The role of public and internal communication for growing companies
All forms of communication are crucial in everyday life, and it is no different when it comes to a professional environment. Communication is the key tool for building and maintaining relationships, completing tasks and expressing our needs.
Within a company, there are the communications that happen between staff and employees, but there’s also the conveying of messages to the general public and the customers. Both play a vital role in the development and growth of a company.
Public communication
The public are the people that truly allow a company to grow; if you win them over, then you are bound to develop and succeed as a company. Without their support, it does not matter how hard you work from the inside.
An innovation keynote speaker Kurt Uhlir believes that building relationships and helping people is key to accelerating growth and reaching that next step within a company. Having a connection with the public allows a company to motivate change, listen to feedback and improve the delivery of products and services.
Kurt Uhlir has displayed how important the role of communication is through his own work that he has achieved when advising various company CEOs, causing growth in their revenue and increasing their reach to customers.
Channels Used For Public Communication
Utilising the various channels available to interact with customers is extremely important for building relationships with customers. If there are interactions between you and a customer, a connection is formed and a customer is more likely to remember you as a brand.
The more places you use to expand your communication with the public, the more universal you will become, and the more customers you can reach. There is owned media and paid media, and both have different benefits.
Owned media is free and can be personalised and used as many times as you want. Paid media has the potential to reach new and more people, but costs extra money and is limited in time and/or size in what you can say. Here are some examples of types of media and public communications channels.
● Social media
With the development of technology, one of the newest and main ways to interact with customers is through social media. Having dedicated accounts on various platforms - including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, and Youtube, to name but a few - is one of the ways to create a personable and likeable brand.
It is one of the best ways to directly communicate and gain feedback from customers from comments and DMs, and you can form connections by replying to them too, both publicly and privately.
● A website
As well as being the place to sell and offer services, your company’s website can be a source of information to the public, too. Creating a blog can get potential customers excited about things relating to your services, inform them why you are the people right for the job, and why your service is so important.
Telling your company’s story is a way of storytelling, which is one of the methods for building an emotional connection with customers.
● Advertisements
Sometimes, you simply need to get the company name and brand out there to as many people as possible.
Putting up an advert on the radio, podcasts, TV, newspapers, and even shop windows can be a way of getting people to talk about the company and the services you offer. People and word of mouth can be one of the best ways of spreading the message you are trying to get out there.
● Mailing lists
Encouraging and creating offers for people to sign up to email, SMS and traditional postal newsletters allows for another channel of communication.
They can be a highly effective way of making announcements, displaying your services and products, and showcasing your values and beliefs. You can even request feedback and send surveys to learn what customers are liking, or not liking, about the company.
● Handwritten notes
Adding a personal touch can make a difference nowadays, where usually everything is standardised. Popping a thank you note in a letter can make you stand out among the competition and encourage repeat customers.
Public communications strategy
Having a team dedicated to a public relations strategy is important to ensure you are staying relevant with trends and listening to customers' requirements. You can create goals to maximise your impact on customers, evaluate data and competition, create relevant but unique content to reach new customers, and provide valuable information to retain customers.
Whilst it is important to be active on several different channels of public communications, sometimes it is also necessary to be selective on which ones you focus on; this can depend on your brand and your company goals.
The Role Of Public Communication In Growth
In summary - bearing in mind the above methods, strategies and channels - clear and intentional public communications can be a very effective way of growing a company, in both gaining new customers and encouraging return customers.
These communications are vital in conveying your brand, which includes your values and beliefs as a company, to form an emotional connection with customers. As well as this, simply sharing announcements, such as new product launches, can help excitement grow around your company and what it offers.
You can also show how much you value customer feedback, and actively work on what customers criticise. All this helps a genuine relationship form, to create a more memorable and highly regarded company. This, in turn, will help you grow your following, reputation and revenue.
Internal communication
Ensuring that tasks are being performed effectively and correctly by employees can be achieved by maintaining the flow of information and updating everyone involved. Having everyone on the same page means progress can be made and confusion is avoided.
Channels to communicate within a company
So there are a variety of methods that can be used to efficiently communicate in a way that minimises time wasting and suits the situation.
Choosing what form of communication to use depends on things like the importance of the information, the amount, the subjectiveness, and the pre-existing knowledge of the information by the receiver. The main channels are verbal, electronic and paper. For example:
● Video calls
This is an example of verbal communication. These are a great way of comprehensively presenting information in an engaging way. Whether it’s pre-recorded, or a face-to-face live call, videos can be more easily understood even if the information is more complex.
