Strategic Communication
Simply put ‘Strategic Communication’ is the art of communicating your thoughts, decisions, ideas, or the features of your product to the audience or customers in a well-planned way that is aligned with your long-term vision. There is the external communication in which an organization conveys its message to the external stakeholders and there is the internal communication which is directed towards internal stakeholders, mostly the company’s announcements and decisions. Marketing, digitalisation strategies, content writing and communication, and so on are all part of strategic communication.
Communication is one of the most important aspects and a necessity to excel in business. Without the right communication individuals as well as companies will suffer. Effective communication strategies in business can help organizations improve the overall productivity of the workforce, create a positive presence for the organization in the market and instil a sense of trust among employees.
Benefits of Strategic Communications
There are many benefits of communication strategy. Effective communication strategies in business help organizations to improve the productivity by leaps and bounds beside numerous other fringe benefits such as:
• Making organizations to be proactive rather than reactive.
• Setting up a sense of direction.
• Increase operational efficiencies.
• Increase market share and profitability.
• Make business more durable.
Why is communication strategy important within an organization?
Communication strategies ensure that important information is conveyed to the right people, through the right channel and at the right time. Information should be evenly distributed throughout the organization without any particulars being left out. Without complete information it will be difficult for your employees to carry on the task and also your customer will also not get any idea on what you are trying to convey.
Standardized communication
Putting a communication strategy into place allows employees to refer to a standardized plan to interact with managers, colleagues and clients. A communication strategy ensures that everyone involved has adequate information to communicate about it, maintain consistency in the workplace and prevent any ambiguity.
Brand image
An effective communication strategy helps maintain a company’s image in the public domain. A professional and standardized method of communication with external contacts ensures that the company is shown in a positive way. For instance, if two contradicting pieces of information are communicated to external contacts by different people, it would suggest that the company is disorganized and dishonest.
Enhanced motivation
Ineffective communication or uneven dispersal of information can make employees left out, especially if the management fails to communicate key information. A strong communication strategy plan ensures that information is shared equally and regularly across the organization. This also creates a sense of transparency and increases employees’ trust in the organization.
How to create effective communication strategies in organizations
Before you start developing a strategy, it is important to identify and understand the challenges within the organization that might affect communication. There are many factors that you need to keep in view such as company size, resources, and cultural differences and so on. One major challenge that you need to manage is too many emails being received by employees in a day which may result in their missing out on some important ones due to oversight.
Understand employees
Communication strategy should be built around employee’s personalities, akin to the way you would do for customers. This will enable you to segregate employees based on their modes of communication that they prefer. For example, some of the employees may not have access to company’s email or internet and for those the team has to come up with an alternative mode of communication to convey the message.
Setting your targets
Whether you have achieved the goals that you set determine the success of your communication strategy. Setting goals at the beginning itself is important so that you can build your communication plans according to what you want to achieve.
Incorporate a workforce communications platform
To ensure that all groups of employees are included in the communication strategy, it is important to identify their preferred communication channels. Depending on the different employee groups, a multichannel approach needs to be included in the strategy. The best way to bring different communication channels together is to use a workforce communications platform. This will allow you to integrate different communication channels in one place.
Take advantage of digitalization
Digitalization is making waves and with the virus outbreak and social distancing norms, work from home is becoming a new norm and this involves digitalization. Mobile communications are increasingly popular and using a mobile app to download information and communicate is another best way to keep employees informed.
Develop engaging content
Content needs to be short, crisp, up to the point and updated as well. It should be interesting and appealing to the reader to make him hooked to it. Written word, pictures, videos, facts and figures are all key ingredients to an engaging content. Ensure that everything is mobile friendly as well.