January Newsletter – What’s on Tap for Communicators?
New Beginnings
Stay Motivated this Month
While ringing in the new year symbolizes a fresh start, January is also notorious for being the month when Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) rears its ugly head. The magic of the holiday season is over, it’s cold and gray (if you live in the Northeast), and many aren’t taking time off or traveling to spend time with family and friends.
As we’re setting new strategies for the year, recovering from the holiday sell period, and starting new projects at work, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed with everything that needs to be done in January and easier to lose motivation.
To stay motivated this month, check out The Muse’s 7 Ways to Motivate Yourself to Work Hard When You’re Not Really in the Mood. Setting goals are a great way to stay motivated. Then, take those goals and break them into small, attainable pieces. It’s also very important to celebrate wins – big, small, and in between, when you acknowledge the strides you’ve made towards a goal, you’ll remain motivated and encouraged to keep going. And finally, keep going! When something needs done, just do it and avoid procrastinating.
New Year's Resolutions for Communicators
We made it through 2022! Some of us reached all the milestones and goals we’d set at the beginning of last year. Some of us maybe didn’t. But not to worry! Here are five New Year’s resolutions from SnapComms to make 2023 your year.
- Look for opportunities to communicate.
- If you already have a rinse-and-repeat comms calendar, you may be missing opportunities to engage employees. Look to also focus on business highlights, team and individual successes, initiatives, organizational milestones, and looking ahead for some inspiration.
- Make everyone an advocate.
- Your internal communications team may be one or many people. But within our organizations, everyone is an internal communicator. We discuss with colleagues what’s happening within our teams, our departments. the company overall, and some even post on social media. Embrace these communicators! Solicit feedback and encourage them to submit their ideas.
- Take the road less travelled.
- It’s always tempting to fall into the old behavior of “that’s what we’ve always done” and use things we’ve used in the past. Before you post the same message with updated dates or contacts, think about whether or not last year’s message got the results you wanted. Maybe it’s time to look for a new way of communicating, including using different tools to do so.
- Make more meaningful measurement.
- It is hard to measure results in communications. Many of us are able to quantify what goes into a plan or initiative, but we struggle to report how those campaigns were received without constant surveys. Look for ways to build tracking and post-campaign reporting into your communications plan then circulate those results with stakeholders after your campaign has ended.
- Celebrate diversity.
- Workplaces are becoming more and more diverse. The difference of cultures, languages, and attitudes presents a multitude of opportunities to celebrate different cultures and foster team building. Consider how ethnic and cultural diversity can add to communications activities this year.
Source: 5 New Year Resolutions for Internal Communications, SnapComms, 2019.
2023: The year when internal and external communications align
Compelling storytelling is more needed than ever, and it’s lucky for us communicators that more and more of the same content is being used by both internal and external comms teams. Here are a few tips from PR Daily for effective internal and external comms partnerships – click below to read the full article.
- Align your comms
Both internal and external communications need to be aligned on messaging so they can communicate the same narrative to their audiences. To do so they need to be strategic in their planning and execute those plans jointly.
- Think cross-functional collaboration
40% of internal communicators last year stated that their collaboration with marketing, PR and external comms teams increased over the past 12 months, and 50% said that collaboration has remained the same. Internal comms teams should see PR teams as partners in content development, and vice versa. Ensure key pieces of press coverage secured by the PR team are being shared throughout an organization.
- Create a corporate messaging document
Working together to create such a document becomes the source of truth for reference by all employees, especially company spokespeople, those speaking externally to media, prospects, and customers, and new hires going through the onboarding process. This official manual of company approved messaging would be regularly updated by a company’s core comms team working with various stakeholders.
- Be strategic
For an organization to stand out and be understood by internal and external audiences, both comms teams should work hand-in-hand, along with stakeholders within an organization, to develop and execute a holistic communications plan. According to Edelman’s The Future of Corporate Communications Study, “communications leaders who have instituted regular, integrated strategic planning find it to be a starting point for better collaboration and a way to ensure that teams and functional partners are informed and aware of each other’s strategies, goals, and program planning.”
- Meet regularly
Be committed to the partnership, share ideas, align on goals and appreciate the value each of these fundamental disciplines brings to the larger goals of the organization.
Source: 2023: The Year When Internal and External Communications Align | PR Daily
