By the time you get to read this, there will probably be scores of other articles already written. (If you are an early visitor, don't worry there's plenty more to come).
So I hope this will help to give you an idea of what the Communicado blog is about and where to find articles that will interest you.
First off, Communicado is about one big underlying theme: creating communicating and managing good quality, audience-focused, business and organisational content.
What do we mean by 'business and organsiational content'? Well, we are talking about the wide variety of information that we all provide to our customers, colleagues and suppliers on a daily basis.
This information can come in a variety of formats and sizes. But just as a couple of examples, I'm thinking of things like, user guides or manuals for a customer, intranet pages for colleagues or guidelines for suppliers.
Why is this stuff important? Well first, this kind of information is the lifeblood of any organisation (it's second only in importance to the employees and their customers). In other words, no organisation can function without it.
Next, poor quality (or missing) information has a profound impact on everybody. It's slows employees down and costs huge amounts of their time and the organisation's money.
Third, poor quality or missing information drives customers insane (and ultimately drives them away).
Finally, it frustrates suppliers and probably sours your relationship with them.
What's interesting is that organisations pay a great deal of attention to (and spend vast amounts of money on) the storage and retrieval of this information, but very little attention to its quality and effectiveness.
There is often an assumption that employees are all perfectly capable of producing good quality information that is fit for purpose and appropriate for the audience using it.
In many, many cases, this view is very wide of the mark. Lots of people really struggle when faced with the task of putting information together in a size and format suitable for a particular audience.
So if you are one of those many people, or if you are managing colleagues who you can see are struggling with this, we hope you'll find something of interest here.
In some ways, the blog might seem like a bit of a rag bag of ideas, thoughts and comments. But there are so many different kinds of business and organisational content and so many different issues that impact on its quality and development, we need to cover a wide spectrum.
So you might like to start by looking at articles about the specific kind of content you produce. Or you might like to look for articles that focus more on underlying themes like the technology used to deliver particular content or research into how we read, process and internalise new stuff.
If any of this 'floats your boat' why not consider subscribing by email or setting up an RSS feed.
Whether you are a one-time visitor or become a regular reader, we hope you'll find something you like.
