We are increasingly seeing a blurring of the lines between the two types of communications and many organizations are seeing the value of aligning them. But what’s involved in developing a single tone of voice, and how can tools like VT Writer help businesses to align their communication strategy as they look to ensure a positive employee and customer experience?
What is the definition of business communication?
Business communication is defined as the sharing of information between people within and outside of an organization. Good business communication affects every layer of a business, from how tasks are assigned to employees to how an organization handles customer feedback.
Generally, business communications comprises both internal and external communications. Up until a few years ago, there was a clear distinction between the two different types of business communication. Internal communications tended to have an informal tone, while external communications maintained a formal tone. Likewise, the language used differed between the two types of communication. Internal communication is aimed at an internal workforce so the language is more familiar, while external communications are speaking to a wider group and so the language is generally more official.
What is internal communication?
Internal communication is the communication within an organization. Its main purpose is the exchange of information between departments, business units, and divisions. This information can take many forms – company updates, messages from the C-suite, relevant news, and day-to-day facts. Internal communication is typically pushed out via email, memos, video or conference calls, Intranets, internal social networks or collaboration platforms, and internal newsletters. Most large organizations will have a dedicated internal communications team, and in other organizations, this information may be communicated by the HR department.
What is external communication?
External communication is how an organization communicates with its customers mainly, but also its partners and suppliers and other stakeholders. The objective of external communication is to inform customers and build relationships with them with a view to inspiring loyalty. External communication varies greatly and can include advertisements, press releases, website, social media posts, customer newsletter, and sales or service calls. Most large organizations will have PR and marketing departments and will often have digital media units responsible for online and social media communications.
What are the benefits of aligning communications?
Today, there’s a growing school of thought that internal and external communications should be unified under a single message. The lines have blurred between these two forms of business communications. The external message, so often seen as completely separate to the inside purpose, needs to reflect your internal company culture. If your external messaging is completely different to the experience within your organization there is confusion and likely employee disengagement. A style guide can be a great asset for aligning organizational communications and creating positive customer experiences with your company.
So what are the benefits of aligning your internal and external communication strategy?
- Increase revenues: a consistent brand message translates to better sales outcomes
- Enhance the authenticity of your brand: you are what you say you are
- Boost productivity: your employees are better connected to your organization’s purpose
- Increase efficiencies: you can reduce confusion and wasted time with a single unified message
- Retain staff: workers are more engaged with your organization
- Attract new staff: recruit workers that align with your organization’s values
- Improve the customer experience: customers are clear about your values and purpose
- Create employee brand ambassadors: an aligned communications strategy can help turn your workers into champions for your brand across social media
Ten steps to align your communication strategy
Aligning your business communications will take time. It’s not a project that should be rushed. Partnerships will need to be created, buy-in sought, and research conducted, not to mention an ongoing education program, which will be crucial to the success of the project.
Here are the 10 steps towards aligning your internal and external communications.
1. Establish a partnership between your marketing and HR teams
Your marketing and HR departments are uniquely placed to help develop a cohesive communication strategy. By blending their expertise and understanding of both types of business communication, they can assess how internal and external communications can be aligned. Not only do they understand the types of communication, they know the target audience and can take those initial steps towards creating an overarching tone of voice for all communications.
2. Get executive buy-in
For any large project to work it’s important to gain senior-level sponsorship from the beginning. Your newly-created business communications partnership of marketing and HR should outline the plan, its objectives and benefits, and the delivery roadmap to senior executives. Without executive buy-in, a project like this will ultimately fail, so it will be important to have a solid strategy in place.
3. Check the pulse of your organization
Find out what the staff at your organization think of your brand and how it’s portrayed externally, and whether that portrayal lines up with the internal perspective. Your workforce will be a valuable resource as you unify your message and align your communications. Their understanding of your brand values and purpose will help to guide you as you develop a singular communications strategy. It’s also important to get them on board with the changes you’re making. After all, they will be your key content creators.
4. Understand the difference between the internal and external audiences
With any communication, it’s vital that you understand who you’re speaking to. That is especially true with business communication. We know that internal communication speaks to the internal workforce of an organization while external communication speaks to its customers. In order to communicate authentically and effectively with two different audiences, you will need to understand what makes them tick and what are they looking for from your brand. Research will help you to gain a better understanding but it’s important to listen to feedback as this will help you to fine-tune your messaging and hit the important notes with both audiences.
5. Develop a consistent tone
Once you understand how your audience feels and what they’re looking for from you, it’s time to create a consistent tone. Identify appropriate tones – formal, educational, friendly, approachable – and narrow them down. Try them out with different messages and see which ones connect or perform better. This type of A/B testing will help you to find the tone that best suits your business communications and appeals to your new, wider audience.
6. Integrate your brand communication into your company culture
Use every opportunity to integrate the new messaging, branding and tone into your organization. From job listings right through to exit interviews, you should be taking the time to underpin your brand. It’s important to remember that all communications, no matter how trivial they may seem, are an opportunity to promote your brand. This is especially important if you are creating a new communications strategy.
7. Use champions to communicate a consistent tone
Identify a group of champions that will reinforce your communications plan across your organization. This group should be passionate about the new strategy and the brand. In the beginning, this group will communicate the new tone and language and be on hand to help fine-tune messages.
8. Provide ongoing encouragement to employees
Your employees will need practical support as they re-wire the way they communicate internally and externally. Regular reminders of the new tone and messaging are a good start. Consider a regular quiz or spot the difference contest where your teams have to identify the new tone and language.
9. Organize brand training sessions
Training will be a key part of your new communications strategy. Brand training should be included in all onboarding, and existing staff should attend brand messaging information sessions. Occasional refresher training could be useful, particularly if the tone and messaging changes are significant.
10. Use VT Writer to enact your aligned business communication strategy
VT Writer can help align your organization to a single tone of voice both internally and externally. It provides instant measurable and scalable feedback to ensure consistency in your communications at an individual and organizational level. VT Writer offers a step-by-step approach to building your brand guidelines, and features like Watch Words help to fine-tune your efforts by highlighting inconsistencies. Using technology like VT Writer removes a lot of the guesswork involved in creating business communications, and ensures consistency of message with minimum effort.
Aligning internal and external communications is emerging as a real movement among global organizations. There’s a growing understanding that how a business communicates internally is just as important as how it presents itself externally. By unifying under a single message and tone of voice organizations can enhance their authenticity, both internally and externally, at a time when trust and transparency have never been more important.
