Strategic Communication: What it really means!

After attending the Strategic Communication workshop at the University of Johannesburg last month, it got me thinking as to what strategic communications really means.

While many believe that it’s about creating and distributing communications that, while different in style and purpose, have an inner coherence; others think that it’s a new way for organisations to respond to a changed business landscape that results from today's networked communication environment.

Extending on the above views, Shayna Englin, who teaches Public Relations and Corporate Communications at Georgetown, believes that being strategic means communicating the best message, through the right channels, measured against well-considered organisational and communications-specific goals. It’s the difference between doing communications stuff, and doing the right communications stuff.

I’ve come to believe that strategic communications involves the strategic planning of communication in order to ensure effective internal communication, thereby enabling the organisation to achieve short-term goals such as productivity and effectiveness and long term organisational goals such as adaptation and survival. It is a way of thinking, a guide to action and the determinant for the communication behaviour of every member of the organisation. Its goal is to create a distinctive set of communication capabilities that have special value to a particular part of the market place.

Karen Hughes, former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs shared her five C’s for best practices in strategic communications:

1. Clarity – Say what you mean. To be effective, your message must be clear. Make sure you have the sound bite that is tomorrow’s headline.

2. Conviction: Mean what you say. There is a fine line between being emphatic and being overstated. Learn the difference.

3. Compassion: Make your message relevant to people’s lives. Tell the story in the context of the audience you are communicating to. Focus on kitchen table issues.

4. Credibility: People have to believe you/trust you. If they don’t, it doesn’t matter what you say or do.

5. Consistency: Say it over and over again. About the time you are sick of saying something is about the time it begins to sink in. You have to find new and interesting ways to say the same thing. Messages based on core values are good because you speak about what you believe in. Speak with one voice throughout the organisation. You also have to DO what you SAY for consistency.

This ability to think strategically is crucial to remaining competitive in an increasingly turbulent and global environment. In the nutshell, strategic communications means infusing communications efforts with an agenda and a master plan. Typically, that master plan involves promoting the brand of an organisation, urging people to do specific actions, or advocating particular legislation.

The Nature of Media Deadlines

Your reputation is generally based on two things: the quality of your work, and how well you meet deadlines. Sure, you can do great work, but if you don’t turn your projects in on time, you won’t get many repeat customers/clients.

Deadlines. We all face them, and they can make for a very stressful and anxiety-ridden time. Even the most organised and systematic among us will occasionally face deadlines that make us stay up late and get just a little bit worried that this may be the one we miss. That’s the nature of media deadlines.

Why meet deadlines? Well firstly, it’s the line beyond which you’re dead if you haven’t done your work. But that’s the negative side. On the positive side, meeting deadlines ensures smooth workflow, facilitates timely communication and makes you a team player because people may rely on your involvement.

What does it mean to meet deadlines? Meeting deadlines is as important as the task, it means compromising and sacrificing your time to get things done within the desired period set out for the task. It also means having proper processes on how you plan to execute a particular task within a project or the project itself.

We need to respect and value people's time. Understanding and respecting not just your job but also those of the people who are involved in the process is as important.

Public Relations deadlines are linked with media deadlines (i.e. we don't make them up for fun). Journalists work according to schedules and they are given certain tasks with clear turnaround times (i.e. to source & write stories or even interview for stories for their publications).

Journalists may turn to PR for content and create a deadline for editorial submission that we need to adhere to. If you miss that deadline you actually inconvenience the journo as well as the publication because they now have to make other arrangements to fill the space before their print or go-live deadline. Some of these deadlines may come up at the last minute and you need to be prepared to respond at short notice.

How do you make sure you meet deadlines and prevent opportunities from falling through the cracks? Here are some essential tips on how to manage deadlines:

1. Care about deadlines, respect and value people’s time.
2. Keep a list of projects & deadlines.
3. Communicate a clear deadline to yourself and others
4. Break down the project, have a start and complete date for each step.
5. Block off adequate time to complete and review your work.
6. Give yourself extra time to follow up.

People usually underestimate the time it takes to mentally switch gears. Working with media requires you to meet constant deadlines and it is a demanding activity. Some people thrive in this sort of environment, especially when they know some of the tricks to meeting deadlines. Have you got what it takes?

The importance of PR continues to grow

There was a time when public relations as a practice suffered from an ‘unfortunate past’ across the world. This had been due to practitioners being perceived as ‘spin doctors’ and ‘fancy accoutrements’ for issues and events.

Expressions such as: ‘It is only a PR exercise’ were often heard and the perception that the activity of public relations is merely a technical function in organisations was rife. In recent times the strategic role of public relations has taken front stage.

Public Relations has arguably never enjoyed a position of greater prominence than it does today. Companies and organisations across every industry and geography recognise the importance of effective communications. Along with the traditional PR strongholds of analyst and media relations, disciplines such as internal communications and social media are now becoming increasingly important as a core requisite for successful business operations.

In a competitive global environment companies are looking for new and more effective ways to communicate with customers, prospects and partners and this is where PR comes in. Having said that, let us look at some points showing the importance of PR.

- PR makes a valuable contribution to reputation management, working hard to sustain and enhance a good reputation and even harder to repair a damaged one.

- PR can change the context of how people react to all of your communications, your brand and to other brand critics and evangelists

- PR is essential as a management function and a vital component of strategic planning at the highest levels of decision-making.

- PR is all about forming relationships, nourishing them and watching them grow whether it's with clients, the media or investors.

According to an in-depth feature on churnalism.com, in the U.S. and U.K. there are now more PR people than journalists. This shows that companies and organisations are starting to properly harness the value of PR. The relationship between PR and journalist has never been more symbiotic than now.

PR practitioners need journalists because the formal media is currently still the largest outlet to inform the public about their clients. With newsroom cuts and the increasing speed of technology, journalists have twice the workload and less time to research and deliver in-depth reporting. Therefore, journalists turn to PR practitioners for story pitches, press releases, and quick answers to their questions.

PR, both as a communications tool on its own – and as part of the overall communications mix – has helped build many of our clients’ brands.

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