Making the Most of Tools for Communicating About Your Project
From the The Money Files Blog
by Elizabeth Harrin
A blog that looks at all aspects of project and program finances from budgets, estimating and accounting to getting a pay rise and managing contracts.
Written by Elizabeth Harrin from RebelsGuideToPM.com.
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If you want to let people know about your project, you need to tell them.
Often.
And in lots of different ways.
In my last article about project marketing I wrote about the different ways of getting your message across that you could use from your intranet to a leaflet campaign.
Varying the tools you use to talk about your project is important because people need to hear the same message between 3-5 times before they start to believe it. After that it begins to lose its effectiveness.
It’s more interesting for them to hear it in a variety of ways. And you’re more likely to catch people who have a personal style that means they respond better to different approaches. For example, the intranet isn’t going to be very useful in reaching people that don’t spend a lot of time in front of a PC, like your catering staff. They might prefer to hear about your project through the staff magazine. When you vary your tools you improve the chanced that some of what you are talking about is going to go in.
It’s also beneficial for individuals to hear the message from different people, including someone more senior than them whom they respect. Look for ways that you can include quotes from your Project Board members or invite them to attend events with you.
Avoiding Information Overload
With all this communication happening and the different tools, and the repetition, you’ve got to be careful about creating a balance so that you can avoid information overload. People can and will be fatigued by your messages. You could probably give me examples of marketing messages and advertising that you see so often, like billboards at the side of the road, that you stop noticing it’s there.
Unfortunately, there’s no scientific method for working out when that is going to happen, so I can’t give you a rule to apply. My best tip is to create a communications calendar to run alongside the rest of your communications plan so you can easily see which messages are going out when and to whom. Then you can judge if one audience is receiving too much at any one time, or conversely, not receiving enough.
Be visual
Another way to help balance your messages is to be visual.
YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google, with over 1 bn unique visitors per month. Pinterest was the fastest growing social network in 2014, seeing a 97% growth in active users. There’s no doubting that pictures help get your message across.
A study from at the University of Minnesota found that presenters who used visual aids were considered 43% more persuasive (pdf), and as you want to be persuasive about your project it will help you to include images.
Go visual with video
You’ve also got the option to use video. It’s not expensive and you don’t need professional kit to do it any longer.
Here are some screenshots from a video we made about a big software implementation. Originally the project sponsor and I planned to travel to each of the 40 locations to discuss the impact and answer questions directly from a wide group of stakeholders. When we looked at the logistics it wasn’t practical for us to take that much time away from managing the project to solely focus on this communication strand. So we made a video what we would have told them face to face.
You can see here a mix of talking heads, tour round the new servers, screenshots of the software and panning shots of people at work. This was a software project, so even if you are creating something like software that isn’t as visual as, say, a construction project, then you can still create interesting videos with a mix of participation from the project team. It’s fun and engaging for project team to do as well.
This video was watched by key people at all locations and we had excellent feedback on it. You can see how many times your videos are watched through a simple count on YouTube but if you do publish on YouTube then make sure you do so as a private video so only those people with the link can see it.
For us, the video was a simple way to promote the project, reach a wide audience and give people a consistent message without having to meet them individually. On the plus side we probably reached more people than town hall style meetings. On the negative side I had to rely on phone calls, emails and capturing queries via the intranet instead of hearing and responding to questions face to face in real time. There are payoffs and choices in every communication decision!
For more information on project marketing and the tools you can use to communicate about your project, watch my PMXPO talk on the topic. You can get it here (and claim a PDU at the same time).
Posted on: January 11, 2016 11:59 PM |
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Comments (6)
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Rami Kaibni
Community Champion
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten Associates
New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Hi Elizabeth,
Very interesting subject and I would like to stress and strongly agree on the fact to Avoid Overloading Information.
As for the Visual, when I used to work overseas (I am talking in terms of construction projects), we used to put live cameras in our projects which gives live feed through a link provided by our organization and it was a very successful Higher Management Monitoring Tool AND Marketing Tool at the same time.
Kiran Kumar
Transformation Management Office
Viernheim, Germany
Rami, copy that - information overload is always an problem. What we did in the past was define a framework for Project visibility, which had 2 set of definition - one was from the PMO which was the standard that will be used by the PM, which includes as an example status reporting in a specific template. The second was the aspect that the PM had to fill in which is required by the Sponsor/ steering committee. All this is defined within the project management plan, which helps all the stakeholders to evaluate what the strategy for information sharing is. This also helps the PMo to evaluate what else the PM's are doing which could be standardized.
Rami Kaibni
Community Champion
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten Associates
New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Kiran, this is all great but this is within the organization and the projects. However, as far as I understood from Elizabeth's post, her concentration is on marketing and overloading people with marketing and advertisements which is totally a different concept. Did I get that right or I missed something ?
Stéphane Parent
Self Employed / Semi-retired| Leader Maker
Prince Edward Island, Canada
Communication is such a large part of our workload. It is important to get this reminders and tips on how we can do it effectively and efficiently.
I agree that finding an optimal balance in communication is critical. Make your point only once and it won't sink in, or people won't remember. Say it too many times and people will get annoyed.
From my personal experience I can attest that if I hear a point only once and it's never repeated again, it probably won't sink in. And the fact that there was no follow-up (repetition) means it probably wasn't that important.
fosco frongia
Senior project manager| ENTE PATRIMONIALE CHIESA GESU' CRISTO SUG
Fino Mornasco, Como, Italy
Thanks Elizabeth for the interesting article. If i remember well, around 60% of communication is no verbal (posture, images etc.) so the suggestion to go visual is very important because more effective. The rule is valid for presentation too: the message is not effectively transmitted by script but by images.
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