CorpComms Magazine

(1) SPEND TIME IDENTIFYING YOUR AUDIENCES

Scattergun communications do not really work. Make sure you know which audiences matter to you, and just what makes them tick. Your audiences will include at least some, but possibly all, of the following: customers, employees, shareholders/investors, regulators, government, media and a floating group of hard-to-define 'influencers', which includes NGOs and opinion-formers. Each group has its own agenda: make it your business to understand them. Survey work is normally not wasted, if it gives you a better feel for your target audiences.

(2) ALIGN COMMUNICATIONS WITH YOUR COMPANY'S RESOURCE USAGE

Which resources your firm uses to make its business fly will be crucial to your communications plan: having a lot of employees places a heavy emphasis on internal communications, operating in a regulated market means that interaction with regulators and governments, a B-2-B sales strategy needs different communication from a B-2-C plan. There is limited point in communicating (however successfully) to the wrong audience.

(3) STAY CLOSE TO BRAND, MARKETING, CULTURE, CHANGE MANAGEMENT

There is a school of thought that communications is about reputation, and that reputation just means press releases and stock market announcements. This is too limiting. Communications has distinct skill sets but also some obvious overlaps with marketing, brand management and the complex world of deciding what values and vision a company should reflect. Just as brand management involves more than designing logos (though corporate design is important), and change management is about more than getting staff numbers and remuneration right (though this too is vital), so communications has more to contribute than just successful execution of set-piece messaging. You should see communication and reputation as part of a bigger picture, which determines the character and identity of the company.

(4) MAKE COMMUNICATIONS INTEGRAL TO STRATEGY

It is very hard to bolt a communications strategy onto a corporate plan that is already set in stone. The best approach is to develop communications and messaging alongside the more substantive aspects of corporate strategy (for example, considering the products or services you are supplying, how you sell them, how you price them, what is your USP and so on). Being part of this process means that communicators also have a better understanding of what it is that their company is trying to do. This enables you to avoid the classic risk of disconnection between hard-edged business strategists and soft-sell communicators, and especially to avoid communication activity coming to be seen either as a necessary evil or pure cost burden.

(5) SELECT YOUR CHANNELS CAREFULLY

Figure out how each group needs to be communicated with. Here we can get into the realms of specialisation: for example conducting investor relations via stock analysts is a highly technical skill set of its own, succeeding at media relations often requires a different approach to achieving understanding and influence through public affairs, and the in-house audience can sometimes be the most demanding of all. There is, of course, a very necessary degree of overlap (see my later point about consistency) but emphases will vary between audiences, as will the information sources on which each audience group relies. Your customers may buy after researching web-based references to your product while your shareholders may get their information from the financial press. There are very few information channels which are all-encompassing and which reach all audiences effectively, and the communication market gets more fragmented, not less.

(6) BE CONSISTENT

Ensure that the overarching message(s) are consistent. By all means vary the level of detail, complexity and the language used. You will undoubtedly vary the emphasis or the tone to fit the audience. Obviously, you will explain your company to a retail customer in a different way than you would a market regulator. But do not permit internal or external contradiction. At its core, what you say boils down to a few very simple messages about the company vision and how you do business. The rest is evidence.

(7) BE FLEXIBLE

You have to be ready to make adjustments to communications if circumstances or facts change. This is a differentiator between communications and marketing: as a communicator you can usually adapt more quickly, as corporate advertising tends to have a lead-time. This is currently very apparent in the banking sector where advertising is only just beginning to reflect the credit-crunch environment - one year after the crunch began.

(8) BE PERSISTENT

Do not be afraid of repetition. The story may feel dull to you after the tenth, or hundredth, time of telling. But it may still be new to your audience. So, do not reinvent or reframe your message until your audience also knows it by heart.

(9) MEASURE YOUR SUCCESS

Despite the efforts of many, corporate communications lags behind the marketing and the branding worlds in terms of having established, well-known methodologies and scientific-sounding processes for adding value. Maybe communication is an art rather than a science, but that does not mean success is incapable of being measured. So monitor what you do and make sure you demonstrate that it adds to the bottom line. This is an important aspect of being taken seriously at a strategic level.

(10) ENJOY IT

Your work matters to the success of the corporation and of all those work in it. Communications is a responsible job. Communications is also one of the most stimulating, varied, interesting, creative and, frankly, fun jobs in any company. Make the most of it, take it seriously, but also have fun doing it. 

share me: del.icio.us | digg | reddit | Tweet