Corporate communications is about more than just marketing.
Externally, it’s about solidifying your brand’s reputation, resolving PR issues, maintaining consistency and clarity throughout messaging, and more.
Internal communication includes how you communicate with your team members, provide company updates, and deliver product and skills training.
With so many different contexts to consider and balance together, you might not be surprised to hear that most companies need a little help improving their corporate communications.
Let’s explore some common corporate communications issues, learn how to craft impactful communications with your teams, and discover three recommended workplace tools that can enhance your internal and external communications.
Common corporate communication issues
Most companies don’t have a dedicated corporate communications team, corporate communications leader, or even an established policy.
Whether or not there’s a corporate communications leader or policy in place, all companies are communicating, internally with their employees and externally with their customers. If they don’t maintain communication standards or uphold best practices, problems arise. Here are some of the most common problems:
Lack of clarity and consistency in messaging: Employees have different communication styles and interpretations of their company’s core value propositions. This is especially relevant for external communications, where your customers might receive mixed messaging or experience a bumpy customer journey.
Internal corporate communications inefficiencies: Many companies are still adjusting to remote and hybrid work settings and dealing with the obstacles that come with managing distributed teams. All-hands Zoom meetings or relentless Slack notifications can distract your teams from deep work.
Corporate comms clearly need a 2024 refresher. Let’s explore how to accomplish that.
How to make corporate communications more impactful everywhere
Here are a few strategies you can apply to both internal and external communications.
Establish clear communication objectives
What exactly are you hoping to achieve with your corporate communications strategy?
External marketing communications objectives might be to grow brand awareness, improve customer connection, or drive more leads into your sales funnel.
Internally, your goal might be to improve the link between your human resources department and frontline workers, to lift engagement with internal memos, or to distribute crucial information while reducing meetings.
Document your communication objectives and ensure they’re accessible to all relevant stakeholders.
Pro tip: Engage your stakeholders early in the goal-setting process to establish buy-in. They’ll be more likely to uphold an objective if it includes their input and ideas.
Understand your audience
Make it a standard practice to ask yourself this question before developing any piece of corporate communications:
Who is my target audience for this communication?
It's rare that a piece of communication addresses the general public. Even something as far-reaching as a PR announcement should target a specific reader, like a potential investor or a future customer.
To dig a little deeper, focus on the answers to these questions that concern your target audience:
What does this person care about?
How do they like to absorb information?
What tone of voice do they typically communicate in?
How have they engaged with other communications from your brand?
Then, use those answers to inform your communications.
You might, for example, choose to deliver your content in a video rather than written messaging, knowing that video is a preference for your intended viewer. Conducting additional research into the optimal video length for your audience can also increase completion and click-through rates.
Craft consistent brand messaging
Brand standards are a critical part of your communications plan.
They empower every person on your team, be they marketers, customer support reps, or a founder seeking funding, to maintain a consistent corporate identity in their messaging.
Design a brief, accessible style guide, like this one from Uber, to help your teams adhere to messaging guidelines:
Clarify gray areas and reduce misinterpretation by including some “this, not that” examples in your guide.
This one from ViceVersa is another great example. It explains how to use the company’s style preferences in a specific context:
Use social media for audience engagement
Social media can be either a valuable tool for your company or a considerable liability depending on your communication plan.
Many companies fail to define their strategy. They post on social media but don’t have a distinct voice or a clear vision for these initiatives to engage external audiences.
Instead of using social media as a one-way messaging channel aimed at your customers, focus on nurturing two-way engagement to strengthen your customer-brand relationship.
Here are a couple of strategies to try out:
Contribute to the conversation. Jump into relevant group discussions, answer questions, and share resources. You will build rapport and establish brand credibility.
Be a little curious. Run polls and ask questions to learn more about your audience. Use the answers to improve your future messaging and demonstrate sincerity to your customers.
With the right tools, such as a company intranet, you can also nurture bi-directional social engagement with your employees. And when your employees and customers feel more connected to your brand, mission, or conversations, they share in your success.
Be a human
Corporate communications often feel just a little too, well, corporate.
People are the foundation of your business. Your messaging will connect better with your employees if they come from a real-life human, and the same goes for your customers.
Video creation tools like Loom can help you add that human touch.
Don’t break your back or your budget going after that perfect filmed-in-studio feel.
Your CEO can use Loom to shoot a quick video sharing your next company announcement. Or, get one of your sales reps to make a five-minute sales video to replace that over-produced product demo video.
The role of tech: 3 corporate communications tools to try
No conversation on corporate communications in 2024 and beyond is complete without at least a brief mention of the role of technology.
Today’s world of work is packed with communications tools, from workplace chat solutions like Slack and Microsoft Teams to social media management platforms like Sprout Social and Buffer.
The three corporate communications tools below offer a unique take on both internal and external organizational communication.
1. Loom
Loom is an AI-powered video recording solution and the perfect companion for corporate communications campaigns.
Whether you’re looking to replace in-person meetings with asynchronous communication or fuel your marketing strategy with contextual, video-driven customer communications, Loom has something for you.
Loom can help you drive team alignment by sharing business updates via video and encouraging engagement through comments, reactions, and emojis.
Marketing teams can use Loom to announce product launches and produce customer-led demo videos, while support teams can deliver hands-on, customized customer service with personalized video walk-throughs.
Oh, and Loom has recently introduced a host of new features to help make video creation easy, like:
Live Rewind: Make a mistake mid-recording? Don’t start from scratch. Just rewind and pick up where you left off.
AI Editing Suite: Automatically cut out awkward silences and filler words, or generate summaries and CTAs that are always contextual to the video you've just recorded.
Edit by Transcript. Find the precise spot you need to trim by searching the video transcript.
AI workflows. Cut down on manual work and publish comms faster with powerful AI features like instant text document creation and automatically drafted sharing messages.
2. Workvivo
Workvivo is an employee communication app equipped with tools for all kinds of workplace communication.
Engagement is the name of the game with Workvivo. It offers interesting and unique features like:
Workplace chat functionality, like Slack
The ability to publish news and articles, create internal landing pages, and manage a workplace wiki
Gamification functionality such as badges and awards
Content analytics to optimize your corporate communications strategy
There are also engagement features like surveys and polls, plus a host of reporting and analytics functions. You can even see which individuals interact most with the platform.
3. Birdeye
Birdeye is a review management and messaging platform.
It’s specifically designed for handling public relations. But rather than focusing on crisis communication, it takes a more positive approach.
Birdeye helps businesses expand their presence and visibility on Google and other local listings and collect positive reviews from happy customers.
You can sync Birdeye with your CRM to automatically trigger review requests at the right time, and even generate automated review replies with AI to save time and improve engagement with customers.
Nurture strong relationships internally and externally with Loom
Creating long-lasting relationships with your employees and customers boils down to effective communication.
A focus on developing strong communication skills is important, as is a clear understanding of your objectives when crafting any piece of communication, be it a press release or a simple team update.
Loom’s screen recorder can also be a powerful companion to help you convey your messaging in a virtual world, taking advantage of visual communication cues like gestures and facial expressions.
Loom comes packed with numerous features to make video production and distribution easy. Use Live Rewind, AI-powered editing, and automated share links to accelerate your communication process and deliver consistent messaging to your customers and internal teams.
