MARBLE ARCH — I was visited by a charming man from Brussels yesterday called Hugh. We had a nice chat about PR, communications and change management. We talked about schools in Kenya and wine in Kuwait and real estate in Cirencester.

When it came to the subject at hand — work — Hugh blushed a bit and said “I am here because, I am afraid to say, I googled ‘change management’ and your company came up.”

And I think that was the best thing I have heard so far in 2009. (Granted it’s not been a such a great year.)

There was a day when businesses like ours would try to find the biggest shingle they could and hang it above the front door. Or you might offer the “best deals” or some kind of AMAZING results or solutions. I know companies that have gone to great lengths to get in the papers or appear on TV. But today there’s one business directory that counts ahead of all others, and that’s Google.

When we started this business in September 2008 we had a lovely website that no one could see. But we didn’t figure that out until earlier this year. When we did, and our South African SEO (look it up!) guru tweeked a few things, everything changed. We climbed the ratings literally over-night.

Part of this is about technology, but part is also about noise and focus. We have tried hard to make our business offering both broad and specific. We found some words that we wanted to own, and we set about owning them.

At the same time we made as much noise online as we could. Blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn… We appeared at conferences and made sure the name was spelled right.

Has it been the making of us? So far, not really. But it can’t hurt. And it’s better than trying to lift that big shingle.

/df

LONDON — I love finding new writers on internal communications and change management. A colleague has just pointed me towards this fellow. He is in Hungary, working for a Japanese-owned company.

You don’t see that every day.

He’s got some interesting things to say.

http://behindthefence.wordpress.com/

Have a read.

/df

TCR — I have been looking around at some of my favourite blogs today. And it’s an interesting to see my colleague Lee Hopkins running a Social Media workshop in Australia today and tomorrow. I have run these in the past in the UK and I loved doing it. But it was more than a year ago.

I have kind of moved on. Which is not in any way meant to be dismissive. I think many of us are now using social media as an extension of the way we used to use the Internet… which is itself an extension of the way we used to use the postal services and the library.

I have blogs for example that I read a lot. Just as I read newspapers cover to cover each day. But I suspect there are people who don’t. And I use thinks like LinkedIn and Facebook regularly as well.

I have abandoned Twitter. But I know many people who still love it — and I can still see myself recommending it to clients. I have also not been on Second Life in a long time. But I am desperate to return for another try at an book launch in Second Life. (I’ll do one later in November.)

Here are a few of the blogs on our business that I read.

Internal communications in India
http://intraskope.wordpress.com/
Awesome. Lively. Fresh, interesting and clever.

Lee Smith
http://talkingic.typepad.com/
Lots of good stuff on the ‘industry’. Lee’s a good guy. A consultant-about-town.

Lee Hopkins in Australia
http://leehopkins.net/
Undying and frankly inspirational energy and enthusiasm. Lee is into everything and knows a lot about it all.

Sue Dewhurst
http://www.blackbeltdojo.co.uk/black_belt_dojo/
Along with her esrtwhile colleague Liam, Sue has trained a whole generation of internal communicators in the UK. You can hear then rattling around in here. It’s often fun and whimsical reading.

Neville Hobson
http://www.nevillehobson.com/
Neville knows everything about blogging and technology that anyone could ever need to know. If there’s something interesting going on in communication AND technology Neville will write about it first.

Kevin Keohane
http://kevinkeohane.wordpress.com/
He calls this ‘Death to Internal Marketing’ and you can’t argue with him. I like Kevin’s writing style.

Marc Wright
http://simply-blogging.typepad.com/publishers_blog/
Despite his boyish looks, Marc has been in this business since Moses was in shorts. He’s always interesting and up to something new.

If you are a fan of Delicious then here are some links here that you might find interesting. I used this in my social media courses in the past. I haven’t really updated it a lot recently. But there’s still some fun stuff here.

I have a group on Internal Communications and Change in Facebook. It keeps growing, but, frankly, there’s not much in terms of discussion going on there. And LinkedIn is growing in new and different ways all the time. Both are often more trustworthy to me than using my contacts list to find my friends and colleagues and see what people are up to.

What do you think is going on in social media that is exciting?

/df