1. It’s a lot easier to market a great product. Rather than pushing a crappy HR program on people, make the program so awesome, so helpful to people, that they not only want to use it – they even tell a friend!
2. Design matters. Good design doesn’t mean adding a few random graphics at the end. It means thinking about how a user would interact with what you’re creating. Its about how something works – not what it looks like.
3. Brands matter. Your organizational culture has a brand. Your department has a brand. Even you have a brand. Make sure you own it (or someone else will).
4. Just because you have an email address doesn’t mean you have the right to use it. Every time you send a stupid, annoying or meaningless email to the entire organization, you increase the likelihood that they’ll delete your emails without reading them. It’s the organizational equivalent of spam. Instead, send timely, anticipated, interesting emails.
5. People don’t pay attention to boring things. In other words, people ignore the dry, buzzword laden prose that’s typical of most corporate communication. Be direct. Be interesting. Be relevant.
6. Be honest. Which would make you feel better: Buying a product that doesn’t live up to the hype, or buying a product that ends up being exactly what you thought it would be? Same thing goes for candidates “buying” a new employer and employees “buying” a new HR program.
7. Know your customers. You may think you know what your employees want. But you don’t really know until you ask them. If you told someone about Twitter three years ago, they would have told you that you’re crazy.

About our guest writer: Chris Ferdinandi is a human resource and social media pro at EMC Corporation in Boston, MA. He’s also a clean hippie (he loves recycling and taking showers), beach bum, weekend warrior, and musician. You can find him at RenegadeHR.net or on twitter at @ChrisFerdinandi. We’re lucky to have him as a guest writer today.