What is a Communication Strategy? Here’s Everything You Need to Know.

What is a communication strategy? Well, without one, a business is all but doomed to fail. So much of modern business life involves online and virtual communication, and without the proper tools and methods in place, a workplace will founder. In this article, we’ll explain the basics and provide concrete steps to help any company create and implement a strong communication strategy. 

What is a Communication Strategy?

A good place to start is right with the basics. At its core, a communication strategy is the framework that organizations use to communicate both internally and externally in a consistent, purposeful manner. It defines how information will be exchanged and how relationships with different stakeholders will be managed.

So what is a communication strategy? In fact, the main meaning of a communication strategy is not just about sending messages but ensuring that those messages are received, understood, and acted upon. It involves understanding the audience, shaping the message to their needs, and selecting the appropriate channels to deliver it. It’s a proactive approach to communication that goes beyond reacting to situations, enabling organizations to control the narrative, build trust, and in the end, help a business achieve desired outcomes.

A well-defined communication strategy is essential for fostering engagement, promoting collaboration, and driving success. Whether for internal communication among employees or external communication with customers, partners, or investors, a communication strategy ensures that the right message reaches the right audience at the right time.

Key Elements of a Communication Strategy

And speaking of basics, when answering the question “What is a communication strategy?”, here’s what the strategy is generally built on. In fact, there are several fundamental components that every effective communication strategy should include. Understanding these components helps organizations create a cohesive plan that aligns with their goals in regards to strategic communications.

1. Objectives

The first step in creating a communication strategy is to define its objectives. These are the specific goals the organization wants to achieve through communication efforts. For example, are you looking to increase brand awareness, improve engagement, or streamline internal communication? Your communication tactics should align with your broader organizational goals.

2. Target Audience

Identifying the target audience is critical to ensuring that communication efforts are effective. Understanding who the message is intended for helps tailor the content to resonate with that audience. Whether you are communicating with employees, customers, investors, or partners, the tone, style, and content of your strategic communication messages should be adapted to meet their needs and expectations.

3. Key Messages

The core message is the essence of what you want to communicate. It’s important to craft clear, concise, and compelling messages that convey the desired information effectively. These key messages should reflect the values and goals of your organization and be consistent across all communications channels.

4. Communications Channels

Once the target audience and key messages are identified, the next step is to select the appropriate strategic communication channels. The choice of channels depends on where your audience is most likely to engage. For internal strategic communication, this may include email, newsletters, or internal social platforms. For external strategic communication, it could involve social media platforms, press releases, or direct marketing communications.

5. Timing and Frequency

Timing is an essential factor in good communication strategy. You need to determine the right moments to share your messages to maximize impact. For instance, announcing a new product should coincide with its release, while internal updates might be communicated during regular company meetings. Additionally, the frequency of communication should be planned to avoid overloading or under-informing your audience.

6. Responsibility

A successful communication strategy requires clear responsibility and oversight. It’s important to define who will manage the creation, approval, and dissemination of messages. For larger organizations, this might involve a dedicated strategic communications team or department, while smaller companies may delegate the task to marketing or HR.

The Main Purpose of a Communication Strategy

Which brings us to the big question: the purpose. Well, the purpose of a communication strategy is multifaceted and extends beyond simply getting a message out. It serves several critical functions:

1. Clarity and Consistency

A well-executed communication strategy ensures that the organization’s messaging is clear and consistent. This prevents mixed messages from reaching employees or customers, which could lead to confusion and misunderstandings. For instance, if different departments are communicating conflicting information, it could negatively impact the company’s reputation and internal operations.

2. Alignment with Business Goals

A communication strategy aligns communication efforts with the overall goals and vision of the organization. Whether the goal is to improve customer satisfaction, boost engagement, or promote a new product, the communication strategy ensures that every message contributes to achieving those objectives.

3. Building Relationships

Effective strategic communications build strong relationships between the organization and its stakeholders, including employees, customers, partners, and investors. A good strategy helps maintain open lines of communication, ensuring that stakeholders feel valued and informed.

