Your Content is Never As Interesting as What's On Your User's Mind

Here's a tip for all of you in the Employee Communications space. It's from Ryan Travis, Senior Manager, web and digital communications at Walmart. In this great interview from The Council of Communication Management conference, he shares Walmart's strategy for communicating with Associates across their exclusive internal social community myWalmart.com.

Walmart found out that the way they were communicating was not in line with the way associates process information. They found that associates think of themselves first, their peers second and the customer third. After that, they think of the store, the home office and then the company.

Now every conversation starts with the associate first and how everything affects the associate. Gone are the "Announcements" from senior executives. You know them... {company} is proud to announce... or {company} believes that...

Instead, Associates speak first about how issues affect them or the customers, and then Walmart inserts themselves into the conversation, adding how those same issues affect the store, the company and in many cases, the world.

It's a great step in learning, and a good lesson for building a brand from the bottom up. Don't talk about your brand and expect people to listen. Instead, create a dialogue with people who already share your same beliefs.