or
or
or
Tags

Overview: Communication Strategy

Communications appears complex. But a good communication strategy shouldn't be.

4-steps, 4 tables

I generally boil it all down to four simple, interrelated tables, defining:

  • Who you’re trying to reach: your audiences, including their needs and information preferences, and what your goals are for them
  • Why they should pay attention to you: starting with your Unique Value Proposition, craft a Global Elevator Pitch, and from that derive Editorial Messaging for each audience, reflecting their needs (above)
  • How you will get those messages to those audiences: an integrated, mutually supportive communications portfolio
  • When you will monitor and optimise those activities: key metrics, analyses and optimisation processes.

Process

A Word document entitled "communication strategy" gathering dust on a shelf is no use to anybody. The only way your strategy will have an impact is if:

  • you engage your colleagues during its development - after all, they have some of the answers you'll need;
  • and your ensure they understand the strategy once it's finalised - after all, their cooperation will be critical to its success.

There are many ways to go about this. My favourite option is to spend a few hours a week interviewing diverse members of your comms team and holding one or two workshops with them and others. That way we'll develop buy-in together along the way, and I'll be able to mentor your staff so that they can better implement the strategy.

But if that's not possible right now, I boiled my process down into an online course: 4-Step Communication Strategy Framework: demystify communications strategy

Relevant resources

Launching new framework: The Future of Work
rossdawsonblog.com
Card image

The framework probably needs some explanation, and I intend to both refine and provide more detailed explanations of the framework in the near future. In the meantime, here is our Beta v1 of The Future of Work framework. - Launching new framework: The Future of Work - Trends in the Living NetworksTrends in the Living Networks

Automatismes et aspects sémantiques - SeenThis
seenthis.net
Card image

Seenthis dispose de fonctionnalités lui permettant de déterminer la langue des messages... - le message global est analysé, - les paragraphes de citation à l’intérieur du billet sont analysés à part. De cette façon, je peux écrire un billet en français, contenant des extraits en anglais et en espagnol. Seenthis est capable de déterminer la…

Rise of the Social Influencer and Sponsored Posts
www.linkedin.com

only when people are tempted to write gushing praise about a product they secretly despise that I think you have thrown away everything that you supposedly stand for... quite depressing to think that after all these years, we are still trying to put a price tag on everything that moves.,, However, there is something quite refreshing and excitin…

Masterclass time. From the Google Blog:  we’ve taken the Google logo and branding, which were originally built for a single...
www.youtube.com

Masterclass time. From the Google Blog:  we’ve taken the Google logo and branding, which were originally built for a single desktop browser page, and updated them for a world of seamless computing across an endless number of devices and different kinds of inputs (such as tap, type and talk).

Automated Multilingual Content Analysis: A New Approach to Estimating Conflict from Parliamentary Speeches Across Languages
ecpr.eu
Card image

Something for the bloggingportal reboot, courtesy @ronpatz: "quantitative text analysis has provided useful tools to extract policy positions from text or estimate sentiment of political speech, the application of such techniques is hitherto limited to monolingual contexts. We present a possible solution to this problem by presenting a reliable…

How do you stay authentic in your business?
medium.com
Card image

Authenticity: one of them hot button topics.... because we crave human connection in a technology-driven world? Is it because the Internet has become so saturated with bogus people spewing bogus content and using bogus titles?... we asked our community of digital creatives. Here’s what they said:" My favourite: "Authenticity is ... about bei…

28/08/2015
Influencers And Advocates: Who Are they & How Can They Help? | Sysomos Blog
blog.sysomos.com
Card image

You really have two types of people you can leverage to aid your target marketing and social strategy efforts: - Influencers: Popular, well-respected, quasi-celebrities in your industry/space that share and engage in relevant content, and have a large audience and an engaged following. - Advocates: Vocal evangelists who are already a big fan o…

Replacing The User Story With The Job Story
medium.com
Card image

Job Stories are great because it makes you think about motivation and context and de-emphasizes adding any particular implementation. Often, because people are so focused on the who and how, they totally miss the why. When you start to understand the why, your mind is then open to think of creative and original ways to solve the problem. - Repl…

Time to integrate Innovation into your Comms strategy
mathewlowry.myhub.ai
Card image

Any decent Communication Strategy will integrate offline, online, internal and external communications. But what about your organisation's Innovation Strategy?

Social media fundamentals, productivity & authenticity (Top3ics, 21 August)
mathewlowry.myhub.ai

In this edition I highlight only one post, and mention a few others. Topics: truth, authenticity & trust, but also productivity and digital transformation.

Did LinkedIn go Klout on us?
www.linkedin.com

Daily I now see posts published authors on LinkedIn that praise the value of finding out your "SSI". . .. while at the same time gently but not so quietly promoting what their score is... I believe the "one percenters" tag is entirely relative since each of have a completely different network from anyone else in the world. - Did LinkedIn go …

TL;DR: “From One Spokesperson To Millions”
mathewlowry.myhub.ai
Card image

A tl;dr version of “From One Spokesperson To Millions” the brilliant 45-minute longread by @jessedee on taking one of the most successful campaigns of all time - Paul Hogan’s 1980s Tourism Australia campaign - and updating it for the age of user-generated content. Some key quotes:

Attention is a Currency: It's Time to Re-Think Storytelling and Content Marketing | Brian Solis | LinkedIn
www.linkedin.com

"Humans are emotional creatures and they want experiences that engage them as humans. They're not eyeballs, impressions, views, likes, shares, clickthroughs, or conversions.... connect people through sharing and conversation to form communities that we can then cultivate. That takes understanding, purpose, intent and genuineness.

