6 Components of a
Successful Communication Strategy
Discover how you can create a successful communication strategy and how an intranet can help.
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Intro
Strategy is one of the most important and used words in business. From hiring to marketing to purchasing, we all know how important a business strategy is.
However, many businesses take communication strategies for granted. If your current business communication is not delivering the results you want or driving enough sales, developing a communication strategy will clearly define the information you want to get across and ensure you stand out from the crowd.
An effective communication strategy depends on your project, but one thing’s for sure, a successful communication strategy includes information about your target audience and goals.
An effective communication strategy helps increase employee engagement and morale. Additionally, it helps align employees with the company’s mission and vision.
What You Should Consider
- Target Audience
In order to get your message across, you first need to know your target audience. For example, if you own a food business that primarily sells organic food products, you must tailor your message to that specific audience.
A communication strategy can be directed to a set of audiences with different expectations and experiences. You also need to consider the levels of knowledge, concerns, and priorities.
Knowing your target audience is just the first step in creating an effective communication strategy. You also need to learn about the needs, motivations, and goals of your audience which often involves looking into public opinion, research, or media coverage.
The more information you know about your audience, the higher the chances that you will be able to create a communication strategy that helps motivate them.
2. Context
An organization can't grow and have a successful communication strategy without context. Context not only gives you an effective communication plan, but it also works in practical applications.
Granted, you can create the best and most innovative strategy in the world, but if it doesn’t suit the current situation or context of your organization, it will fall short.
Once you already know who your audience is, define the context. Recognize key relations and events that are important for your audience. The context defines the experiences and expectations of the audience.
When creating a communication plan, context should be considered within the following major categories:
Environment
Goals
Team
Budget
Technology and resources
3. Measurable and Specific Goals
If you don’t have a specific goal, you won’t be able to determine whether your communication strategy works or not. By setting goals, you will be able to improve your strategy and make the next projects more effective and successful.
Some goals may include:
Raising awareness of your brand or organization
Motivate your target audience to take action
Improve employee morale
Measuring success will depend on the strategy you use. The important thing is to set measurable and specific goals to have a successful communication strategy.
For example, if you're using Facebook to raise brand awareness and boost sales, your goal can be reaching 50,000 impressions within one month. You can measure the success of your strategy through Facebook likes, sales, and so on. Without goals, you won’t be able to construct an effective strategy.
4. Key Messages
Key messages are the main idea of the message or information you want your audience to hear, remember, and understand. In other words, it clarifies and intensifies the meaning of the message you are trying to communicate. It is the foundation of your communication strategy which serves as the organizations marketing efforts and should be reflected in all of your spoken and written communications.
Why are key messages important?
It helps define and prioritize the information
Accuracy, consistency, and continuity of message
Measuring and tracking the success
Helps you to stay focused when speaking with stakeholders or the media
Effective key messages are concise, simple, tailored, straightforward, and relevant.
5. Outcomes
Business communications have specific purposes or goals to achieve, whether it’s instruction, information transfer, transformation, or persuasion.
The best way to define outcomes is to consider what people need to know, do, or believe as a result of your communication. Ask yourself what your call to action is.
If you already know your purpose, it would be easy to construct messages that will resonate with your target audience.
Another approach is to create a message pyramid with the subject followed by several reasons and a series of proof points. The message pyramid allows you to assess the highest-level summary statement of your message to the specific pieces of evidence that your target audience will consider relevant to their concerns, situation, and interests.
6. Channels or Communications Platform
How will your message be communicated to your target audience?
A successful communications strategy includes getting your message across communication channels such as intranets, social media, blog posts, video content, email marketing, meetings, and so on.
You should carefully consider the context and what you are trying to achieve when choosing a medium to get your message across as audiences may respond differently to a variety of communication channels.
Being specific and consistent with how your message will be communicated will keep people engaged and taking action.
How an Intranet Can Help with Your Communication Strategy
An intranet helps remove the traditional trend of communication wherein information is passed using the downward hierarchical flow.
It also allows multidirectional communication where top leadership can gain invaluable insights from the feedback received from employees. Steegle Sprinboard intranet can support this in several ways, from launching virtual suggestion boxes to surveys.
An intranet makes your organization more inclusive, and a participatory approach ensures that the voice of all employees is heard and considered.
- Company News Feed
Every company intranet should have a news feed to keep everyone updated on recent projects and changes in the company. A news feed is an essential intranet feature because they empower your organization to share news or updates company-wide.
It also promotes a transparent and open company culture, keeping employees in the tune with what is happening within the organization. Otherwise, many employees will feel left out, which can cause confusion and breed mistrust about where the business is heading.
2. Employee Recognition
One way to boost employee productivity and motivation is to be vocal and generous when showing appreciation to your employees.
Based on statistics, about 69% of employees will work harder if they feel that their efforts are being recognized. Proving that the act of praising your employees is a powerful move!
Steegle has a Steegle Heroes tool to help you recognize your employees who went above and beyond.
An employee recognition platform is a powerful feature that helps improve employee engagement by making it easier for employees to see and review the feedback they need.
These platforms empower employees to get more feedback than they have received before. It also helps employees to helps employees have clear goals.
2. Organizational Charts and Employee Directory
Remore working is becoming the norm. But, about 47% of employers find inter-department communication has been one of the issues of remote working.
Having an organizational chart and employee directory on your intranet helps solves this issue. Getting in touch with other team members or employees would be more efficient.
Even in small companies, it's difficult to know everyone, let alone the department they work for and their contact information.
Steegle People allows you to automatically generate org charts and you can quickly find employees in just one click.
Looking for a customized intranet solution for your organization?
Since 2008, we here at Steegle.com have been delivering intranet development solutions and ongoing support and maintenance for organizations including hospitals and medical institutions. As a certified Google Cloud Partner, we specialize in Google Workspace based solutions. Give us a call at US ✆ +1 (302) 672 3007 UK ✆ +44 (207) 871 502 or contact us today to view a demo of our intranet solutions, and see how it can help increase employee productivity and save time and money. Click below to learn more about the Steegle.One Intranet solution.
Sales Hotlines
US ✆ +1 (302) 672 3007
UK ✆ +44 (207) 871 5021
UK ✆ +44 (207) 871 5021
