This time I'm going a little bit off the beaten track to address the communication, that magical subject that I am passionate about, in a broader and riskier sense. Communication, if we know how to manage it properly, is a great ally, professionally and personally, in the office, at home, on LinkedIn or in outer space.
That's why I asked myself the following question today: if I were to reduce the keys of a good communication At the very least, what would they be? Could they be shared keys between the communication of a brand and the communication we carry out in a more personal environment, with friends, partners, family, etc.?
The answer is YES. All communication has similar foundations as it always feeds on the same basic elements: sender, receiver, message, channel, code and context. If you feel like giving it a try, here I go with the list:
1 - Bidirectionality
Communication is not a monologue. Any act of communicating must move away from the concept of "I'll spout my ideas and walk away" because then we are no longer communicating, we are reciting a soliloquy which contributes little or nothing.
When we disseminate our values and branding, it is not enough to simply spit out information, we have to listen, and in order to listen it is necessary to establish channels through which our public can express themselves.
"Effective communication starts with listening."
- Robert Gately
Listening to our audience What does your audience need? What is their opinion of you? What can you improve? How can you help them better? Do surveys, ask for opinions, listen (without judging), learn and improve.
Perhaps this lack of bidirectionality is what has caused us to lose a little bit of soul in all our contexts (political, economic, business, private, relational...). Listen to and assert your right to listen to you, in any situation.
2 - The forms
At corporate communications great care must be taken with the tone which is chosen when preparing all our information material (website, brochures, social networks, business cards, etc.).
Depending on the brand, our audience and our objectives, choosing a more or less formal tone can determine our success.
To give a very practical example, I've always felt more comfortable with a registration The most serious and cold in the professional sphere, while there are other brands in the same sector that opt for a much more informal and approachable style of communication.
It can work for all of us, the important thing is that we choose a few forms consistent with our personality, with the sector in which we work and consistent in the set of channels we use. If we go to the RolexWe will see that they use the "you", because they have studied their audience and know that they will be closer to their objectives if they choose this path.
In life... forms. We sometimes think that the ways in which we say things have no consequences or that they matter little, as long as you say what you have to say.
Bearing in mind that the success of a communication is based on whether or not the message has been conveyed well, perhaps we should consider in our next conversation, how we will be closer to getting our message across effectively.
Successfully conveying a message requires that the recipient accept and assimilate it And this is extremely difficult if things are said in bad manners. Bad manners will only result in rejection (like being hit back with a tennis ball), no assimilation of our ideas and possibly feel bad about ourselves. Zero communication success guaranteed.
3 - Select messages
Communicative minimalism. I am the biggest fan of this commandment. You don't always have to say everything. Too much information hides information.
For this commandment I like to use the metaphor of the shop window. A shop does not put all its merchandise in the window, only those products or elements that are most attractive and make the customer want to come in.
A web works in a similar way. We should not tell all the good things about our brand/company, only what is necessary to attract the user's attention and make them approach us to have a deeper conversation.
"The important thing is to know when to speak up and when to keep quiet".
- Seneca
If we build a medium (digital or physical) for a first contact with a thousand ideas, none will arrive. Make a list of the 3 main ideas you want to convey and order them from most important to least important. This step is extremely difficult, especially choosing the first one.
The rest of the ideas will be relegated to the background or simply omitted for another medium.
Keep to the essentials. Less, if brief, is better.
4 - Choose the right channel and the right time
We could use the famous anecdote of "I've been dumped by WhatsApp". In our corporate strategy, depending on the message, we will use one channel or the other.
Perhaps the web is not the best place to introduce a huge list of actions or publications that our company makes because as we said in the post of "Writing for the web".the human eye barely scan a small percentage of all the content in digital media. But perhaps we can put together a small corporate document where we can address these actions.
It is also clear in social networks. Going back to my case, for example, I don't have Twitter because I don't have short, continuous messages to transmit every so often. I have to disseminate my content through other channels.
In addition, our content strategy should address at what point we communicate things. This is very much taken into account in marketing campaigns in which there is a purchase action, for example. It is not the same to launch in the morning as in the afternoon, or on a Friday as on a Saturday.
5 - Embrace Imperfection and Learn
In communication, we all make mistakes. The first website I built for my brand was completely redone after a short time. I realised that I didn't convey well what I wanted to say.
It is time for us as a society to accept the error as essential step towards improvement and not as a failure. Communication, in our brand and in our lives, is trained and perfected over time.
"The way we communicate with others and with ourselves determines the quality of our lives".
- Anthony Robbins