Authenticity has disappeared from my online life
medium.com

In response to In Search of Authentic People in The Age of Automation: "Authenticity was supposed to be what social media was about — it was social, it was supposed to be about us. And... your authenticity was the best coin you had."

14/08/2015
In Search of Authentic People in The Age of Automation
medium.com
Card image

People are worried they will lose their jobs to robots but if you ask me, most of us have already lost our minds to the machines. Our personalities. Our authenticity. Who are you as a human? - In Search of Authentic People in The Age of Automation — Medium

13/08/2015
11 Strategic Tips to Cultivate Relationships Online
colleendilen.com
Card image

"sometimes organizations get so caught up in showing off their use of social media tools that they forget that those tools have a purpose – strengthening the relationship between an individual and your organization. A healthy social strategy includes both content created to get new folks in the engagement funnel AND to strengthen the “passion-c…

Science journalism, longform & authenticity (Top3ics, 12 August)
mathewlowry.myhub.ai
Card image

In this week’s newsletter I return to the “3 Topics, 12+ links” template of week 1, but present things a little differently…

Being able to capture, without being forced to stare at your phone, is liberating
medium.com

Let’s hope [Beme] catches on ... and make social media about real people again -  not their carefully edited versions, and certainly not companies, Institutions and all the others choking up my feed with their marketing as they desperately try to appear human.

News outlets vie for global audiences with translated stories
www.poynter.org

While European media ask for EC handouts for translating their articles, US media just do it themselves: "As news organizations realize the potential of reaching international audiences with their journalism, more and more are translating their work into different tongues. BuzzFeed, Vice and The Washington Post have all made forays into the rea…

31/07/2015
How asking the right questions will deliver the best results
www.melcrum.com

"When starting a new [internal] communication project, asking the right questions of your customer sounds like a no-brainer. But are your questions right? ... Richard shares his method of developing the right questions to deliver the best results –  to start your IC projects right." - The power of critical thinking: How asking the right questio…

How NASA won the internet
qz.com
Card image

"@NASA is the 104th most popular Twitter account in the world... and 3.5 million on Instagram. The Department of the Interior, whose stunning wildlife and nature pictures make it the only government agency with cool visual content to rival NASA’s, has just 654,000 ... John Yembrick and Jason Townsend are veterans of other government agencies...…

Three online community case studies lined up for EuropCom2015
mathewlowry.myhub.ai
Card image

My EuropCom 2015 workshop on online communities is taking shape. (Update: view all slideshows and key takeways from the session) According to the EuropCom2015 site it'll be held after lunch on Day 1, and will cover:Convening and managing an online community is an extremely effective way of achieving communications goals, but will probably fai…

27/07/2015
Learn from Watsi’s Wildly Successful Email Campaign
firstround.com
Card image

Great in-depth look at an email marketing success story. Resonating point: "Don't assume you know who your customers are until they've had a chance to show you." - What Startups Can Learn from Watsi’s Wildly Successful Email Campaign - First Round Review

Strategy, not Technology, Drives Digital Transformation
sloanreview.mit.edu
Card image

The 2015 Digital Business Global Executive Study and Research Project by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte identifies strategy, not technology, as the key driver of success in the digital arena. Conservative companies that avoid risk-taking are unlikely to thrive - and they'll also lose talent ... The ability to digitally reimagine the b…

Raising your Digital Quotient
www.mckinsey.com

"By evaluating 18 practices related to digital strategy, capabilities, and culture, we have developed a single, simple metric for the digital maturity of a company... its Digital Quotient. This survey reveals a wide range of digital performance in today’s big corporations... a strong and adaptive culture can help make up for a lack of technica…

How Bots Took Over Twitter
hbr.org
Card image

"the rise of suggested content tools has shifted the balance between conversation and link-sharing, and in so doing has diminished the value of the links that get shared... a tweeted link no longer reflects any curation or judgment on their part; it may well be something that was found for them rather than by them. Nor is it a sign that they’ve…

Why hyper-distributed Reported.ly still decided to make a website
www.niemanlab.org

Because everyone needs a Hub to call their own: "its own space to follow stories at a less frenetic pace ... readers can find collections of stories on topics ... incorporate a variety of mediums. Embedded tweets, videos, and Facebook posts are mixed in with text... The website is aggregation-heavy. Some pieces are roundups; other posts allow t…

3 Ways To Remain Creative In A World Of Big Data
www.fastcocreate.com
Card image

Distributed intelligence means you need to find a social process, not a data-driven solution... You cannot outsource leadership to your analytics group. - Thinking Small: 3 Ways To Remain Creative In A World Of Big Data | Co.Create | creativity + culture + commerce

A 4-Step Blogger Outreach Tool
www.convinceandconvert.com
Card image

"The Influencer Identification Worksheet is a blogger outreach brainstorming tool [to] build a list of bloggers." - A 4-Step Blogger Outreach Tool for Identifying Influencers | Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy

Get Your Message Across to a Skeptical Audience
hbr.org
Card image

arranging for others to tout your expertise before you make your case can increase the likelihood of people paying attention and acting on your advice... Despite the experience deficit, the candidate who had scored highly on the leadership potential test was rated as more likely to be a successful hire, even though they were objectively much le…

Cookies disclaimer

MyHub.ai saves very few cookies onto your device: we need some to monitor site traffic using Google Analytics, while another protects you from a cross-site request forgeries. Nevertheless, you can disable the usage of cookies by changing the settings of your browser. By browsing our website without changing the browser settings, you grant us permission to store that information on your device. More details in our Privacy Policy.