4. Fostering Engagement

Engaging both internal and external audiences is another critical purpose of a communication strategy. For internal stakeholders, it fosters a sense of belonging and involvement in the company’s mission. For external stakeholders, it creates a connection to the brand and builds trust.

The Difference Between Internal and External Communications

It’s right in the names, you don’t need to look any further than that. An effective communication strategy encompasses both internal and external communication, each serving a different purpose and audience, one more internal, and one more external. 

Internal Communication

Internal communication refers to the exchange of information within an organization, primarily directed at employees and internal stakeholders. It focuses on creating a sense of unity and ensuring that everyone is informed about company goals, policies, updates, and initiatives. The objectives of internal communication often include improving employee engagement, facilitating collaboration, and aligning employees with the organization’s mission and values.

Examples of Internal Communication:

– Top-down communication: Leadership communicates important messages to employees, such as new policies or strategic decisions.

– Bottom-up communication: Employees provide feedback, share ideas, or report issues to leadership.

– Peer-to-peer communication: Colleagues exchange information and collaborate on projects.

External Communication

External communication, on the other hand, refers to the way an organization communicates with individuals outside the company, such as customers, partners, investors, or the public. The primary objective of external communication is to build and maintain relationships, promote the brand, and ensure that the company’s message is effectively conveyed to its audience.

Examples of External Communication:

– Marketing campaigns: Promoting products or services through advertisements, social media, or email marketing.

– Public relations: Managing the organization’s image through press releases, interviews, and media relations.

– Customer communication: Providing customer support or sharing product updates via email, chat, or phone.

Measuring the Success of a Communication Strategies

It’s simply a fact: no communication strategy is complete without a way to measure its effectiveness. By setting clear Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and tracking the right metrics, organizations can evaluate whether their strategic communication efforts are achieving the desired results.

1. Engagement Metrics

One of the key indicators of strategic communication success is engagement. For internal communication, this could mean tracking how many employees opened a newsletter, attended a company meeting, or participated in a survey. For external communication, engagement metrics may include social media likes, shares, comments, or email open rates.

2. Message Reach

Message reach is another critical metric. It shows how many people received the message and how effectively it was distributed. For internal communications, this could involve tracking which employees accessed important announcements. For external communication, it could be measured by website traffic, media coverage, or social media reach.

3. Feedback and Sentiment

Obtaining feedback from your audience is a valuable way to gauge the impact of your strategic communication. Internally, feedback can come in the form of employee surveys, pulse checks, or suggestion boxes. Externally, feedback may come through customer surveys, reviews, or social media comments. Sentiment analysis helps determine the overall mood of the audience in response to your message.

Communicating with Sociabble: The Modern Communication Solution

To fully realize the potential of a communication strategy, modern tools are essential. Sociabble is one such platform designed to enhance both internal communication and employee advocacy.

1. Unified Multi-Channel Communication

Sociabble offers a unified and strategic communication solution that integrates various channels such as newsletters, mobile app, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and even digital signage. This ensures that business communications are delivered through the most appropriate medium, making it easier to reach both deskless and office-based workers.

2. Engagement Framework

The platform includes a sophisticated engagement framework with features like badges, leaderboards, challenges, and peer-to-peer recognition. This fosters an engaging and interactive communication environment, motivating employees to stay informed and participate in company initiatives.

3. GDPR-Compliant and Secure

Data privacy is a top concern for many organizations, particularly those operating in Europe. Sociabble is fully GDPR-compliant and offers a secure communication environment, ensuring that all corporate and employee data is protected.

4. AI-Powered Content Creation and Moderation

Sociabble also leverages AI to assist in content creation and moderation, helping business communications teams generate and review content more efficiently. AI tools can help optimize messaging, ensuring that it aligns with company guidelines and resonates with the target audience.

