knew that past company-wide projects
were more successful when they had a unifying
theme or brand. They remembered that fantastic
employee benefits program the HR department
promoted a few years ago. People actually talked
about the posters and newsletters. So Andy came
up with his own project brand:
Systematic Apps Deployment 2.0
Oops! Andy didn’t ask for help with marketing. Andy
shared his project brand with his team and they
weren’t impressed. Systematic Apps Deployment 2.0
sounded like just another IT project. It also had the
abbreviation “SAD”—not the feeling to promote
among their user community. The marketing
representative asked if he could come up with an
alternate brand for the project.
Work in the future today: Any team,
any place, any time, and any device.
The new brand and slogan was a big hit with users.
They included the brand in all of their messages
they sent out during Core IT users. The slogan,
which was easy to understand and snappy, helped
to generate a positive buzz.