5 Tips to Improve Your Brand’s Communications
Your goal with all of your communications should be to drive your audience toward something—it does not matter if it’s in the form of an announcement, social media post, or company messaging. Whether that inspiration encourages meaningful change or prompts individuals into learning more and using your product or service is entirely up to you.
But where should you start? Good content takes time to develop, so before you begin, try to outline what messages you want to convey and what you would like your audience to take away after reading them.
Keep It Simple
First things first, make sure your messages are clear and straightforward. People should understand what you are trying to accomplish with your communications, whether they are part of your industry or not. If you’re announcing something, highlight what’s new and explain why it’s important to your company and customers using approachable language that breaks down the product or service.
What should you do if your messages aren’t simple? Try to boil them down to only include essential information. Using bullet points to list info also breaks the text up and helps your audience pull the most important details out.
Spell Things Out
Additionally, be vigilant about your use of industry-specific jargon or acronyms that could confuse the reader; although you may be familiar with their meanings, your reader may not.
For example, PR could stand for “personal record,” “purchase request,” “progress report,” “Puerto Rico,” or “public relations.” Without proper context, it may be difficult for your reader to determine which meaning is correct.
If you need to use an acronym, spell it out first, followed by the abbreviation in parenthesis:
CottageHouse PR is a public relations (PR) agency that works with brands in tech, consumer, wellness/sustainability and “future of” industries.
Know Your Audience
Pay attention to who your audience is, how they interact with your brand and company social pages, and what they find relevant.
If your company focuses on really thoughtful, profound messages, and your audience appreciates those messages, continue developing your content that way. If your company is thriving with witty and funny content, don’t suddenly change your tune to become serious.
Audiences like consistency, so any shifts in the way you communicate should be gradual. Think of it as dropping tiny seeds of what’s to come before making any sudden changes. Always listen to your audience’s feedback, especially when they voice legitimate concerns about what they like or don’t like.
Above all, don’t forget to engage with your audience and communicate how your brand is changing and growing. Audiences value transparency and appreciate being kept apprised of what your company is doing and how that may affect them.
Support Your Messages
Share any details or data that support your communications. If you have research that supports your message, use it!
Data gives your message and your company more credibility. For example, if you were to say, “our company is a leader in our industry,” where’s the proof or the data point that supports that claim?
If your company had record growth and did well, highlight the growth rate and explain the factors that contributed to your company’s success.
Call Your Audience to Action
Lastly, include calls to action (CTA) such as “Learn More,” “Visit our website for more details,” or “Check out our tutorial…” that direct your audience on what to do next. Without those directions, you risk losing that person’s engagement—clicks, likes, comments or shares—with your content.
Common places to include CTAs are:
- Social media posts
- Web page buttons
- Blog posts
- Opt-in campaign buttons
- Text and buttons in emails and newsletters