4 SIMPLE TOOLS FOR MORE EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
If you believe in who you are and what you do, you’re eager to share that. In this article, we offer four simple communication tools that will help you increase your visibility.
Anyone can apply the four communication tools described below: whether you are self-employed, an artist or a passionate hobbyist, whether you have your own company or want to take new steps in your career. Learn how to share your product or story effectively and efficiently – with the right people and in the right way.
1. Strategy
If you’re self-employed, or your company doesn’t have a communication specialist, the concept of ‘communication strategy’ may sound a little fancy to you. However, a clear communication strategy can drastically improve your results. It will give you a clear view of:
- Your target group(s)
- The primary and secondary messages you want to convey
- The best media to use, for example, a video or animation, a YouTube channel, a social media campaign, a website, or a series of folders
- And the required content
Your strategy should also include a budget and a timeline, so that you know what needs to happen when, and how much money and other resources you need to put aside for it. Several of our customers have discovered that even with a simple, well-thought-out communication strategy, laid out on one or just a few A4 pages, they can tell their story much more effectively. A good strategy helps you engage a lot better with customers or target groups than communicating randomly.
2. Resources
Part of the strategy is choosing the most effective communication resources. For example, you may have a website, but do its contents and appearance match your strategy? Does your message come across clearly? And have you thought about the various different forms of communication you can use on your website? Formats like client testimonials or quotes, user cases, an animated video that gives a quick‘n’easy explanation of your concept, or good photos of your projects. Do you have a brochure or flyers that you can distribute at trade fairs or during visits?
Then there’s your pitch. Can you verbally convey in a few sentences what you have to offer, for whom and why it matters? Or do you still need to work on your pitch? Don’t be afraid to ask for help in choosing and creating the right resources for the right message and target group. Your visibility and results will increase considerably.
3. Content calendar
With a content calendar, you plan content creation and publication in advance – for example, for six months, or a year. A calendar is a huge help to content creators, like our team here at rebelieve. It enables us to prioritize, schedule and properly develop projects rather than having to come up with last-minute solutions and quick fixes. Of course, a calendar also has strong advantages for your own company or project:
- You have a clear overview of what needs to be done to get your communication on track;
- You can spread out the necessary content creation, spreading the cost and the stress, while systematically building up a complete, coherent content package;
- You have up-to-date, ready-to-go content for important decisive moments with customers, for example at the time of a trade show, a product launch, a date on which new regulations enter into force, or the date of a TV broadcast or event that is important to your customers.
Want to find out more? Take a look at this article with explanations and examples.
4. Social media scan & plan
Many freelancers and small companies use social media without having a real plan. At rebelieve, we’ve discovered that a short analysis of your social media activities can quickly lead to very strong recommendations for improvement. A simple example: ensure a more constant stream of Facebook posts, rather than posting two in one week and none in the following six weeks. Or: focus on managing two social media channels well and, for now, ignore the others, which you hardly use anyway. Or: encourage your colleagues and employees to be more active in sharing posts about your company.
This kind of ‘Quick Scan’ is easy and quick to carry out, and doesn’t have to cost much – especially if you involve rebelieve team members who breathe social media. Yet the insights that flow from it can lead to significant improvements in your visibility and findability on social media and the Internet.
After a Quick Scan, we can put together a social media plan in a few short steps: which channels will we use for which target group and messages, which channels will we lay aside, what do we want to achieve exactly, and how can we measure that, which tone and minimal frequency are necessary for this? You can put together this kind of social media plan for a six-month period or a year. Even better: outsource the content production at a fixed price and link it to your content calendar – then you can sit back and enjoy the certainty that your story or product is being heard, seen and/or read about when and where it matters.
Eager to become more visible, but in need of advice on how to do it? Don’t hesitate to contact us