Have you ever wondered how some of your colleagues have good knowledge about your management? How do they have a good rapport with the higher and middle-level management?
You may be a hard-working person and probably technically sound with your skills but, still, are you not the preferred one during the appraisal?
Do you know or can you guess the reason? No, it is not politics ( you can give 2 to 5% of the share though). The actual reason is the lack of your performance visibility to the management.
If this is who you are, then you must really focus on the question “What is Corporate Communication”? The skill you can use to project yourself in front of the right stakeholders at right time.
In this article We shall find out
- What is corporate communication?
- How is corporate communication different from general communication?
- What is the role of corporate communication?
- Importance of corporate communication.
- Elements of corporate communication.
- Corporate communication strategy.
- Tools of corporate communication.
- How PR is different than corporate communication?
Let’s get to know more about the corporate communication.
What is Corporate Communication? (The corporate communication definition)
As per Wikipedia, “Corporate communication is a set of activities involved in managing and orchestrating all internal and external communications aimed at creating a favorable point of view among stakeholders on which the company depends.”
In simple terms, It is a combination of utilizing both written and verbal skills one uses to keep all stakeholders informed about day-to-day activities. Thus ensuring all stakeholders are at the same level of understanding for a specific problem or requirement.
Wait! You must be thinking, how come your communication is different from that of Corporate communication even if you keep your manager updated about the day-to-day activities? No worries, Let’s get deeper.
How is corporate communication different from general communication?
Apart from knowing what is corporate communication? It is also important to know how it is different.
Corporate communication inherits a set of rules and policies supervised by your organization. Having you know how to utilize this skill, you could easily brand yourself and make yourself visible to real stakeholders such as management, vendors, and your department.
On the contrary, General communication is not bound to any rules or policies. This communication is kind of informational and intimation-oriented to which none of the stakeholders gives importance.
So what exactly does a person with Corporate communication skills do?
What is the role of Corporate Communication?
The role of Corporate communication is to mediate between stakeholders and derive or make them agree to a point that benefits the business.
The person having good Corporate communication must know how to persuade his higher management to get the approvals and also should have exceptional negotiation skills to deal with vendors and colleagues to get the work done at an appreciable time and that too within the allocated budget.
Hmm, that’s fine, but why is this skill is needed for you and how does it help you in your professional and personal growth?
Importance of Corporate Communication
Now we know, what is corporate communication and its role, we also need to know why do we need it at the first place.
Just imagine, you are equipped with the skill we are talking about and are solving the very purpose of what we discussed before. What sought of impact could it create? You are going to become the most sought-after person in your organization and you will be looked up to as a dependable person.
Once a person is visible to its management, he would be the sought-after guy or girl for any sought of requirements or clarifications and thus make him very much eligible and establish dominance over other colleagues at the time of appreciation ( you know what I mean, it is Appraisal!! ).
You might have got the point but how could you say if you have those skills?
What are the elements of corporate communication?
Here are a few elements with which you must be well versed to ensure you possess those skills. If not, then need not be worried, the skills which I am going to present to you can easily be acquired and practiced by any individual and at any point in time.
Internal Communications: You could build a strong relationship with your team to get the desired output at the required time by making them efficient.
Public Relations: You could maintain a high reputation and image of your organization or your firm by effectively using the skill at public events and mass communications like press or events.
Social Media: You could build and market the brand of your company or your firm by effectively using this skill on social media and get your company noticed to all the world.
Customer communications: The area where most of us are interested in, the Customers. Having a good relationship with your customer is at most a priority to get yourself or your organization growing. Happy customers always imply wealthy business.
Investor Relations: The investors are the people who trusted us at the first point in time. They are the ones who believe that we do have the potential to grow and thus keeping up with their trust is very important for any business. The transparency in business transactions and growth strategies are the key metrics they would be interested in. Hence keeping track of those metrics and keeping them informed of the right metrics at the right time plays a significant role in retaining the trust.
Corporate communication strategy
Having identified our stakeholders and researched enough about our customers, you must have had a clear view of the people you have to influence and the target you have to reach with your communication. This is where you should plan a strategy for each.
In general, a corporate communicator’s strategy should be aligned with his company’s business strategy. For instance, if his company is planning to expand its business, then your strategy should also include the activities that help your company achieve the target such as marketing, recruiting efficient people, making a strong team to support the upcoming market demand, and so on.
So far so good but how can one perform these activities? Let’s get to that point now.
Tools of corporate communication.
There are two main types of corporate communications, internal communication, and external communication.
The tools one could use for effective internal communications are the company’s form, instant messaging tools, company’s social network group’s, and so on.
The tools one could use for effective external communications are social media, company’s websites, chatbots, digital marketing, and so on.
After coming this far, you might be feeling that corporate communication is more like public relations (PR) but it is not. Let me clarify that as part of this article’s closure.
Difference between PR and corporate communication
A PR(Public Relations) usually involves the communication related to the public only whereas Corporate communication includes both internal stakeholders as well as the public. In short, PR(Public Relations) is part of Corporate communication.
Summary
Now we understand what is corporate communication, let’s get deeper into the tactics and practice needed to achieve mastery in some other article. I have also written an article on “how advantages of oral communication outperformed written” do check it out.
informative and very usefull
Thank you!