Key Communicators are...Key

People talk to people...and those people talk to other people...who talk to others...and so on and so on and so on.

The holy grail of any professional communicator is generating positive word of mouth communications.  We all know that people find messages from their friends and neighbors to be more trustworthy and worthy of consideration than messages from ads or other "professional" communications sources.  Word of mouth messages are seen as trustworthy because they are filtered through the opinion of a disinterested third party.  The thinking is "I trust Becky and if Becky is giving me a message, that message must be trustworthy!"

The challenge, from a professional communicator's point of view, is that the very factor that makes word of mouth so desirable makes it very hard to manage!  To someone who is used to developing style books,  overseeing every comma and semicolon of an organization's communications, and who's mantra is "stay on message," this is difficult to accept.

You may not be able to control the message when it comes to word of mouth communications...but you can influence it!

Developing a key communicator network of key opinion leaders in your community or industry is one way to let the grapevine work for you.  The concept is simple.  You identify those individuals who are opinions leaders within your target audience.  These are the people that other people listen to and believe.  These are not always just the community or industry leaders.  They might be the hairdresser or PTA Mom or the blogger whom everyone listens to in order to find out what's what.

Once you identify who you want to be in your group, you invite them to join.  You tell them that as they are the opinion leaders of the industry or community, your organization will be providing them with extra information on your organization.  The only thing you ask in return is that they participate in some future survey or focus group once or twice a year that allows you to collect THEIR opinions on what people are thinking about regarding issues important to you.

You supply your key communicators with additional information about your company, your issues and/or your industry.  It is important that you provide your key communicators with accurate, realistic data.  Don't try to "spin" your key communicators or you will lose them.  However, if you provide them with real, trustworthy information, on a reliable basis, amazing things can happen.

This works for a few reasons.  First, being recognized as a Key Communicator is an honor to most people.  Better yet it is an honor that comes with few obligations!  Second, you are giving your Key Communicators something that they truly value, access to unique information.  Since they are communicators, they should value being able to share information with their various contacts.  Access to the information you are providing them increases their stature as a communicator.  Third, if you are doing this well, this works because you are not putting any caveats on their access to the information.  You are not even suggesting that they go out and share the information.  You are sharing it with them because you feel that they would find it interesting.

Once again, the frustrating part of this is that you, as a professional communicator, cannot control the message or the flow of information.  You have to just put it out their on faith that it will do your organization good.  And you may never know what good it does, but every once in a while you get confirmation that the process makes sense.

A week or so after my school district celebrated a rare referendum victory, I was talking to a community member who was in my Key Communicator group.  She was congratulating me on the referendum and started talking about how some people in the community had had misunderstandings about the referendum.  She proceeded to tell me about a couple of neighbors who told her why they planned to vote against the school district and then shared the arguments she told them in favor of the school district.  Her arguments, coincidentally were taken almost directly from a referendum fact sheet I had sent our Key Communicators.  This Key Communicator, without even realizing it, had helped promote the district's point of  view.  I became a committed believer in the power of Key Communicators at that moment.

FINE Communications

I sometimes get asked to define "good" communications.  Defining communications is a bit like defining good marketing or good art.  It is hard to put words to but you know it when you see it.

Unfortunately, when I give that answer, almost no one is satisfied.  While there are many different definitions of communications, most don't seem to include all of the elements that I consider important.  So, in the interest of keeping  people who ask me about communications from walking away muttering rude things under their breath, I cobbled together a workable definition.

In my opinion, good communications should be FINE communications:  Familiar, Interactive, Newsworthy and with Everyone involved.

• Familiar: For communications to be effective, you need to communicate to your audience in a language and using a medium that they use and are familiar with.  We all know people to whom it is useless to send an email, because they never check their email.  Similarly, you can talk to me all day in Portuguese, but you won't do much communicating because I am not familiar with the language.

• Interactive: Truly excellent communications is always two way and interactive. We have all heard the old adage that we were given two ears and one mouth because we should listen twice as much as we talk.  There is a lot of truth to that.  The best communicators are ALWAYS those who connect the most with their communities, constituencies and audiences.  The only way you can do that is by listening to them and hearing what their issues and concerns are.

• Newsworthy:  For communications to happen, the receiver of a message has to value the message enough to accept it and process it.  The message has to have value to that person.  It has to be newsworthy to them.  It is important to remember that newsworthiness is determined by the receiver of the message, not by the sender.  It doesn't matter how important a message is to the sender, if the receiver isn't interested, it is not received.   Also, our definition of what is newsworthy varies significantly depending on the situation. While virtually everything my 4 year old nephew says is newsworthy to me, if a coworker said the same things, it would not only NOT be newsworthy, but would be a cause for concern!     

• Everyone involved:  For communications to be effective and to have impact, it must reach an audience.  As we discussed above, first  the message must have value to the receiver and they must accept it.  Good communications is not a spectator sport.  Both the sender of the message and the receiver of the message must be actively engaged in the communications any communications to happen.  Furthermore, communications is most effective when it spreads.  For that to happen, the receivers of the message need to become the spreaders of the message.  They need to believe enough in the importance and newsworthiness of the message to pass it along to their communities, to their contacts.  Everyone needs to be a part of the communications.

If you can get these four elements working in your communications, everything will be just FINE.