Communication Strategy That Works

Afer the success of the 'summer hacks' series, I thought I would do another one to give you some quick hacks to help you at this busy end of year period. This is episode one of three and focuses on reviewing and assessing your success from 2021 in order to plan 2022. Reviewing and measuring your impact means you can hire an effective team, you can focus your budget and effort where it's needed, an...

Continuing celebrations for the podcast's one year birthday, I reflect on what's been popular and successful for marketers in B2B in terms of content and where your focus should be in 2022. I cover, Understanding your audience's preferences or 'audience-led content' what to focus on and how to engage your audience effectively, how to prioritise and when to say; no, it's not working let's move on....

I am thrilled to have Jenni Field on the podcast, especially as it's the podcast's birthday month! I usually talk about external communication. But, today I wanted to open up the conversation around internal communication as a strategic function within your businesses. And Jenni Field has worked in communications for almost 20 years, and she now specialises in helping teams and leaders use communi...

Oh my, we are on episode 50! I can't believe it. How do I celebrate this epic milestone? I can't possibly give you 50 things - that's a challenge even for me, and you have my back catalogue to work through for that already...:) So I thought I would summarise the heart of this show, which is about creating the right approach for your B2B comms. So today, I share 5, not 50, things to create a B2B co...

A recent report from Muckrack on PR measurement stated that more than 94% of PR Pros agree that media placements were a top priority in 2021—and that will remain largely unchanged in 2022 The report from the global media platform unveils how PR pros measured success in 2021, plus their plans and predictions for 2022. Disappointingly, for me, there is a huge focus on media placements. Those of you...

As COP26 draws to a close this week, I'm reflecting today on what this means for you as communicators. Clearly, there is a big stick as well as carrot coming down the line and planning for supporting reputation issues around greenwashing, having difficult conversations with people and working out who's culpable for information shared should be high on the list for all businesses, large or small in...

Attracting investors can be a challenging, time consuming and often relentless task. Moreover, It can be tricky to know what to say and how. Today, I explore what to look for in this deep dive episode when pitching to investors as an audience. This fundamentally takes a strategic communication approach and a very specialist one. However, at its heart, it's still about connecting with an audience a...

Making a strategic choice in terms of who you put forward as a spokesperson is really important if you are going to be engaging with the media of making B2B content of any kind. Today I cover 5 key things to look for in a topic expert for your campaign. We all want to raise the visibility of our businesses, products or services, and one way to do that is by choosing a topic expert or influencer to...

I recently spoke at an event for property marketers where I joined two other experts to discuss what has changed for property marketing in a post-pandemic world.  I thought I would share these insights with you today as the points around audience, community cohesion and the use of technology are relevant to any industry and provide some food for thought around where your communication strategy is...

This week in the UK is national Work-life week promoted by Working Families - the UK's work-life balance charity. Work-life balance is a tricky subject, right? I think it is a modern dilemma where we need to balance life and work as more parents have working households, not just one person bringing in a salary. The 'life' part doesn't have to include kids. It can also mean creating a balance and s...

I wanted to talk to you today about how to manage potential reputation issues without being overwhelmed, and how this can quickly form part of your daily or monthly planning. The recent Facebook outage had some online businesses shifting in their seats uncomfortably whilst secretly panicking about when it would come back on. I have also seen more and more 'automation gone wrong' and businesses cre...

Things have changed since the phrase 'Content is King' was coined and I have also recently reflected on my own content strategy as I am a consumer and a business owner. Things have changed since that phrase 'Content is King' was coined by Bill Gates in the mid nineties, and I have reflected recently on my own content strategy as I am a consumer as well as a business owner. I think it's important t...

If you follow me on social media, you will know that I have recently had a bad customer service experience. It got me thinking about how brands can easily get it wrong if the back-office function is not connected to the brand message.   Public relations is about managing and protecting your reputation as a business, and how you handle customers is a huge part of that. It can make or break a custom...

Context is everything in terms of making sure your message lands; how often do you review what you are doing and what I call the 'operating context' in which you are doing it? If 2020 has taught us anything, customers have a higher expectation for information exchange and show loyalty to businesses that deliver this to a high level through their customer experience with them. The days of 'set it a...

Events are back with a vengeance, people! As are speaking opportunities, I thought I would re-release this episode as it was so popular in February as a reminder of how to nail your first or next opportunity and make the most out of that content.     You can create a lot of authenticity and credibility by speaking at events. But it's essential, especially as we are all time-poor right now, to plan...

In the last of the summer hacks series, I share with you how audio can help you with your content creation. Audio transcriptions services AI and automation for recording your voice have changed unrecognisably over the last ten years. You no longer need to write a blog. That's right, you heard me! I am going to talk to you today about why voice notes and audio can help you create quick and easy con...

In this third episode in the summer hacks series, I will cover some hacks around making social media content easier for you, whether you work in-house as part of a team or a solopreneur who needs to carve out more time for running your biz. Do you find social media is taking up a lot of your time? You're busy writing posts, creating graphics, possibly recording videos, and then you think posting w...

In this second episode of the summer hacks series, I talk about how Public relations is often seen as something you do if you have something to launch or some good news to talk about. But PR is not all about the media - it's so much more than that. One aspect of PR is nurturing relationships that are already strong—reaching out to people who you already work with and who know your business and nur...

I wanted to do a few short episodes during August that were super-short that you could binge on and save you some time and effort over the summer months. I am calling this a 'summer hacks series'. Today's episode is all about repurposing your content. How do you make an impact when you don't have time to create content or run a campaign? There's a simple action you can take which won't take long a...

Today I am keeping it super simple for you. Maybe you are a smaller business or startup that needs some help putting together ideas on how to promote your business using PR or thinking of entering the PR world and wondering what a simple PR plan could include? PR is an effective tool for building brand awareness. I'm one of only a few hundred chartered PR practitioners in the UK, and in this artic...

Automation and artificial intelligence is becoming a big part of PR and Comms and marketing, often carrying out and replacing everyday tasks in the digital marketing space in particular, but it is much more far-reaching than scheduling a few social media posts. As teams get back to work in earnest in 2021 and work generally ramps up for us all, automation tools can be really effective at helping u...

I am a bit of a research nerd. A lot of strategy work I undertake for customers is grounded in data and insights. Why is this so important?   A lot of communication is for communication's sake, and in a world where we are all overwhelmed with content more than ever, we should focus on what matters and why. Only producing communication that supports our business or purpose (or both)   So today I wa...

As I have said many times, a communication strategy is at the heart of your business. Most businesses will undertake financial audits and expenses claims audits, but how often do we audit how well we communicate with our customers? Most businesses will have growing pains, and effective communication leads to better marketing and more traction, which ultimately helps with more sales, right? I am al...

It's deafblind awareness week here in the UK. It got me thinking about how accessible my podcast is and educating myself more on better understanding and considering accessibility as a professional communicator. Nearly 15 million people in the UK have problems with their sight, hearing or both. It's inevitable that some of these people will be in our networks and could be customers. These needs ca...

In-person events are looking likely to be coming back this year, thank goodness; it's reassuring to see audiovisual companies and venues starting to gear up to get full and busy again. It's tempting right now to go 'hell yes!' Let's have an event! Everyone is desperate for interaction, but events are costly, so it's important to think about your end goal when setting out to raise your profile thro...