Articulating your business clearly, meaningfully and professionally across every available platform has a significant effect on how it is perceived in the marketplace. The content that is available - to your customers, your suppliers and your competitors - serves as the foundation from which perceptions emanate. If this messaging is weak, confusing and inconsistent, it can materially damage the credibility of your business. If, on the other hand, it is dynamic, captivating and interactive, it can serve to represent your organisation effectively and to sustain your business.
Following a few simple steps can greatly improve the way in which your company communicates its core messages.
1. Cast a critical eye: Take a step back and examine the material that represents your company: your website, your brochures, your PowerPoint presentations, your corporate videos. Is your company's messaging clearly articulated? Is your unique selling proposition presented? Is your company differentiated from your competitors? Is your reader taken on a logical and interesting journey? Are there spelling mistakes, grammatical or stylistic errors that cast doubt on the professionalism of your company? If some of these areas need to be addressed, a simple content analysis and strategy development process can highlight some of the successes and flaws of your company's approach to communications, and solutions can be implemented to address the latter.
2. Work with what you've got: There's no need to reinvent the wheel. The collateral that your company is already using to communicate its services may simply require fresh life. A critical, practised and professional touch can make a world of difference, without the financial implications of a complete overhaul.
3. Make use of relevant tools: A wide variety of tools are available to assist you with producing content that is engaging and relevant for your various target markets. Authoring tools help to craft clear and succinct messaging, and digital assessment tools are able to assess the effectiveness of the systems you have in place.
4. Use technology to your advantage: With every passing minute, our world is becoming more and more dependent on the digital sphere, and the paper-based world is becoming a thing of the past. Keeping up with these developments involves monitoring trends in this space: eBooks, agile presentations, games, web-based applications, video and 3D animations all need to be considered if your organisation is going to engage successfully with an audience that has come to consider these platforms as essential.
5. Educate and inspire: Creating content for internal upskilling and training purposes is vital if your company is to remain at the cutting edge of its industry, and if your employees are to become informed and respected brand ambassadors. Engaging instructional designers to assist with the development of this content is an important starting point, as they are capable of crafting content that articulates your messages, passing this on to your employees and assessing their level of engagement on an ongoing basis.
The question that needs to be asked is simple: are you saying what you need to say about your company in the best possible way? If not, it's time to put the steps in place to ensure that you are the first and most important voice of authority on your organisation, and that you serve as the foundation from which third-party content and public perceptions are developed.
