The basics of strategic communications

These are some of the key concepts you should consider if you want to enhance and improve your communications in your personal and professional life.

But they are also some of the things I have learnt in how to better perform strategic communications in the workplace.

Understand your audience…

You need to understand the target audience you are trying to communicate to otherwise you may have a great message but it won’t be heard. Instead of asking what you need to say, ask what they need to hear?

This can be done by basic desktop research and analysis or advanced qualitative study; to better understand the depth of knowledge of your target audience, their expectations, attitudes and motivations.

This will mean that the messages you want to communicate can hit home and then be led to the desired response or action you are seeking.

Target driven comms…

Strategic comms needs to be target driven. Simply having a clear target or objective will help maintain message discipline and focus your key message(s) to your target audience more accurately. 

And it will tell you when you have achieved your objective and allow you to assess your performance afterwards.

Simplify your message…

We live in an age where our attention is constantly being fought for. If our message is too verbose or not clear enough to understand it’ll likely be missed or ignored.

There’s many ways to simplify your messaging, but an approach I like to use is to simply answer the following 3 questions:

• What is it I am trying to communicate?
  • Is it a vision, value, belief, policy, service or product?

• Why should they care about it?
  • Why does the vision, value, belief, policy, service or product matter to the audience I am trying to message?

• How do I want them to respond?
  • After hearing my message, what do I want to happen next?

By answering these questions you will be able to boil down what you actually want to communicate and be able to simplify and structure your message.

Win sustainable attention…

There’s so much demand for our attention these days that it’s almost unrelenting.

If you want to reach your communication objectives then you need to win and maintain the attention of your audience.

This can be done by considering techniques of how you want to engage with your audience. 

Language focused: the words we use to communicate can have a huge impact. Simply personalising a message with the name(s) or even directing it at them with the correct pronouns. And using engaging terminology and phrases such as “imagine” and “remember when” can help your audience visualise what you’re communicating.

Activity based: you might want to have an active method such as an event, where your audience is physically responding to something such as a poll or leaving a comment on a message board or collaborating with others.

Thought provoking: you might want them to hear an analogy or story that makes them ask questions and think about your message and how it resonates long after they have received your message.

When we think about the techniques of how we communicate to our audience it can sharpen and elevate your message, but most importantly of all they can help you win and maintain your audience’s attention.

Master your delivery…

You can do all of the above perfectly, but if you fail to execute at the delivery stage of what you’re trying to communicate then it was all for nothing. And even if you have executed the delivery perfectly, there’ll always be areas to improve upon.

Nothing beats a unique, self-assured delivery, so try to consider:

• If what you’re producing is in a written format, then always make sure you’ve proofread what you’ve done or better still ask someone else to check it for you too.
• If you are presenting or giving an interview then: practice, practice, practice. And even record it and play it back to yourself. Observing our actions allows us to have a clearer perspective on performance. 
• If you’re preparing someone else for a speech or interview or presentation, then: practice, practice, practice. And record it and play it back to them. Show them how or where they can improve.

Repeating, reviewing and getting someone else to review it for you are simple ways to master your delivery.

The better you can deliver your message the more chance you have of successfully communicating.

Lastly…

These are some of the key ways to enhance your strategic communications. But theory is only as good as the personnel directing and implementing it. It makes sense as human communication by its very nature after all will always be personal on some level.