Tough Times Call for Simple, Clear, Direct Communications

In this economy, almost every business seems to be cutting back on communications.  Annual reports are largely 10-K wraps, written by lawyers and accountants in convoluted language.  Quarterly reports, other than 10-Q filings, are largely extinct.  Budgets for advertising, public relations and investor relations have been sharply reduced.

Hunkering down and clamming up are not necessarily the best strategies.  Stakeholders want and need communications about your company in good times and bad.  In difficult periods, communications are even more important, because they provide insight into how management intends to overcome tough challenges. 

Top brands understand this and often increase communication efforts during hard times.  They know that if you’re not defining yourself, somebody else is doing it for you.  It may be a competitor, a disgruntled customer or shareholder, or someone on Wikipedia with an axe to grind.  The only solution is to take charge and create and reinforce the image you want to project.

Simple and direct communications are always the most effective way to tell your story.   You’re not going to get that from a committee of accountants and lawyers.   You need a professional communicator who can write for ordinary people, especially in an age where the Internet, e-mail, texting and Tweeting have made us unbelievably impatient with long messages and convoluted language.

At some point, an economic turnaround is going to occur.  That is not the time to start communicating, because you’ll just be playing catch-up.  When the gun goes off, are you going to be back in the locker room lacing up your shoes, or warmed up and in the starting blocks?

-Posted by Tony Lentini

Broken the Rules!

So they say, "you've gotta have a blog! It's the way of the future." Well, true. There is undeniable value that can be found in this strange new form of "virtual" circles called "social networking." But, what happened to the days of happy hour mixers, luncheons and golf tournaments? What happened to just stopping in to chat with a business associate or picking up the phone to find out if there are any potential job opportunities? Well, I don't know if you've tried it lately, but people just don't seem like they want to actually talk to people anymore. Communicating boils down to letters on a screen...emailing, blogging, texting, YouTube, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook & Flickr. Seriously? Is this really how modern business relationships are being started, cultivated and maintained? The simple, and maybe sad, answer is yes!

So, we can't resist it anymore. This truly is "the way of the future." And digging our heels in isn't going to make it all stop. Let me share some interesting facts I found on socialnomics.net.

1. By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
2. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
3. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia (note that Facebook is now creeping up – recently announced 300 million users)
4. % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
5. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
6. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
7. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
8. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
9. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen

And my favorite,
   10. Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser


To view the rest of the list, visit socialnomics.net. So back to the title, we have broken the rules by not keeping up with our own blog! Which, I might add, is about to change! I am going to start the next blog entry right now.


...right after I check my Facebook page.