conversation is an engine

Start moving your messages where they will be heard.

I just got off the phone with a friend at a medical device company. This friend helps prepare technical information for clinicians. His team works at moving IFUs (“Instructions for Use”) and other labeling concerns across regulatory and legal hurdles to be ready for clinicians. Their challenge is to reduce medical waste for their customers (getting rid of medical waste costs more than the usual garbage fee) by reducing the amount of paper they put into the system, that is, reducing the clutter they send to clinicians with products. So they are taking the necessary steps to move documents online where they can be used or downloaded to a computer or PDA, or even, yes, printed. It makes sense: people don’t read documents. People don’t store documents. People want the information they want right now and paper is becoming a bit of a nuisance.

they must find us

Getting the right information to the right people at the right time is always a work in progress. I’ve been advocating the power of search for some time, which means putting information within the reach of your intended audience’s search engines. That information needs to be there before your audience realizes they want it. Right now this is a choice companies make, with most sticking to their old corporate sales monologues and the tools that send the monologues forth, from sales rep to potential customer to waste bin. Companies anticipating the search need are the heroes of the moment.

My friend pointed out that engaging in conversations is not just for consumers, but even more for experts deep in a technical conversation. Generations grow up and Facebook, already a burgeoning economy of its own, is the model for how next-generation clinicians will expect to learn how to program a defibrillator, for instance. Companies will do well to help pave the way for this to happen.

Getting our messages to the right people at the right time trims all sorts of waste: less paper wasted on unneeded documents. Fewer brain cells wasted on fighting off unwanted sales pitches. And more freedom for finding.

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