HOW TO COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY
While effective communication is essential to building a strong brand, excessive communication often has the same effect as not communicating at all. When you over-communicate, audiences begin to automatically ignore your content meaning it’s difficult to listen with full attention, and almost impossible to absorb in full.
Effective communication is how brands and businesses thrive. Overcommunicating may mean sending out unnecessary information about your brand or saying the same thing repeatedly, without changing the way the message is being said. It’s worth doing everything necessary to ensure your company is saying the right thing, to the right people, in the right way and via the right channels.
Decades ago, adequate communication opportunities posed a major challenge to emerging brands. Now, however, with an extremely long trail of communication platforms including various social media platforms, email marketing, and so on, the opportunities abound. These new options can increase the urge to speak excessively and quite frankly audiences are struggling to keep up with the many things brands communicate about. Overcommunicating, is often rooted in good intentions. It may stem from a desire to increase visibility or convince potential customers of the trustworthiness of your brand.
However, customers are becoming increasingly adept at filtering out excessive or in-genuine communications from brands. On this, Raja Rajamannar, CMCO (Chief Marketing & Communications Officer) of MasterCard, says, “It keeps me awake every night. Consumers look at advertisements as an annoyance, as an interruption to their experience. They’re very irritated.”
The answer to engaging your audience is not to speak constantly, but to speak more effectively.
Here are a few tips:
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Ask Questions and Get feedback
Effective communication involves an exchange of information. Be sure to know what your audience needs and provide it accordingly. Find out the type and quantity of information your audience desires, and think about how to make your communications easy for them to consume. Ensure that you answer questions that your potential target audience has, rather than constantly sending out information about your brand. By providing value, you create a mutually beneficial relationship.
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Use a variety of communication methods:
Make use of visual, audio and text driven media rather than sticking to one type. Also, ensure email engagements are reduce necessary. In 2015, an average of 205 billion emails were sent out daily. By the end of this year, that figure is expected to increase by 15 billion. Email newsletters are likely to get lost in the clutter or get opened very briefly. If you are sending emails make sure your content is engaging and visual so users are inclined to not only open it, but to read through in full. One last email tip, ensure that the subject line is very specific. This will gain your reader’s attention and differentiate your email from the pack.
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Create solid content across platforms:
Content is still king. By garnering more engagement, sign-ups, site click-throughs and so on, putting out the right content puts your company in a better position to compete. Also, don’t forget more traditional outlets. Leveraging established audiences through newspapers, magazines, and television is still worthwhile. Ensure that everything that goes out is in alignment with your brand and that it is genuinely useful to your audience. Be open to employing professional copywriters or content creators for this task. The more value you offer, the more visible you become.
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Be concise:
When in doubt, say less. The average reader lacks the time and patience to dig through tons of information in the slight chance of finding useful content. Sites that have wide readership usually have posts between 300-800 words. Whether online or offline the first few seconds of your engagement is what will determine whether the consumer continues to read, watch or listen. Be concise and edit your content to suit the platform you’re using.
To avoid compromising your brand integrity, focus on making your communication constant, clear, and transparent. Make every word count.