Over the coming weeks, our digital team will take a more detailed look at how under-pressure comms teams can overcome these challenges, but for now, here’s a high-level overview of the four topics we’ll expand on.
- Make more of your reporting content
Annual reports and sustainability reports often represent the single most valuable source of up-to-date content produced in a year – but too often great content ends up buried deep in the IR section of the corporate website.
Repurposing can provide months of reusable multi-channel content: summarising strategic overviews, presenting facts and figures, showcasing engaging case studies and leveraging video and animation to bring it all to life.
Next month, we’ll go into more detail, exploring the types of content that best lend themselves to this sort of repurposing, as well as where we’ve successfully done this for our clients.
- Create an integrated channel plan
Integrating your digital channel planning will drive efficiencies across your comms platforms. By combining efforts across social, websites and email, you can align messaging and content across channels, leading to a more consistent audience experience that builds trust.
Here are a few of the considerations we’ll expand on in the weeks to come:
Audiences: who they are and where they engage.
Channels: what’s the right mix.
Consistency: reinforcing brand identity and authenticity.
Co-ordination: ensuring complementary activity and maximum impact.
Measurement: continuously improving your approach.
- Consolidate your digital ecosystem
As companies launch new products, enter new markets and acquire other businesses, they take on ‘digital baggage’: product and regional websites and social channels, all with different design, UX and content standards.
In recent years, the trend had been for companies to streamline and consolidate their digital ecosystems. By closing duplicate or obsolete social channels and consolidating large website estates into a single platform or multi-site solution, you can declutter user journeys and improve content and design consistency, while vastly reducing ongoing running costs and effort.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll delve into our recommendations for digital consolidation.
- Embrace emerging technologies
Integrating AI and social listening tools can help streamline your comms planning and help with content development.
AI tools are evolving at speed, but right now tools such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot can help your team work more efficiently and deliver more dynamic services to your audience. Alongside channel analytics, social listening can play a crucial role in understanding audience sentiment and trends across social media platforms. Tools such as Brandwatch, Sprout Social and Meltwater automatically monitor online conversations about brands, industries and competitors, helping to adapt your comms planning to engage with audiences more effectively and respond to issues quickly.
Stay tuned for a deeper dive on all four topics over the coming weeks, but for now, if you’d like to chat about anything related to digital communications strategy, please reach out: james.croxford@luminous.co.uk
