Five keys to successful project communication

11 Sep 2017

Communication is a vital component to the success of any project, but for many organisations, project communication is non-existent. Or, if it does occur, the audience is often bored and are left feeling frustrated.

Five keys to successful project communication

Creating informative and interesting project communication is often neglected, with management not realising the dire results of this approach. When preparing a communication strategy around a project, it is important to assess your target audience and utilise new and attention grabbing platforms to communicate. The days of the insipid, badly written and poorly constructed newsletter are a thing of the past.

Five tips for project communication:

Make it compelling and specific

When communicating to the individuals involved and impacted by the project, share key specifics, updates and how they will be affected. If the information comes across as too vague or verbose, you will lose their interest. It is vital to keep your audience in mind when preparing communication and to constantly answer the question – what is in it for them?

Ensure it is current

As the content originator, you need to ensure that all updates are relevant and news worthy. If you are reporting old news, you will lose wide scale interest immediately.

Make it appealing to read

While you don’t want sensationalism, you also don’t want your content to be dry and difficult to read. A professional layout with imagery and iconography can assist in your report standing out and being easy to read.

Explore other platforms

Project communication shouldn’t be limited to a newsletter. Make use of infographics and other information on demand platforms. There are superb project communication mobile apps, that allow you to engage with your audience and obtain real-time feedback, in the form of likes and comments, rather than emails that disappear into the nothingness.

Add a personal touch

If you make use of a monthly project newsletter, go beyond just providing project progress updates. An idea, interview project members - programme manager, sponsor, project manager or a business analyst on the team and get their personal insights, ask them to share an anecdote, a piece of advice or a different perspective on the project.