To end with a successful corporate change, start with building awareness. “Typically, it is the organization’s internal change management team that gets the job of bringing employees and middle managers on board,” says Laura Link, a communications coach and public relations consultant.

Experienced change managers know that every communication about the change must add value. After all, you are dealing with skeptics who don’t think that change will really happen. Then there are those who will resist any change because it is change. Luckily, still others will excitedly share everything they hear about the change.

Take this example. Link’s team developed a multi-touch, multi-channel communications program to introduce a large Information Technology-based process change. The change needed to be accepted by all varieties of end-users and stakeholders. Communications needed to nurture these individuals and groups along the continuum of steps from awareness to information to evaluation to reinforcement to measurement.

Link’s advice? “First, the change team needs to find out exactly who the audience is. You may want to bring in a team from outside to do a detailed audience analysis, or you may have the resources to do the analysis in-house. But do the analysis.”

Many change activities fail because the team made the mistake of thinking they understood the audience and its needs simple because the audience is made up of employees.

Then support your efforts with an e-newsletter sent to all employees. Put links to a specially created intranet portal which houses all the change messages. Motivate. Add value.

Consider interactive and multi-media elements such as live chats a part of your e-newsletter. For an example consider the newsletter provided by www.hgtv.com.

To promote acceptance and understanding of the key process change, include areas for users to interact with internal experts as well as with organization leaders through scheduled web chats; static photos of real end users, and leaders delivering actual recorded messages via online movies; and links to events, training schedules and project information as well as a communications archive.