Posts

Consistent Communication Leadership in a Consistently Changing World

Image
In society today, it is becoming more and more difficult to remain the same, or find people or things that remain unchanged. In the business world, it is imperative for organizations to stay informed and well versed on emerging media and other societal changes that could affect their business. An organization that refuses to adapt to new changes, technologies, and emerging communication and media outlets runs the risk of falling behind, losing relevance, and ultimately failing in the business sector. When looking at the professional world of strategic communication, Strategic Communication Professionals are required to know and learn every communication and emerging media outlet available for an organization to monetize and /or use for audience relationships. A Strategic Communication professional should never become too comfortable and stagnant in one form of communication or one specific media outlet, as new outlets and communication channels are continuously emerging. While
Post a Comment
Read more

Getting More than Your Money's Worth with PR

Image
Bill Gates once said, “If I was down to my last dollar, I would spend it on Public Relations.” This strategic leader understood the purpose, power, and worth of public relations. In most cases, however, business executives and managers do not understand the direct impact tha t strategic communication has on the success of an organization. In society today, with technology continuously evolving and the naturally short attention span that people have, it is becoming more and more difficult for businesses to capture and keep the attention and loyalty of audience members. With the help of strategic communications campaigns, however, organizations are able to stay on the minds of audience members through the consistent relaying of information, messages, and relevant and interesting content. Strategic communications professionals play a major role in keeping organizations relevant to the public while helping the organization grow its audience base and increase consumer loyalty. Effec
Post a Comment
Read more

If You Stay Ready, You Won't Have to Get Ready

Image
A major part of strategic communication that is often not as emphasized as other sectors of the field is crisis communication. Many organizations have a reactive approach to a crisis-- meaning that they hastily react to the crisis once it happens-- instead of a proactive approach--meaning they actively evaluate potential threats or issues and have a plan in place to enact when a crisis occurs. By definition, crisis communication, or strategic crisis management, is a subset of strategic communication designed to protect an organization’s reputation and resolve any public challenges that arise that are a threat to an organization’s reputation. Business crises happen constantly in society, yet very few organizations have a plan in place to deal with these public challenges. Having a crisis communication plan in place is not only important for the company reputation, but for the company value as well. Knight and Pretty (1997) found that companies that took a reactive stance
Post a Comment
Read more

The Strategy Behind the Magic Message

Image
A major part of strategic communication is crafting the most effective message for the target audience using the most effective communication outlet. Research becomes a major part of the planning process when choosing a target audience and determining how to reach that target audience, but how exactly does one craft that “magic message” to get target audience members to achieve a certain goal set by the organization? The strategy to crafting the most effective message is knowing what the target audience wants or needs, and knowing how to reach them with a message that correlates to their desires. The tricky part is, however, that most people do not know exactly what they want or need when it comes to a product or service. A quote by Henry Ford explains this notion by saying, “If we asked the public what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses’.” Instead of directly asking the public what they want, organizations have two more effective options for pleasing their tar
1 comment
Read more

Strategic Management vs Strategic Leadership in the Workplace

Image
Within every successful organization, there’s an individual, or a team of people, spearheading operations. These people go by many different titles, including managers, directors, leaders, executives, etc. Despite the varying titles, the purpose of the position is to govern the organization and keep it afloat and moving forward. Every organization needs a “head huncho”, but the type of people in these positions can make or break an organization. When discussing methods for keeping an organization running in an efficient and effective matter, both management and leadership are needed. And yes, they are two distinctly different concepts with distinctly different purposes. While the terms "management" and "leadership" are typically used interchangeably or used to describe executive members of an organization, the two terms have very different meanings and functions within an organization. According to the article "Management is Still Not Leadership"
1 comment
Read more

Strategic Communication on the Inside

Image
When discussing strategic communication and emerging media, a strategic communications professional must analyze the most effective way to communicate with various audiences. While a great amount of emphasis is often put on ways to reach external audiences such as younger demographics, target audiences, potential clients, etc., many strategic communication professionals miss an integral sector: the internal audience. Internal audiences are a major part of the organizational name, brand, and reputation. A company cannot succeed, grow, or function effectively without the support and help of its internal audiences, which is why efficient internal communication with these audiences is important. Learning effective methods for internal communication has just as much, if not more, impact as having effective methods for external communication. According to Community Tool Box (2018), internal communication encompasses the formal and informal sharing of ideas, information, and opinions
Post a Comment
Read more

Strategic Communication through Social Media

Image
One of the most prevalent forms of emerging media popular in society today is social media. Webster Dictionary defines social media as “websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or participate in social networking.” Social media has become a new dimension to create and build relationships with a large audience of people in a small amount of time without face to face communication. Social media is a great tool for organizations to use to communicate a message to a large audience of people in a short amount of time. As mentioned in the Hubspot publication How to Leverage Social Media for Public Relations Success , the viral nature of social media makes it a critical tool for strategic communications professionals to use to promote the image of their organization. They are able to reach a large amount of audience members with each message in a short amount of time. Social media also gives organizations the opportunity to reach social influencers who ca
Post a Comment
Read more