This post first appeared in Anthony Bullick’s Daily Post column.
It’s no secret that reaching your key stakeholders through multiple communication channels is essential in today’s digital world.
Ensuring activity is effective is the key challenge, and North Wales businesses need look no further than one its own for an example of how to achieve this.
Jones Bros Civil Engineering UK and its client Cambridgeshire County Council scooped three PR awards this month, including best integrated communications campaign.
Judges at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) regional PRide awards praised the “considered and focused” campaign as well as its “multi-pronged tactical approach to inform, educate and build trust during the pandemic”.
So what is the ideal mix of PR and brand marketing platforms? Well it starts with your audiences.
Research where your stakeholders are and where they read their news and gather information. Look at your existing social media, email and website analytics to assist in understanding more about your current demographics and their content consumption behaviour.
During construction and infrastructure projects that impact the general public, frequent communication is a must: people like to be kept up to date and in the know about the latest activity and plans. There is nothing worse than site works disrupting commuting or daily life without advance warning.
Consider creating a specific social media page from which to share updates on projects, on whichever platforms are most relevant. These updates can just be a couple of paragraphs with a picture.
Regardless of whether you are in construction or not, draft significant milestones as case studies or blog posts, or as press releases to share with the media to obtain editorial coverage across print, broadcast and online outlets.
Collate and repurpose these stories alongside further relevant information such as employee profiles, supplier spotlights and community updates to create a newsletter available in print and online, including as an accessible document.
Utilise your website as a hub to showcase all content and provide stakeholders with a central source of information.
Take advantage of a site’s flexibility. Filming and editing videos or recording audio as podcasts allow you to tap into different audiences who may prefer audio-visual media.
Create a checklist to monitor all content being repurposed and shared across all your channels. For example, a podcast can be uploaded to YouTube, embedded on your website, published on social media organically as well as used for paid posts and publicised in a print newsletter.