They can also emphasise more important points to allow the receiver to understand priorities and the overall tone of the information. Video calls, or phone calls, allow a two-way conversation to ask and answer questions in that moment, which can prevent time-wasting. Other forms of verbal communication include face-to-face meetings.
This is an example of electronic communication. These are a balanced and formal way of keeping people in the loop for sharing important information and files.
It is easy to find information from old email threads and is quick and convenient. Other forms of electronic communication include team messaging services, texts and website resources.
● Notice boards
This is an example of paper communication. Posters on a notice board can highlight key information and focuses for employees to work on.
They can also display employee reward schemes, schedules and deadlines to motivate and encourage staff members to work harder. Other forms of paper communication include post-it note reminders, printed reports and suggestion boxes.
Which channel you use needs to be considered carefully because otherwise the information can get lost easily. One example of an issue is email overload.
Whilst emails are a convenient and balanced form of communication in terms of formality, inboxes can become filled with unread emails very quickly if things are being sent all the time. “CCing” lots of people in on an email keeps relevant people informed, but too many threads and email exchanges can cause confusion fairly quickly.
Types of Internal Communication
With the different hierarchies within a company, it’s important that everybody can speak with who they need to and relay important information. So this can include management-to-staff, staff-to-management, peer-to-peer, and whole-team meetings.
Depending on who you are speaking to, you may have one usual channel you usually use to share updates, but it is important to use a mixture to ensure that everyone understands what is expected of them and how well they are achieving their various tasks. Here are some different types of internal communication and the objectives of each.
● Leadership generated
Also known as ‘top-down communication’, this is where leaders in a company will often provide information through formal announcements and reporting.
They generally provide updates that are applicable company-wide, rather than for niche departments, and allow individuals to understand the direction, strategy and progress of the company as a whole.
● Employee generated
Also known as ‘bottom-up communications’, this allows employees to convey queries and concerns to those that are higher up in the chain of command.
Staff members are the ones that are getting important tasks done on a daily basis to help the smooth operation of a company, so understanding their needs and ideas is a crucial way of growing a company.
Having one on one feedback sessions with staff, sending out polls and surveys, and having a suggestions box can be just some ways to make sure a company is listening to its employees.
● Crisis situation communication
Being able to quickly overcome an emergency situation is vital in minimising disruption, protecting employees and the general public, and ensuring the growth of a company is not knocked back.
Being able to contact every individual within a company all at once can be extremely important; this can come in the form of having pre-crisis protocols (including staff members having certain responsibilities, such as in the event of a fire) and perhaps having building announcements through speaker systems.
● Peer-to-peer communication
Also known as ‘lateral communication’, having teams of employees to achieve certain goals and tasks is not uncommon, so it is obvious that they’ll need ways of communicating with each other to more efficiently carry out a specific job.
Collaboration between staff can improve employee morale and well-being which has been scientifically proven to improve their performance (and subsequently the performance of the company) in terms of problem-solving and generating ideas.
Having messaging systems is one of the key ways to improve communication between peers, and is a quick and effective way to ask questions and complete tasks.
Internal Communications Strategy
Having procedures and a plan in place when it comes to communications within the company can improve overall performance and growth.
Ensuring employees when to contact someone and by which channel increases the chances of problems being solved more quickly before they get worse because messages going through more people than needed can be avoided.
Evaluating your communication systems often can help work out where there are faults that you can improve on, which will help keep the process streamlined.
The Role Of Internal Communication In Growth
So to summarise the benefits and importance of internal communication from the above information, it plays a role in aiding and encouraging employees to boost performance.
Ensuring that all staff members are supplied with accurate and up-to-date information requires frequent communication, which helps share the goals and progress of the company too. It allows for feedback as well, to help drive actionable change within a company, which is crucial for the development of the company.
All in all, both public and internal communication plays an extremely important role in the growth of a company. Public communications allow a company to build a relationship with customers, make announcements and gain valuable feedback.
Displaying your brand through various different channels builds emotional connections to reach new customers and help retain previous ones. Internal communications help to grow the company from the inside out; having an efficient way of sharing information and providing updates to and between staff members is crucial in progressing as a company.
Improving staff performance will ultimately help the company grow too. All types of communication in a company require a well-thought-through strategy and hard work to constantly improve it.
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