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How to make sure your communications person has the power

Comms: Many clients see comms as a luxury nice-to-have once the other marketing things have happened. But by not assigning centralised control of comms to someone, you risk depowering all other attempts at being heard. That makes no sense. Rethink.

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It happens all the time. Communications is treated as an afterthought as senior management just plod on with ‘doing the job rather than talking about it’. People seeing themselves as men/women of action. Doers not talkers.

The trouble is that if you don’t talk about what you do, you will have less to do in future. Under-invest in communications, and your company and brand will recede from your customers’ gaze. The thought that it’s an add-on is incredibly damaging.

Far too many companies have employed someone to do their communications - and then not given them the tools to deliver. In the meantime, there’s often a range of messages going out from your organisation with someone writing blogs in one place, someone posting messages on their own Twitter feed elsewhere, someone posting on the website and so on. It’s uncoordinated, it’s messy, it can even be contradictory.

In a company where the comms isn’t centralised under someone who has control and authority, the communications output will quickly degrade into mixed messages, wildly different editorial tones and some utterly tone deaf commentary which will cause problems somewhere down the line.

And yes, I do speak from bitter experience.

So what does your comms person need if your communications, marketing and, in the end, sales are to work?

Authority

The first requirement is to give ownership and a sense of leadership to the communications lead. Whoever is in the post needs to be handed responsibility and authority over the entirety of the public-facing output. From website to press releases to newsletters to social media. Everything. At least as far as the rest of the organisation is concerned.

In reality, that person may well check things off with the boss, but as far as the wider team is concerned, they will see a proper, meaningful job title, role and responsibility. And they will have a CEO (or whoever is at the top of the tree) who tells the organisation that all communications needs to go through that person.

In time, your head of comms can delegate back down the chain of command, if it helps, but they will need to have oversight, responsibility and authority over everything that goes out in order to understand where they need to concentrate their efforts, and strategy. Talking of which...

Strategy

So, there is a person in the comms job. They have the big desk in the corner office (or the kitchen table backing on to a picture of domestic chaos). They then need to produce a communications strategy which details the aims and activity of the next twelve months or so, and drive the company forward. And which should contain the following and more besides:

  1. What is the brand? (What you do and the values and mission behind it)
  2. What are the objectives? (And success is more complex than ‘sell more’)
  3. Who is the audience? (And it is never ‘everyone’)
  4. What are the messages? (And the tone with which they are delivered)
  5. What is your content? (More than black words on a white background)
  6. What is your third party/PR approach? (Because people trust other people more than you)
  7. What’s the social media strategy? (and we can help)
  8. And the digital strategy? (we can help there too)
  9. What is your stakeholder management? (Because someone needs to talk to the grown-ups)
  10. What is your crisis plan? (Because it will happen)
  11. How will you measure all this? (Because your finance people will want to know if they’re getting value)

Senior support

So the strategy is agreed, but for your communications to function, there needs to be a senior support team.

Who does your comms manager report to? Who to bounce ideas off? A weekly planned meeting with a senior management team means fewer nasty surprises across the company and is vital to setting the agenda and to get buy-in from everyone. It also allows space for professional levels of editorial scrutiny on the content and some time for planning on how the work might be amplified. It creates the ability to coordinate and organise, while giving the opportunity for occasional intervention from other senior members of the team. The senior management support gives space for the rest to function.

Structure and process

At the very least, you need a planning calendar. Something where the comms is planned in advance, around corporate or sales activity so that there is time to get assets in order, agree messages, platforms and PR, so that messages can be written, sub-edited and filleted for social media posts. You’ll need a process to create, check and publish content. For the PR side to deliver, for the digital product to be created, for the reporting and measurement to kick in.

Doing everything ad hoc, effectively for the first time every time, happens a lot where the communications function isn’t valued or professionalised.

Once it's in place, you’ll see the difference it can make.

If you want to discuss any aspect of this, let’s have a chat.