Once upon a time, communications by departments were easy to track just by checking with the graphics department for design requests. Desktop publishing started to blur the lines. Email blasts and social media marketing have obliterated them. That's where communications audits come in.

Eight Marketing recently completed a communications audit for the Michener Art Museum, examining the interplay of marketing and messages between departments and their correlation to printed publications.

Communications audits can also help centralize list management, editorial calendars and social media strategies.

For information on conducting a communications audit for your organization, simply email us.

Everybody's talking these days and thanks to social media, they're talking publicly.  That's where the importance of having a sound social media policy comes in. Alan Murray, Wall Street Journal Deputy Managing Editor and Executive Editor Online, summed it up in a tweet as "Don't be stupid." While that may be a sound first rule, clearly there's more to be done.

An excellent example of a social media policy can be found on Coca-Cola's website for its partners, a link to which can be found here. Their five key guiding values speak to many of us -- Transparency, Protection, Respect, Responsibility and Utilization.

Remember, it's often easier to communicate to your team what you don't want them to say than what you do. An effective social media policy encompasses both.

MBM: Social Media ROI