The world we live in is changing at an unprecedented rate: Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and the Internet of Things are transforming our economy and society; renewable energy is gaining momentum; and millions of people are calling for a better way of doing business.
All of this means that businesses have a number of communications challenges. This episode highlights the unique opportunities and challenges faced by communicators in terms of skills and how communications professionals can help businesses with their internal and external comms in 2022 and beyond.
What to do next:
Get my FREE roadmap to get more strategic with communication activity in your business (also here: https://bit.ly/SevenSteps2Success )
Full transcription (unedited)
Typically writing is seen as an essential skill in PR or Comms but the landscape is changing.
There are many drivers to succeed in a communications role in a growing and thriving business. I wanted to explore some of those key qualities for 2022, and how they have changed over the years. This is so that anyone listening can look at gaps they may have or areas they may want to explore. Or you can make sure if you’re hiring either for a role or consultant support that you know what skills you are looking for and why these skills will benefit your business..
This is a really exciting time to be in communications. Just as our profession has evolved exponentially over the past few decades, 2022 and the next five years will bring with them an entirely new set of opportunities, challenges and experiences.
Why? the world we live in is changing at an unprecedented rate: artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the Internet of Things are transforming our economy and society; renewable energy is gaining momentum; and millions of people are calling for a better way of doing business.
This all means that businesses have a number of communications challenges. This podcast highlights the unique opportunities and challenges faced by communicators in termsof skills and how communications professionals can help companies with their internal and external comms in 2022 and beyond.
Let’s dive in!
I so often hear that PRs and comms people are the ‘wordsmiths’ and whilst that largely remains true there are core skills and attributes that are now considered essential on top of writing. Especially given the breadth of roles that the two job types can cover. Everything from internal comms to government relations or media relations and campaigns. It is also no longer enough to just be good at writing.
So what is on my list?
Listen hard and write fast was one of the early pieces of advice given to me in my first job and it’s stuck.
Listening skills are not just common sense
They are essential for the success of people in a connected world. We have never been more connected in our daily lives: our lives are increasingly intertwined with the lives of others; we can use our smartphones to understand people’s thoughts, feelings and emotions; and our lives are increasingly dominated by social media.
If we cannot listen well, we cannot absorb information and do anything with it. Listening helps us to understand and listening is learning without speaking. It is not waiting to speak.
In a world of smartphones and apps and continual media infiltration, we are listening all the time, but it is a skills to be able to listen hard and write fast. It was, in fact one of the early pieces of advice given to me in my first job and it stuck.
So what is considered essential by my podcast guests?
I’ve spoken to some respected professionals on the podcast this last year and we talked about skills a lot.
Empathy has come up on list more than once.
Both when planning hybrid events, to defying corporate purpose and also writing for investors, as well as strategic internal communications.
Empathy is a feeling of connectedness, sympathy, or sympathy with a person or thing other than the self that can be a powerful force in social relationships. It can be an important tool for communicators to use and influence others. However, empathy can also be a dangerous force if used without understanding the complexities of the situation.
I believe that people need to have the ability to empathise with others. Empathy is the ability to understand and relate to another person – it helps us create common ground, and allows us to experience and understand their emotions, thoughts, ideas and feelings. This means that communications professionals will need to be able to understand and connect with others in a way that helps them understand what they are feeling and thinking. Both audiences and our customers or stakeholders.
What about the core skill of writing?
Writing has never been more important for communications professionals. It is the way ideas are expressed that matters, and writing is an art and craft that takes time to develop.
The digital and social spheres are now dominating the communication landscape. A person’s communication skills in the digital era are often what sets them apart from their competitors, and whether they are using the written word, film, graphics, video or a combination of all three, writing copy to support this is a skill that is important for all communicators.
I’ll wager most comms pros will be good at writing and better than non-comms colleagues. But, it’s not the entire job if you are part of a wider team or you are supporting a growing business ad you are chief cook and bottle washer carrying out a number of roles. I know some great writers and would not class myself in their league for example, but I can write.
A little poll on LinkedIn before this episode also confirmed the large majority still see i as the no.1 skill.
But, so lots of people can write now. So how exclusive is it to the comms pro?
Automation and ai is changing how content is sourced and created. Apps like jarvis and if you’re in PR there’s AI that can help you with research for pitch strategies to journalist undermining that old need for a little black book.
Content generators make it possible for you to type a prompt and the machine to understand it. Then, the machine uses all the data available to it (often, billions of online articles) to generate content on your preferred topic.
This is original content that a machine creates using what it’s learned from online articles. The machine is not scraping pieces of existing content.
There are lots now on the market. Just google content creators to see. And this is growing. But there is still lots of skepticism around how google interprets the information and how ethical it is etc etc.
Human instruction, sensitivity and emotional interpretation, humor will always be needed in writing content, but the job can largely be carried out by a machine or technology.
And it is going to increase and, therefore, good, strong writing experts will either become like gold dust or become largely redundant. Let’s see.
The next one on my list is project management or the ability to plan effectively.
Now I am not talking about writing a to do list and ticking it off as you go.
I’m talking about the ability to prioritise, evaluate and make decisions in order to plan your comms effectively.
Planning and prioritisation are two of the most important skills for any professional, but particularly so for communications professionals.
Why? because communicators need to be able to plan and manage their workloads in order to ensure that they are able to deliver on their promises and meet their goals. They need to be able to identify their key priorities and ensure that they have the right tools, resources and people in place to deliver on those priorities. They also need to be able to proactively manage their time and energy in order to ensure that they have the capacity and bandwidth to deliver on their key priorities.
Planning and prioritising your time is an essential part of being a good communicator. Many people think that they can multitask and get things done, but this isn’t the case. The ability to focus on one thing at a time is essential to being a good communicator, and the ability to manage your time is one of the most important skills that you can develop.
Luckily there are lots of tools than can help you both digitally and journals. I use the productivity planner to plan the work I want to get done, and to plan out my week. It’s an easy to use time-tracking tool that can help you keep on top of your daily tasks and your monthly or annual goals.
One of the most important skills for communicators is the ability to identify their most important tasks and to focus on those. This isn’t easy, particularly if you’re a natural multi-tasker. The most important thing for communicators is to identify their key priorities and to focus on those. They need to identify the tasks that are most important for them to get done, and to make sure that they allocate sufficient time and energy to getting those tasks completed.
I also use the Most Important Task method. The idea is to identify the one thing that is most important to you at the moment, and to make sure that you are fully focused on that. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do other things, but that you should make sure that you are fully focused on the one thing that is most important to you at the moment. This will allow you to deliver on your key priorities, and to manage your time and energy more effectively.
Finally, I am adding data analysis and research skills.
Data analysis is an essential part of being a professional communicator. It allows you to identify patterns and trends, which in turn helps you to better understand your audience and to create the right content and messages. It also helps you to better identify the most important issues and topics that your audience are concerned about, which in turn allows you to create more relevant and impactful content.
You need to be able to analyse data in order to determine what stories are resonating with your audience, what stories are getting the greatest response and which stories are having the greatest impact. This means that you need to be able to understand what data looks like, and to be able to use that data to determine where your efforts are having the greatest impact.
As a professional communicator it’s also important to be able to conduct thorough research. It allows you to identify patterns and trends, which in turn helps you to better understand your audience and to create the right content and messages. It also helps you to better identify the most important issues and topics that your audience are concerned about, which in turn allows you to create more relevant and impactful content.
What skills would you add?