Case Study: The Communication Strategy of Expereo

Expereo, a global leader in internet connectivity, is transforming the field of business digitalization. Serving 60% of Fortune 500 companies, Expereo ensures reliable and secure connectivity. With over 550 employees spread across six continents, Expereo stands out with its unique solution, Expereo One, offering an unparalleled customer experience. Faced with the transition from a wholesale model to a direct approach, Expereo encountered internal and external communication challenges. However, thanks to Sociabble, Expereo overcame these obstacles, transforming its communication and reinforcing its position as a leader in intelligent connectivity solutions.

The Challenges

With the shift from a wholesale to a direct-to-enterprise sales model, Expereo faced a significant challenge in strategic planning: effectively repositioning its brand in a complex ecosystem, while gaining a competitive advantage. This change not only required redefining Expereo’s market approach but also clearly communicating this transformation to its current and potential clients.

The objective was twofold: maintaining strong relationships with wholesale partners while building a robust reputation directly with global enterprises. This transition demanded an external communication strategy capable of reflecting Expereo’s new strategic communications direction while highlighting its unique ability to deliver tailored and innovative connectivity solutions.

The Solutions

To address Expereo’s communication challenges, Sociabble emerged as a key partner, providing both a robust technological solution and tailored strategic support. According to Emily Pearce, “Thanks to Sociabble, Expereo has been able to transform its communication approach, both internally and externally, leveraging innovative features and a well-defined strategy.” Sociabble provided:

The use of Sociabble to disseminate videos and messages from top management has been crucial in making leadership more accessible and visible. With video integration, Sociabble enables the direct publication of videos on the platform, ensuring that all employees, regardless of their location, can access strategic communications from top management

To promote user-generated content (UGC) and encourage engagement, Sociabble offers thematic communication channels. For instance, the “Life at Expereo” channel allows employees to share their personal and professional experiences, enhancing their sense of belonging.

The development of a culture of social sharing has been facilitated by Sociabble at Expereo, with campaigns like “Faster to Our Followers” aimed at rapidly increasing the number of followers on Expereo’s official account within weeks. Sociabble integrates social sharing along with numerous advanced engagement and planning capabilities.

To better inform employees about Expereo’s products and services, Sociabble enables the creation of product information campaigns with rich multimedia content (native PDF viewer, chaptered videos with automatic translation, audio podcast player). Additionally, RSS integration automatically disseminates the latest news and product updates, ensuring employees stay informed about market developments

The Results

The implementation of Sociabble at Expereo has generated significant and measurable results, fundamentally transforming the company’s internal and external communication.

As Emily Pearce explains, “Sociabble achieved a 70% adoption rate in just two weeks, surpassing initial expectations.” Monthly engagement has stabilized around 80%, with peaks during specific campaigns such as “Customer Service Week” and “Ready to Give Thanks.”

The employee advocacy campaigns, such as “Faster to Our Followers,” significantly increased Expereo’s visibility on social media. Within 19 days, Expereo achieved its monthly goal for new LinkedIn followers, showcasing the effectiveness of the content sharing strategy.

The reward badge program has encouraged employee engagement, with 10% of employees receiving badges each month. In December, this figure rose to 44% thanks to specific campaigns.

Collectively, these strategic communications results served to boost both internal and external comms at Expereo, while increasing key metrics like engagement and social media followers. All thanks to combining a strong communications strategy with the right digital tools. 

Conclusion: Strategic Communications Are Made Easy and Effective with Sociabble 

So what is a communication strategy? Hopefully this article has helped answer that question. However, creating and implementing a powerful communications strategy is not without potential hurdles and challenges, even when you understand how one works. Fortunately, the Sociabble platform is designed to address all the challenges discussed in this article and more. With its many dedicated features, it strengthens companies’ internal and external communication strategies to improve employee engagement. We’ve already partnered with global leaders like Coca-Cola CCEP, L’Occitane en Provence, Expereo, and AXA, and we would be delighted to discuss how we can help your company, too. Request your free personalized demo today and discover how Sociabble can revolutionize your strategic communications. See you soon!