This week's discussion circles around the
importance of strategic communication planning. Argenti, Howell and Beck define
strategic communication as communication aligned with the company's overall strategy, to
enhance its strategic positioning. Dennis Moynihan, Chief of Information for the U.S. Navy, seconds
that notion by stating, "When planning to use social media you should
first consider how social media fits into your overall communication strategy.
Your approach to social media should be complementary to your other
communication efforts." I too believe that a company's communication
strategy should link back to the company's overall strategy; if not then what
are you really communicating to your publics? With consumers becoming harder to
reach by the old ways of marketing and with the increase in consumer social
media usage, the importance of integration is more important now than ever. To
ensure strategic integration across platforms companies need to develop plans.
I say plans as plural because there need to be several different plans,
short-term, medium-term, and long-term.
As a public relations practitioner my team and I
would create calendars based off of our clients marketing calendars. These
calendars would span for the entire year and would break down by each month and
then each week. Monthly plans would tie together with new product launches as
well as events that occur that month for example, February we all know is
Valentine's Day so we would plan outreach geared towards Valentine's Day at
least three months ahead to secure timely placement in the media. On a weekly
(short-term) level we would plan the content of our social media Tweets and
Facebook status updates etc. Short-term planning also included being abreast of
what was happening in the news which would include things such as, ‘How to
achieve looks from last night’s episode of Mad Men’, or ‘Avoid looking like an
Umpa Lumpa like Lindsey Lohan and use this sunless tanning product’. Without a
strategic communication plan you run the risk of things being left on the
table, missed opportunities.
Kevin Rollins, CEO of Dell, says, “You have to modify messages by constituency.
Which elements of the overall strategy do you want to discuss with which
constituent? The communication function breaks strategy into pieces and sells
the right pieces to the right audiences.”
Once the company has established its overall strategy then it can
determine what to communicate to its marketers, its employees, the media, etc;
while still delivering a cohesive and integrated message.
Resources
Argenti,
P., Howell, R., & Beck, K. (2005). The strategic communication
imperative. Retrieved from https://www.dartmouth.edu/~opa/communicators/fall08/reading/Sloan_MIT_Strat_Comm_Imp.pdf
Moynihan,
D. (2011, July 25). Social media handbook for navy paos. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/USNavySocialMedia/sm-handbook-print
Hi Damaris,
ReplyDeleteGreat examples of the short-term versus long-term strategies. I don't think enough companies are planning far enough in advance. Take the holidays for example. We started pitching to our clients (digital marketing) that they should be planning the holiday season starting in July for the coming November/December. In Lesson #4 of strategic communications, Argenti, Howell & Beck (2005) state that "that the most enduring companies are those that focus on the long term, have a strong set of values and are proactive rather than reactive in communicating" (pg. 89). This means having a strong social media strategy in place along with crisis management procedures in order to be prepared when something comes up. Being proactive rather than reactive will prevent any unnecessary remarks or unintended communications coming from the organization that can sometimes happen in a reactionary state. With the immediacy of social media, it is especially important to be proactive rather than reactive and carefully plan each communication. Too often Tweets, pictures, and videos can be misconstrued which could be detrimental to a brand.
Thanks for sharing!
- Meagan
Hey Meagan,
DeleteYou brought up a great point about companies needing to be proactive over reactive. To me when I think about companies being reactive in our current social media obsessed world I think about more than just companies reacting to a crisis. I think about a company responding to a customers tweets and comments via its social media platforms; whether the comments coming from the customers are positive or negative. I think it's important to note that when a company does respond to its customers via these outlets it should aim for personalabilty; a dry generic response is ineffective. In last week's discussion I brought up K-Mart and how they handled the Twitter backlash they received around their Black Friday holiday hours. No matter what customers tweeted to them, the response was the same. As a consumer what that says to me is that K-Mart doesn't care enough to offer its customers a real and true statement. What are your thoughts on that?
Damaris,
ReplyDeleteI thought you made some great points in your response. Planning should be considered one of the most important aspects, whether it is short-term, long-term, or medium-term. It's also imperative to have long-term goals take precedent over all others. How often do you believe companies should evaluate their long-term goals after short-term and medium-goals are completed? Do you think it's even necessary? Also, do you think it would be possibly for a company or organization to see success without planning social media posts? Rather than taking a premeditated approach, they would just tweet or update posts with new information, but with no set plan.
Great work on the post this week!
-Pat
Hey Pat,
DeleteYou raise some great questions. In your first question you said something that I think is important to call out which is "after short-term and medium-term goals are met." I think it's important that public relations practitioners are working to achieve all of these goals simultaneously. They shouldn't wait for short-term and medium-term goals to be met before they start on their long term goals. For instance, if I am a pr practitioners on a given day I could send out tweets and status updates via social media platforms or pitch a story to bloggers (short-term), send a press release out to the media for a product that is launching three months from now (medium-term) or set up a lunch date with an editor which would help build a long-term relationship. So in my book it's not a one after the other thing. Does anyone else have thoughts on this as well?
In regards to your second question I do think it's possible for a company to see success through social media without setting a plan however I think that the company is leaving the possibility open for missed opportunities.
And I say pr practitioners probably because I'm taking a PR class as well lol. But it really is whoever the company has maintaining its social media platforms. Some companies leave this to marketing, some to pr, and some to other internal departments.
DeleteHi Damaris,
ReplyDeleteYou highlighted a lot of great points in regard to the amount of effort and focus that needs to be given to a companies strategic communication agenda. I thought you brought up a great point when you said, "Without a strategic communication plan, you run the risk of leaving things on the table; missed opportunities". That is a very powerful statement, because its true. Based on the amount of planning you did as a public relations practitioner, and how you had the entire year broken down month by month, this really illustrates the amount of thought and attention that needs to be given to any kind of strategic agenda, because there is so much to account for. I also agree about breaking things down into short term, and long term goals. One thing companies need to keep in mind, is that they must also be prepared for any kind of crisis that might come about, and have a crisis plan or agenda in place, so they know how to correctly respond, through their messaging, to any kind of problem they might be facing
Dan,
DeleteI couldn't agree more. Crisis management is a great reason to have a strategic plan in place. On one end you can have some people on your team working hard to address the crisis and on the other end other team members could be following the plan ensuring business moves forward as usual. Granted, every crisis a company faces is different and sometimes the whole team May have to "stop and drop" everything to tend to the crisis at hand. But the quicker everyone can get back to the plan the better.