Jump-start your conference experience by attending these interactive and practical workshops. These information-packed sessions are a great opportunity to network with fellow attendees while taking a hands-on, common-sense approach to better understanding how to build an internal communications strategy that is not only effective, but can be used for multiple purposes. These workshops are designed to enhance your understanding of the informative, case study presentations throughout the remainder of the conference.

Choose A, B, C or ALL 3 for Maximum Value and Learning

How To Develop Engaging Content For Your Internal Communications Strategy: Overcoming Common Obstacles & Practical Solutions

Once you’ve chosen your communication tools, it’s the content that truly makes it all come together.  It’s an ongoing commitment, but when executed well, pays big dividends and is well worth the time and effort.

Internal communications is an especially tough road to travel with seemingly impassable obstacles.  You have access to great internal distribution tools, but how do you go about creating compelling content that engages employees while dealing with the issues inherent in an internally controlled distribution channel?

In this workshop, you will be guided through critical concepts that serve as the foundation for developing a content strategy. You’ll learn practical approaches and tips for creating content that engages with your audiences, allowing you to not only share your message, but more importantly, to create a personal connection that opens the door to ongoing interaction.

Through case study examples, you’ll experience common obstacles faced when developing internal communications content and learn, first-hand, how these obstacles not only can be overcome, but in some cases, can be recast as opportunities.

In this compelling, hands-on workshop, you will be shown how to:

• Understand key items and utilize best practices when creating a content strategy
• Develop compelling content that will engage your audience
• Deal with the challenges and benefits presented by inward vs. outward facing distribution
• Address expectations regarding engaging with and sharing video content and “viral views”
• Develop cost effective video content for multiple distribution channels
• Create a phased strategy for developing content, measuring success and achieving acceptance
• How to apply these approaches to your specific content needs

Rave Reviews From Past AboutFace Media, Inc.Workshops:

"I love the group interaction—it forces conversation that makes me think outside the box. I’m taking back some great commentary and “arguments” to our senior leaders."

"This was so good. Great information, great collaborating, and I have tools to take home."

"Denise was great!! :) Absolutely useful! I know what my homework is now. Thanks!"

10:30 a.m. to 10:45 a.m.
Break

How To Transform And Migrate Your Intranet Content To Meet The Needs Of Your Updated Intranet And Its Users

Moving over ugly, unusable content to your shiny new intranet won’t ensure use and adoption. If you want your new intranet to meet user needs into the future, you’ve got to tackle bad content today. Transform it into content that works great on the web and integrates with your platform.

This workshop will provide you with practical approaches for:

• Identifying what gets moved, what to do with it and how to prioritize it
• Rethinking what content you provide and how you deliver it
• Managing a large intranet content transformation effort
• Integrating usability testing and records management
• Tackling taxonomy and tagging in your implementation
• Rewriting and editing to make the content work well on the web

WORKSHOP LEADER: Stacy L. Wilson, ABC is President and Senior Consultant of Eloquor Consulting, Inc. Stacy has more than 22 years of communication experience. In 2001 she launched Eloquor Consulting to help organizations communicate more effectively with employees to improve the bottom line. Some of her clients have including Ocean Spray Cranberries, Pitney Bowes, Xcel Energy, Denver Public Schools, AT&T Broadband, and more. @stacylwilson

2:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP C
Refreshments will be provided during this session.

How To Link Your Communication To Your Business Strategy And Measure Its Impact: A Step-By-Step Process
It’s hard to connect our work with business results unless we plan our communication strategies from the beginning to help deliver those results. This workshop will give you an easy-to-follow, step-by-step process to connect communication to business goals—and then prove the value of the communication.

Specifically in this session, you will learn the difference between communicating a business strategy and communicating in a way that fulfills the strategy—sometimes without even mentioning the strategy itself. You will also be provided with a step-by-step process for engaging your executive management in communication planning in a way that feels like other, logical business processes they are comfortable with, including:

• Determining which stakeholder groups are most important in helping to achieve a particular goal
• Identifying the ideal behaviors for each stakeholder group to reach the goal
• Discovering through informal research which knowledge and attitude messages are contributing to the current (incorrect) behaviors and which messages would better motivate the ideal behaviors
• Choosing the best channels for the ideal knowledge and attitude messages
• Setting measurable objectives for the messages and channels
• Developing measures that will connect your communications with achievement of the ideal behaviors and organizational goals in terms of a return on investment

WORKSHOP LEADER: Angela Sinickas is President of Sinickas Communications, Inc., a consulting firm dedicated to helping organizations achieve business results through focused research and practical solutions. An award-winning organizational communicator since 1974, she has been measuring the effectiveness of communication since 1981. She wrote the manual "How to Measure Your Communication Programs" and has developed a range of Communication Audit Starter Kits on CD-ROM for communicators to conduct their own measurements, as well as 40, one-hour audio CDs on planning and measuring communication (www.sinicom.com). @sinickasa

Rave Reviews From Past Sinickas Communications, Inc. Sessions:

"She was the best presenter of the whole conference. Very, very good
information and covered depth of subject."

"Very good. There was a great deal of information provided that can be
used immediately in my workplace."

"Fantastic—this will change my approach to planning and measuring immediately!"

Wrap up your conference experience with a hands-on workshop that will leave you inspired and ready to embark on your own internal communications journey!

Sign up for this post-conference workshop and receive one in-office training on a future date of your choice.

1:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
POST-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP D
Afternoon refreshments will be provided.

The "How-To's" Of Designing Structured Content: How To Create Content To Spur Discussion, Identify Gaps, Align Your Employees, And Resolve Issues

Content is on your desktop, in print, flooding your inbox, and bombarding your mobile. Companies are struggling to engage with a multi-channel, multi-device, multi-lingual workforce with timely, consistent and relevant content. As a solution many of us deploy numerous tactical solutions to repurpose content from one channel to another. Or we use responsive design to just-in-time deal with content on the target device.

But how does structured content happen? How do you create content once that can be published everywhere? Where do you start? What do you need? Who needs to be involved? How much effort do you need to invest?

Designers, technologists, and editors need to align in order to create structured content. You must create models that communicate a shared understanding of the content requirements, to align the design vision with the editorial needs, convey them in a tech-ready form, and bring your strategy for structured content to life.

In this workshop you will learn how to create content models that will spur discussion, identify gaps, align teams, resolve issues, and ultimately design reusable content that can be used everywhere.

WORKSHOP LEADER: Jeff Willinger is the Director of Social Computing, Collaboration and Intranets at Rightpoint and was recently named the top SharePoint person to watch in 2012 and one the most influential social media people in the city of Chicago. He specializes in advising clients on social computing strategies, social intranets and portals, mobile reach vs. reach and increasing employee engagement.

Testimonials From Past Rightpoint Sessions:

"Entertaining and relevant material."

"I wish he had more time!"