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

The Synchronized Organization
www.digitaltonto.com
Card image

"research into network science has begun to shed light on how synchronization happens and how we can make our enterprises function more effectively.... Great overview. Of particular interest to I-Labs: - "research helps explain why it is so hard for enterprises to adapt to new challenges... leaders need to treat new initiatives not as mere organi…

The Verge's Big Future video on tomorrow's comms
www.theverge.com
Card image

How do we want to communicate with each other? ... what kind of communicator would we actually want to use?... How do you signal that you're available to talk about movies, but not to talk about work? As we talk to more people more of the time, we'll also need smarter status indicators and smarter ways to break down conversations. The closest t…

Medium's approach to catch22
medium.com
Card image

"Every new platform that relies on user generated content depends on influential users who make the platform indispensable, thereby attracting larger numbers of users to try it out. But it's a Catch 22; the platform needs the influencers to make it indispensable, but these users won't become addicted unless it's already indispensable" Same 'vic…

27/11/2014
A List of Goals Is Not a Strategy
hbr.org
Card image

So how do you really create strategy, rather than end up with a hodgepodge list? By following these steps:

24/11/2014
The essential guide to A/B testing by @ABTasty
app.abtasty.com

"AB Tasty, the French A/B testing specialist, has published this guide for the benefit of those who are implementing A/B testing and would like to know how to conduct truly effective tests."

17/11/2014
The Job of Leadership
medium.com
Card image

"... is to foster alignment and enthusiasm toward the right goal. I’m thinking of official leaders (and myself) when writing the above, but there are official and unofficial leaders in every organization. " Very short post, very worth reading. Sometimes the simplest insights are the most powerful. - The Job of Leadership — Inside Medium — Medium

When should you (not) blog?
moz.com
Card image

"blogging is so hyped as a panacea, you'd think that simply adding a blog to your site would also help you find the perfect spouse, cure the common cold, and even turn lead into gold. ... you should always question anything that's touted as the right answer for everyone (and everything). So should you blog?... let's look at a few examples of w…

How To Create A Movement Within Your Organization
www.digitaltonto.com
Card image

"movements... seem to self-organize and spread virally, as if they were LOLCats or some other digital meme. So why can’t we get our organizations to act the same way? You would think that with command and incentive structures in place, it would be easier for leaders to set a direction and get things moving, but anyone who’s run an enterprise kno…

The Complex Role of a Modern Intranet Manager
www.thoughtfarmer.com
Card image

"Traditional intranets required someone at the helm with a broad perspective and variety of skills. Newer social intranets, with their greater ability to influence company culture and productivity, have only added to the pile of needed skills. In this article we explain what the core skills are for successful intranet managers, common gaps in exp…

Cornerstone of a Smart Content Strategy
www.copyblogger.com
Card image

"we are kicking off the relaunch of The Lede with a three-part series on content strategy... we begin with an element of content strategy that often gets overlooked … but that is crucial to understanding your audience intimately enough to influence it." Hint: it's AUDIENCE. And it's a podcast, so grab it and give it a listen tomorrow morning on y…

Dim Future for Mobile Apps
www.businessinsider.com
Card image

Nothing here about geolocation, augmented reality ... but good points anyway. Via @nosemonkey ""In a world where notifications are full experiences in and of themselves, the screen of app icons makes less and less sense... Why open the Facebook app when you can get the content as a notification and take action... right there at the notification o…

Participation Success Factors: a quick followup
mathewlowry.myhub.ai
Card image

What happened when 60 odd people had a go at the Participation mindmap?

Wrestling with Social Media Psychology
www.socialmediatoday.com
Card image

"A good social media manager doesn’t have to have experience in the subject matter; they know how to do their research, build personas, adapt and be creative... Not understanding target demographics is like playing darts without a bull’s eye." - The Psychology That Informs Social Media | Social Media Today

Will Politico fill a media void in Europe?
www.cjr.org
Card image

"Politico is launching a European edition ... with ... Axel Springer... to cover “not just Brussels but European politics and policy more broadly,”" CJR sees a few problems ahead: "- the 28 member countries have distinct identities and interests, so a one-size-fits-all outlet does not necessarily fit anyone... - the European Union has no shared…

Gag of the Year: 9/11 Brand Tweets
www.adweek.com
Card image

"Brands that try to get in on the social conversation around 9/11 can come off as crass and opportunistic. " "can" come off as crass?? Really? This is the crassest thing I can imagine. - This Guy's Replies to 9/11 Brand Tweets Sum Up Everything That's Wrong With 9/11 Brand Tweets | Adweek

