Five tips for using corporate communications to influence

All good communications strategies have two core strands: one, engaging audiences by sharing information with them and listening to their views; and two, sharing insight back into the organisation, to influence the organisation. Assuming you agree, here are five tips for successfully using communications to influence:

1, at the top table: the organisation must be willing to have its core purpose influenced by its full range of audiences. This is made possible by the organisation having a clear outcomes-based purpose, and using its different interactions and disciplines - monetary, supply chain, workforce, customers, external stakeholders etc - to shape that purpose and how it is delivered. A corollary of this is that communications is not a secondary service but of equal importance to tracking profit and loss, as both shape understanding and future direction.

2, consistency and frequency: the organisation must clearly internally communicate its purpose and supporting narrative, so that all parts of the organisation can try their best to deliver and not undermine it. It must also consistently communicate externally too, making sure target audiences are engaging with the message. This is communications bread and butter, but it requires the rest of these points to work in order to maximise its effectiveness.

3, shared challenge: what is being communicated should be related to the organisation’s purpose while also being widely useful, addressing a shared problem, rather than being self serving. This is often known as thought leadership. The point is that communications is not a direct sales channel for promoting a product, it’s about nurturing an engaging conversation. The best way of evidencing that you are truly engaged in thought leadership on shared challenges is by recruiting energetic advocates.

4, credibility: the organisation’s way of working and core product must demonstrate success and quality. People want to listen to leaders in their field so, if your own house is not in order, don’t expect an audience for your views. So, help get your house in order and, where you cannot, be ready to offer a good explanation why. Put the other way around, reputation management is not only about external communications tactics but internal influence.

5, agency: finally, people want to listen to the views of organisations that can act on those views. So, if there are aspects of your organisation that are immovable or controlled by others, be sure to emphasise the areas where you can act freely while being honest about where you cannot.

Conclusion: all communications professionals will be used to, and likely frustrated by, colleagues asking them to ‘comms’ something. At best, this means using communications to unrealistically widen public interest in something mundane. At worst, it means using communications to mitigate a problem caused by activities of another part of the organisation. If you have not already had the conversation, such requests from colleagues are a good opportunity to advise them of a different approach: that you can a) add value to the organisation by shaping its core purpose, b) communicate more engaging messages if that core purpose is shaped by your audience environment, and c) best mitigate challenges by heading off activities that undermine your organisation’s purpose. In other words, if something needs ‘comms-ing’ something avoidable has already gone wrong and you can help advise how to fix it.