Joy C
Dir. of Corp. Communication for Benefitfocus, a Healthcare Technology company
What are the top three issues facing professional business communicators? in the U.S.? in other countries?
While there have been articles written about this in IABC's Communication World and other resources, I'm taking an informal poll to see the common areas which may arise between communicators in the U.S. and other countries.
Answers (22)
Gary G
Senior Public Relations Counselor, Corporate Spokesman, Entrepreneur and Media Expert
1. The rapid changing of the media marketplace/town square of ideas. Businesses have to find a way to adjust and get comfortable with the stream of conversation style of social media.
2. Finding talented communicators to hire. In an age where LOL and LMAO are acceptable shorthand for the younger generation, how are we to train and grow the next crop of communicators?
3. Creativity.
Patrick O
Senior Marketing and Corporate Communication Executive
Best Answers in: Public Relations (1)
1. Getting comfortable with honest communication. Corporate communication's job is to start conversations, implying feedback, dialogue and relationship. Too often companies get nervous, worried or defensive when their stakeholders get candid with them.
2. Learning how to use social media and internet-related as tools to improve corporate performance through market feedback and intelligence.
3. Building employee communications into a non-HR, strategic management function, focused on aligning corporate strategy with employee performance.
Kami W
Providing inspired public relations programs with passion, innovation and integrity
My top three would be: 1) quantifying our contribution to the bottom line and/or organizational objectives; 2) targeting using technology and other channels to reach people the way they want to be reached; 3) keeping up with the tectonic changes in communication, or in other words, professional development.
Lindy D
Corporate Marketing Manager Inter Access
Best Answers in: Public Relations (1), Wireless (1)
From the Netherlands:
My main issue is: How to get the message across and be noticed amongst the zillion other messages that target audience is bombarded with.
Yes, that takes creativity, both in composing the message as in selecting the right media and moments. And in this age of user generated content and everybody being a "communications expert" it also takes a sound knowledge of your profession - what works, what doesn't and why. Finally, there's the challenge of tactics vs strategy. Businesses are mostly focusing on short term, generating revenue, where building a brand takes time and consistency in communications.
US vs the rest of the world? No clue. From a Danish perspective:
1 - avoid getting lost in the ever increasing amount of communication people are exposed to;
2 - reliable measurement linking communication efforts to business impact;
3 - react in real time regardless time zones and cluttered agenda's.
1 - Originality. Too many sound like the latest motivational speaker, or like the current business books.
2 - Lack of educational breadth. Knowledge is power, and too few have lots of it in many areas. We need more renaissance readers and thinkers.
3 - Integrity. Standing up for the right thing, saying the right, and standing against the wrong thing.
Links:
1, 2 and 3 - How to handle the constantly emerging technologies that offer new opportunities to communicate. What's worth the time and effort to learn/ROI? How to apply these to benefit your client? What works and what doesn't? How long will the technology be effective before it's obselete? How can you measure these these new technologies?
Joy F
process improvement is ALL about people
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Respect for the Audience.
Respect for the Subject Matter Experts.
Respect for (and awareness of) best practices.
1. While receivers of messages are resistant to spin, the senders -- leadership -- often are unwilling to give it up. Communicators need data to show leaders what messages will resonate, but it's often not budgeted.
2. Budget. Continual belt-tightening makes it hard to do the right things well.
3. Information overload has reached a point that it's almost beyond "breaking through the clutter" to reach the audience. People can now select to travel in a very narrow field of communication and ignore everything else.
Kyrill L
PR Director - Head of PR Dpt. at MTT (Multiregional TransitTelecom)
Best Answers in: Public Relations (1), Writing and Editing (1)
Hey Joy!
Here in Russia we have the folowing issues (for PR only):
1. As far as a lot of Russian TOP-managers have no special business education, but they are very ambitious people, one of the main tasks of PR business communicators now is to create the right and effective communication with this TOP-manager. It is realy hard and important here to prove to such a TOP-manager that PR-manager is a good expert in his field. Moreover, very often Russian TOP-manager still don't understand the leading role of PR communications in business process, and they don't understand why and what for are you doing something and force them to do some public motions.
2. I'm not sure about all the Russian markets, but in telecom we meet the situation, when though all good journalist decided to become PR-experts of the biggest Russian companies. As a result we have no good jourlists though in this field of economy and have to teach them just to be sure that they will not place not professional but sensational (as they think) articles in tommorow newspapers:)
3. Bussiness analitics and experts need to be teached as well. Sometimes we have shocking comments and understand that these people know our market and the very companies too bad.
I wrote some articles for Russian PR-journal about it, and picked up statistics, so this is the whole big picture, the very tendence, but my own experiece in some definite company.
Frankly speaking I would add a few issues, but they are basic I think. Designing of information matters, for example. Good PR-team creating, chosing the needed outsourse agencies, and so on.
Clarification added 9 months ago:
Sorry, here is a mistake. Please reaв this sentence as: I wrote some articles for Russian PR-journal about it, and picked up statistics, so this is the whole big picture, the very tendence, but NOT my own experiece in some definite company.
