What is Strategic Communication? Definition of Strategic Communication, Strategic Communication Meaning and Concept

Strategic communication is a way of managing the intangibles of the organization, incorporating elements of communication as part of the strategy.

All for-profit and non-profit companies and organizations have intangible assets, which make them recognized by their employees and the community. They are also known as stakeholders.

Thus, building a corporate image is essential, because that could affect the business model itself , favoring it if it performs good actions, or harming it if it does not.

Keys to strategic communication

But what are communication assets or intangibles?

As each company grows and takes a position in the market, it needs to build its communication assets and also align them with its business strategy.

Some of them are:

• Branding : Everything that marketing and sales cannot achieve with their actions, branding must do. Building a brand capable of being recognized by consumers and, at the same time, valued. To do this, you must know, what value do we want people to link to our brand?
• Positioning: No company is born being the market leader and this transit requires efforts that make it acquire a better position. Here the actions of branding, marketing and sales converge , with the objective that people give greater weight to the performance of the brand and express it through their preference and perception.
• Corporate Social Responsibility : Everything that the company does has an impact on its environment and that, together with being previously evaluated, must be taken care of by the company. In order to do so, build processes that better link the brand with the territory where it is located. The construction of these actions with the community will make it value it better and contribute to the social sustainability of the company.
• Digital transformation : Being at the forefront of new digital trends is part of managing communicational intangibles. Therefore, it is important to know how these new channels and ways of communicating can help the company establish better relationships with people and its customers.
• Organizational communication : Communication processes within the organization are key for employees to handle the same version of the information and thus not be exposed to interpretations due to lack of clarity in it. This improves work environments and affects other important processes, such as operations, administration and of course, commercial areas.
• Transparency: Access to information by the community is highly valued. Consequently, sharing memories, historical information, actions of the company or, carrying out open recruitment processes, are aspects that make people have an interest in knowing more about it.

Communication as part of the strategy

Integrating communication as part of strategy means not just thinking about performance indicators for operations, sales, marketing, and administration. It means including the communicational performance of the company throughout the production process.

For this, it is important that within the objectives of the strategy there is one related to communications and ask how does the community see my brand? Or, how do collaborators speak out about my brand?

All of this is important, because if any of these questions have negative answers, it will impact in one way or another on the performance and credibility of the organization. Therefore, it must be managed.

Integrating communication as part of the strategy also requires quantitative and qualitative indicators, which allow analyzing the behavior of the organization and the responses of people to the communication actions carried out by the company.

Importantly, building a brand reputation takes time, but one misstep and poor communication action could bring down everything that was built in a minute. That is why it is important that values ​​are transmitted and the company's organizational culture be seen.

Crisis and strategic communication

At some point, companies are faced with crises and the difference in how they will solve them will depend on how prepared they are for it.

At this point, the essential thing is to get ahead of possible crisis scenarios that could affect the organization from the community. From clients, collaborators, competitors and even the media. In this sense, it is essential to have an action plan for these scenarios.

When, for example, a company is questioned by the media, due to a complaint made by a client, keeping silence is the worst option, because it is opening up space for speculation and amplification of the news, an issue that will quickly affect to the reputation of the brand.

Therefore, immediately going out to face the situation, giving the explanations of the case, offering apologies, assuming errors and executing actions to amend, are highly valued behaviors by people. Which could come to understand that brands are managed by people and that there are unintentional errors that can occur.

Strategic communication is an area that must be aware of everything that happens in the organization. It must be aware of its processes and its actions, advising and building together how to establish the best relationships with people, not necessarily with a commercial purpose, but as a human meaning. A human meaning that links the values ​​of the company, with the way it communicates with its entire environment. But always, as part of the strategy.