1. Week 3: Online Research and Corporate Communication
    1. Corporate Communication: A process that collects information from the environment, develops messages from the information and transmits them to get specific economic results. Online is an essential tool to get this done.
      1. Uses multiple messages and media, both verbal and nonverbal
    2. External corporate communication consists of message sending intended to achieve specific economic results from those who buy goods and services as well as those who sell goods, services and resources to a seller, and it directly influences how well a seller will survive in a market. Online is an integral part of this communication.
      1. Economic results do not have to be sales. May include permission to operate.
      2. Business rarely acts alone. It communicates to actors who are essential to making and sustaining economic transactions. At one time or another, any actor may hold the key to a company’s survival.
      3. Managers observe the business environment and translate information into messages tailored to the needs of external individuals who directly affect a company’s survival and success. Managers interpret the external business environment to the internal organization. Online is an essential tool for environmental observation.
      4. Managers struggle to make messages and meanings real in the economic transaction. Online is a tool for helping to get this done.
        1. All industries have different rates of change that impinge on communication.
        2. A manager can never know the precise status of individuals, markets or industries.
        3. Environmental observation is a craft in itself that is complicated to do. To most managers, understanding is intuitive, and knowledge is fragmentary. Online is an excellent source of environmental observation because so much is there.
        4. Managers run into trouble communicating externally when they distance themselves from the external environment. Online is one way to keep the external environment close.
        5. The manager’s challenge is to monitor all key participants in an economic transaction. This is impossible. Managers depend on communication systems to tell them what is going on, but they can never be sure about what they are told. Online is a medium that can help managers find out what is going on.
        6. Online, corporate advertising, public affairs and public relations deal with many external issues that threaten or hinder a company from completing economic transactions, but there are no rules that say a company must use any one of these media.
          1. Some companies prefer to be invisible
          2. Some companies are visible and forced into social involvement.
          3. Some companies cannot justify their positions in society no matter how hard they try – tobacco and arms makers.
          4. There is no logic to what society accepts or condemns at a given moment. External communication does not have to be rational. Often it is not.
        7. Managers use heuristics, or rules of thumb, to determine what to communicate. A problem arises when managers use or communicate heuristic rules outside environments in which they work
        8. External communication frequently fails because of noise in the business environment, competing claims, embedded biases, the heuristics of message-receivers, and other factors.
        9. No company completely controls its external business environment and no communication to external individuals can guarantee a result. People have free will and companies have little control.
        10. The role of the manager is that of observer first and message-sender second.
    3. Online Research
      1. Exercise: Students analyze eight search engines, their similarities and their differences.
      2. How search sites work.
        1. Catalogue sites. Humans defining categories.
        2. Robot search engines
          1. Meta Tags. What they are and why they are important
        3. Link sites or supersites. Why and how to use them.
      3. Research on online when you know what to look for.
        1. Narrow phrases
        2. Proprietary names
        3. Newsgroups
        4. Listserv
        5. Gopher
        6. Search and meta-search engines. Never use one search tool alone.
      4. Research online when you don't know what you are looking for.
        1. Start wide with general phrases. Never use one search tool alone. Search and meta-search engines
        2. Follow trails that seem promising
        3. Look for a link/supersite
        4. Investigate link/supersite
        5. Find narrow phrases and proprietary names
    4. Assignment for next week: External public relations
      1. Readings:
        1. Chapters 3, 6 and 7 of Publicity on the Internet
        2. Chapters 6, 7 and 8 of Public Relations on the Net
        3. Chapter 7 of Integrated Corporate Communications
      2. Class Exercise: Prepare an announcement about your organization's main product or service.
        1. Keep it short.
        2. Make it interesting.
        3. Direct readers of the announcement to a Web site or e-mail address where they can get more information.
        4. Name three online newsgroups or web sites where you would place this announcement and give reasons why. Reasons must include:
          1. The focus of the site.
          2. Discussions taking place on the site. Prepare to hand in at least two e-mails backing you up.

Blue_ArrowF051.gif (140 bytes) Home Blue_Arrow4370.gif (140 bytes)Top of Page