Jerome Bloch (360crossmedia): Communication is not a game of perfect!
The age of hyper-communication is also the age of bullshit raised to the highest standards! Many companies are confused by the noise they witness on social networks and in the press. In this article, Jerome Bloch, CEO of 360Crossmedia explains how every company can easily set up an efficient communication strategy, whatever its size.
The virtues of presence
Serious people are rightly obsessed with relevance. Why should they publish an article if they don’t have something really interesting and new to say? The answer is simple: communication is like a war. Losing battles often results in financial or reputational losses. And just like in a war, you cannot prevail unless you have a calculated presence on the field. The myth of clean wars fought in the distance, with drones and targeted attacks avoiding any collateral damage, vanished long before US troops left Afghanistan. It is therefore very important to maintain a presence on social media, in the press and inside your protected circles: with clients and employees. This is true for a company of any size. What will change is the periodicity: big companies and retail businesses will communicate every day, while SMEs may opt to execute a plan publishing monthly or quarterly. And companies that do not need to communicate – there are many of these! - should publish an article at least every six months, as a vaccine against any smear campaign and as a way to boost their brand as an employer of choice.
“Communication is like a war: you cannot prevail unless you have a calculated presence on the field.”
The relevance conundrum
Once presence is established, relevance becomes key. The danger here is to over-engineer articles to the point where they become hard to understand and, often, to the extent that they are never published. As the title of this article indicates, always keep in mind that communication is not a game of perfect! First of all, very few people will read your article, unless you write for the FT or The Economist! Most of the time, people will only read the titles and the start of the answers. Secondly, keep in mind that publications are not produced to explain the complexity of your expertise: to the contrary, they should demonstrate how you can solve problems related to highly complex issues in total simplicity. Finally, remember that everyone – like you – is bombarded by content on a daily basis and forgets fast. So, you can publish an article today, check how people react and update it. You can also republish it in a whole new context: integrating new developments of a law, improving the title, changing the photo. In short, get things done, and when they are done, start improving them!
"LinkedIn is just as amazing as Google when you know what you are looking for!"
Cristal clear strategies
During my 360Masterclass, “Boost your growth with LinkedIn”, people are often surprised when they hear that despite my 29k+ connections, I spend a maximum of ten minutes per day on this app. This is simply an example of cristal clear strategy. I have a business to run from 6 am to 6 pm, and looking at the LinkedIn wall often makes me feel dizzy. I just don’t have time to waste surfing the app, hoping to bump into something interesting. I am still a huge fan of the app as a way to collect information in a highly targeted and contextualised way, whenever I need it: LinkedIn is just as amazing as Google when you know what you are looking for! It is also great to publish videos that I can record in 5 minutes on my www.360-box.com. So, just like me, I encourage you to set up a strategy that works for you. Social networks, press, newsletters, websites: it has never been easier to communicate for free. The key, as in any digital tool – and in any war!- is to get active, analyse, adapt, perfect. Relentlessly. Get things done.
Chief Operating Officer and CSR Manager
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