Because much of the internal communication in our company is done via e-mail, the biggest challenge I face as our writer is getting people to open the message in the first place. We communicate new marketing inintiatives, events and programs through carefully crafted and well-laid out e-mails, only to find out that the message was never read and our associates don't realize what is available to them. For instance, we will often get requests from our field for us to produce topic-specific marketing materials - for topics on which such materials have already been created.
While the Internet and other technologies are supposed to make communicating easier, the abundance of resources in existence equates to information overload and a large percentage of communications getting lost in translation.
Here is a quick answer from Ukraine:
1) Evaluation of PR campaigns efficiency in business terms
2) Lack of business mass media outside of the capital of the country (on the regional level, press editorial and advertising departments are often very closely connected, so business news are often viewed by media as source of advertising budget rather than news. Same goes for most national TV channels).
3) Overcoming the general perception of PR as a dirty technology. The negative perception is based on numerous recent political election campaigns with lots ot political struggle and dirty technology used, commonly called "black PR").
Craig P
Founder, CKPcreative (custom editorial, Internet marketing, digital project management) ... blogger (lohad.com)
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (2), Advertising (1), Viral Marketing (1), Branding (1)
In no particular order ...
1. Embracing honesty and authenticity
2. Eschewing buzzwords
3. Being nimble and responsive in the face of a swiftly changing business landscape
(In no particular order)
1. Cutting through the clutter and making sure your message is heard.
2. Building and preserving your credibility.
3. Finding people -- especially young people -- who can write and speak clearly. Language skills seem to be a thing of the past.
Lubna K
Associate Director at Ernst & Young and newspaper columnist
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Hi Joy,
1) Keeping abreast of various rules and regulations not only in the home country but even abroad, where your parent company may be. For example: to ensure that no future projections are conveyed during the "silence period" which may be mandatory pre a listing
2) Learning to deal with global investors, not merely domestic investors - challenges would arise in terms of cultural differences, time differences, different modes of communication - for eg: video conferencing, etc
3) Being able to convey a complex term in simple language.
Best
Lubna
One issue in Holland is whether journalists should become specialists in communications or that we should keep communications and journalism each at one side of the border.
I find it a ridiculous discussion. I am a journalist, but also a communications specialist and I believe that I am good in my work, because I am experienced at both sides of the spectre! You can benefit of the knowledge of both.
A few months ago a journalist gone communications expert told me she was so disappointed that she had no use of her journalism. She still couldn't get her press release published. Well, if that's why you make the move, don't do it! The benefit lies within the way you know journalists like to be treated. You know what it requires to take upon a job, that is your bonus. Not, because you know when a press release will be picked up. Because that is something you never know.
I'm in the UK and I would reiterate the answer from the Netherlands. The average UK person sees/hears 3000 messages a day, from notices on shops to adverts on TV. They screen out 90%, and then most of the rest get through to them because they are key topics on which they are interested.
So the key issue is finding a message that really makes people think "hey, what?" in about 2 seconds, and so read on.
We've done a lot with humour to break through on this - and that is humour in B2B selling, not in selling to consumers. Interestingly most people have said to us, "you can't use humour to sell a serious product like a direct mail list" but we have proved they are wrong.
Links:
Vasco Phillip D
Narrative Designer
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1) lost communications. Due to over-aggressive spam filters, and legit mail being seen as junkmail, as well as privatization of postal services, I've lost more and more important communications (and I'm not alone).
2) people who don't read or listen (or can't hear). I especially get this problem with one Asian country, which seems to block their population from reading my blog but not attempting to comment on it. You could call it spam, but it's actually a communications wall which is very frustrating.
3) lawsuits and other nonsense. There used to be chivalry and ettiquette. Now it seems there are so many factors to consider. I prefered the cold war, when we could call the enemy "the evil empire" and not think of them as a potential market who's boots we're supposed to lick.
1) The increasing loss of respect for communication *quality*. ("u don't need to edit that i spellchecked it so its ok.")
2) The increasing fragmentation of the audience. This can be good because it simplifies strategic/targeted communication. However, it can also be a problem because each fragment will be more difficult to reach with new messages from outside of their comfortable fragmented space.
3) Increasing lack of respect for the audience. ("I have your e-mail address; therefore, you are my audience. I don't actually remember who you are or whether you are interesting in this topic, but hey if you don't like it then you can just delete it. And the other 10 you're going to get from me later today.")
1. Tone: US-based companies often take a cowboy-style approach to communication. While in-your-face works in many venues, it can definitely alienate audiences in other parts of the world.
2. Vernacular: Terminology that is common-place in one part of the world may not be in another. In order to effectively communicate with others, you must first "speak the same language."
3. Salience: With differing perspectives comes differing needs for information. To be effective, business communication must highlight points of interest. While the US market is heavily marketing driven, businesses from other parts of the world seek information first, then benefits.
1.) The lack of knowledge (or at least the lack of enough knowledge) about the topic he has to write about.
2.) The inability to incorporate "marketing punch" in the language, when it is a Marketing collateral like brochure or case study. Having command of the language is one thing, and having flair for using "selling language" is something different.
3.) Confusion about the significance of the role that PR writing plays in the over all PR/Mar Comm activities.
1) Effectively understanding the media landscape, including traditional and "new" media and how to build relationships in it.
2) Communicating your value to internal and external clients.
3) Measuring results and their impact.