Growth = Developers without Project Managers, email or meetings?
qz.com
Card image

"We couldn't understand why people without technical knowledge had to tell programmers "what" to do and, furthermore, they had to supervise "how" programmers did it." At last. Someone said it. And also quite a bit more about the timesucks that are meetings, email and commuting. These guys avoid all of them, work 4 days/week and are growing …

What is Employee Engagement?
www.melcrum.com

"the biggest impact on competitive advantage comes not from products, processes or technology, but empowered employees. And with the lines between Internal and External Communication becoming increasingly blurred, ensuring your people are engaged and empowered has never been more critical.... Leading Internal Communication teams are already bla…

Start with user needs, not government needs
readwrite.com
Card image

"Government around the world is pretty good at thinking about its own needs — they often put their political needs followed by the policy needs. The actual machine of government comes second. The third need then generally becomes the system needs, so the IT or whatever system’s driving it... the user comes a poor fourth, really." Turning that ups…

Good example of continuous web redesign
www.niemanlab.org

"The Guardian released a beta version of its new website to get reader feedback as it continues to tweak its design.... Content discovery is a major focus ... “container model” allows the paper to implement a responsive design while also retaining a story hierarchy, user experience director... Each item contains a story, which are put together…

Sonar Solo - european commission
sonar.bottlenose.com

Sonar Solo allows you to search any topic to find trends and influencers about any subject, in real time. Sonar Solo visualizes what’s on people's minds right now, by combining data mining, trend intelligence and advanced sentiment analysis on the world's social media chatter.

BuzzSumo: Find the Most Shared Content and Key Influencers
buzzsumo.com
Card image

"Analyze what content performs best for any topic or competitor Find the key influencers to promote your content "

Choosing the Right UX Metrics
www.dtelepathy.com
Card image

A beautiful, HTML5 exploration of the HEART methodology: Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, Task Success. " different members of your team have different ideas about the goals of your project. This process provides an opportunity to build consensus about where you're headed." - How to Choose the Right UX Metrics for Your Product

You’re Not Steve Jobs!
innovationinsights.wired.com
Card image

Altimiter study finds that while 80% of companeis surveyed said they were "undergoing digital transformation": "... only 25% had actually mapped out the digital customer journey. It’s unfortunate that so much time and resources are going toward programs that may or may not hit the mark." That's a lot of money being wasted. "While the word “digi…

Innovation: management and culture (TumblrHub last week, part 1)
www.linkedin.com

'Innovation' threaded its way through a lot of the resources added to my TumblrHub last week: from innovation-friendly management through to innovative Content Management Systems for tomorrow's newsmedia business models and personal productivity tools.

Marketing, groupthink & blind spots
www.digitaltonto.com
Card image

@digitaltonto on "Cargo Cult Marketers", who - despite the complexity of modern marketing - "offer a false solution ... a simple formula that explains everything." Greg goes into the psychology of this particular breed of marketers with great insight, charting how they come up with and fall in love with their own idea and then, subconsciously, on…

Great strategy is aided by diversity of thought and attitude
blogs.hbr.org
Card image

If you're involved in developing strategy, you need to read 'Why Smart People Struggle with Strategy'. Personally I recognise a lot of this, including in myself, although I don't consider myself particularly smart. The key recommendation? "strategy should not be a monoculture ... of high-IQ analytical wizards. Great strategy is aided by diver…

Facebook's Pages to Watch: Competitive Insight
www.socialmediaexaminer.com
Card image

"the Insights module will show you several metrics relating to your competition’s Facebook activity, including the number of posts by page admins, number of fan interactions and a leaderboard of the five top-performing posts across all watched pages." - How 'Pages to Watch' from Facebook Can be a Source of Competitive Insight | Social Media Exami…

14/06/2014
5 Essential Steps to Success in Social Media Marketing
www.jeffbullas.com
Card image

Jeff Bullas reminds me why I do EU communications - so I don’t waste my life producing this sort of sh*t, for these sorts of companies.

Influencer Marketing Tools
marketingland.com
Card image

"Influencers come in many forms — celebrities, connectors, thought leaders, aggregators, CEOs and journalists — and need to be identified and targeted based on your vertical market. The following tools are avenues to help you define who you should target as an influencer through 2014 and beyond." - Influencer Marketing Tools That Will Power Yo…

Social Bakers' #EP 2014 dashboard
www.socialbakers.com
Card image

oor-er, they animated it. That makes it better.

27/05/2014
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.