I have decided, with encouragement by Very Smart People, to lay down my fundamentals for professional communicators. After <redacted> years in the industry, I find it helpful to myself- and I hope others will find it helpful also- to create a summary of my vision of a career in the field.
The first part of this exercise is to define those elements, compiled based on my experience. The next is to go into detail on each of those elements. This series of blog post, starting here, will find a more permanent home as a resource on this site. This, then, is the opening statement for a series of individual examinations of the fundamental elements of a communications career.
My work experience covering journalism, public relations, marketing, social media, and content strategy and marketing has been more than enough to get a well-rounded view of the different ways communications skills apply to different situations.
The overarching theme sounds like a trite buzzword, and it has its own place in the list of fundamentals, but I use it anyway: storytelling. The word does not mean some soft, magical BS where you dream up creative narratives and everyone magically loves you. It does mean working with the information you have to create a plain, comprehensive-yet-comprehensible narrative that drives people to take an action. If that action is not something that means your/your boss’/your client’s business goals, you will not keep your business/job/client. That said, there are many elements to keep in mind throughout a career in communications; I outline these below, and will address them in more detail in further articles:
- Strategy
- I lean hard on storytelling as the base of my profession, but the stories we create serve us better when use strategy as a foundation. Strategy- content strategy, marketing strategy, communications strategy, all informed by and serving business strategy – is a narrative in itself. This is from where writing skills, smarts, client relations, analytics, team development and the other core pillars grow. I also bring this topic out as a reminder that as important as tactics are, and as easy as it is to rely blindly on tactics– strategy is the driving force.
- Ethics
- The decision to represent for-profit companies vs creating journalistic content does not bring with it the abdication of ethics. If anything, the responsibility to behave ethically as a biased representative is even more critical. Legal obligations are merely table stakes, while elements as broad as proper disclosure (especially since social media gained prominence) and as small as delivering on promises (materials, executive availability, et al). Ethics is not merely about obligation, but about building and maintaining trust among all audiences, internal and external.
- Writing
- You cannot communicate without a strong grasp of proper writing skills. Writing proficiency is how, for example, a journalist can transition to public relations and related jobs. If you cannot write, you cannot communicate. It’s not that simple, surely, and there are many kinds of writing, but it all springs from a grasp of fundamentals. Ideally, you learn these fundamentals early in life and exercise them frequently thereafter.
- Storytelling
- Again, I cling to this buzzword defiantly. Being able to boil complex ideas into digestible narratives is how you move people to action- whether that action is a changed sentiment or opinion, a better-informed audience (covering journalism’s role in this whole smorgasbord), a website visit, a petition or a sale. Also, one’s ability to look at a high level at how words (Writing) form a narrative and knowing the audience for whom you create the content is essential. For journalists and other professional writers, the story is the product; but that does not make it less important elsewhere.
- Client and
Team Management
- Whether you work in an agency setting or in-house, you have clients, and you have teams. The ability to communicate expectations, process, progress and results is paramount to any job in the field, and the ability to grow teams and programs is a solemn responsibility. You may do your job well, but if you can’t communicate how you’re going about it, you won’t get far. If you can’t bring up others, they won’t go far and can’t help you. You must be able to advocate for your ideas and programs and be able to counsel and mentor junior colleagues. You can- and should- use your position responsibly, to grow the careers of others and to build and advocate for inclusion in an industry that does not always reflect diversity (diversity could have its own series of posts, and perhaps will).
- Media
- I talk about writing, but one must at least have an awareness of multiple media platforms. “Social media” in general is an easy target – especially to someone like me who had a lot of fun on the front lines of early social media adoption- but more to the point, one must acknowledge the need to interpret narratives in visual, audio and interactive formats. How do we translate basic writing and storytelling skills across media and platforms?
- Analytics
- There are lots of analytics “gurus” out there, but even if you are not a data scientist (or whatever grotesque title one might apply to such a person these days), you must have a basic knowledge of measurement- figuring out what to measure, the tools you need, and who can help you. There are ways to get started – best to start at the end, with business goals – and work back from there, and let whatever level of complexity you bring to your analytics program serve that master. If you are not measuring your results, your program may not fit.
Next: A look at strategy, and how to move from a tactical mindset to looking at the bigger picture.
When? When I write it.
Please share your comments on this opening piece below.