The problem that a lot of people share with me is: I don’t know how much I should communicate.
So either they are overwhelming inboxes and newsfeeds with every. possible. piece. of. communications or they are silent. It comes down to figuring out what works for your organization and how much communication your audience wants.
There are several ways to communicate, but one of the keys to the communications puzzle is figuring out what vehicles work for you and realizing that it just doesn’t make sense to do it all. Or to just throw up your hands in frustration and do nothing.
Here are some tips to help you figure out the balance of communications for your organization:
Take a strategic approach to content development. Listen, you have to communicate. You can’t get away from it. If you use a strategic plan to communications planning, you’ll find that it isn’t as challenging. Sit down with your business plan. What do you want to accomplish? Use that answer to figure out what you need to communicate to your audience to help you reach your business goals
Figure out how much time you have to focus on creating content. You can have all the ideas in the world, but if you have no one to create the content, you are going to end up annoyed and inconsistent. Consistency is a word you’ll read often on this blog because being consistent in your communications will help you grow your readership and viewership. Do you only have one person on the team who has the time to create content? Then figure out what two communications vehicles work for your audience and use them. Stop trying to do videos, newsletters, social media, testimonials, and case studies with one person who only has five hours a week to work on it. You’ll end up with low quality content that won’t hit your targets.
Don’t follow trends. For the love of mojitos, don’t do it. For example, Snapchat is all the rage so suddenly every traditional business from banks to insurance companies are trying to launch Snapchat accounts—and failing miserably because honestly, I don’t need my banker taking pictures with filters. I love untraditional ways of communicating when it makes sense. Just because it’s new and cool and all the kids are doing it doesn’t mean that you need to join up, sign in, and start creating content for that vehicle.
Be consistent. If you want a blog to talk about what your organization is doing in the community, be sure that you can update that blog regularly. What ‘regular’ means depends on your business. For some, it’s multiple times a week, for others, it’s a monthly round-up. The worst thing to see is a blog, Facebook page, Twitter feed or the like left stale for months or years. This is why figuring out how much time you have to create content is important.
Create content you can use multiple times on multiple vehicles. If you’re going to spend time making content, be sure you can use it different places. For example, you’re creating a video? Make sure you can use it at your annual meeting, on your website, on social media, and newsletter wherever else it will suit. One-time use pieces have to have enormous return on investment to be worth the time, money, and energy to create.
Do you have tips that you use to make sure you’re creating balanced communication? Share them—I’d love to hear.