I love working out the best ways to communicate with people. I like the analysis, the planning and the execution. I like to write. But over recent years, I have been buried in ‘what should be’ and ‘the way it is meant to be’, as if there is a correct way to write something. There is an accepted way to write different types of content to ensure it is useable, but how often is that just an opinion based on personal style preferences and how often is it actually right and wrong?

Communication must be the right fit for the audience and portray the right things about a business, the question is, how do you find that balance? How do you give people what they need, when they don’t necessarily know that they need it. We can’t all be like apple and invent something no one knew they needed before making it an indispensable commodity across the world – in the past 10 years over 7 billion smart phones have been produced. (Greenpeace, March 2017)

The current communication norm is disruption. In a time and place where there is so much noise (just like in the header image, you can hardly make out the words) there are thousands of businesses and millions of people trying to shout the loudest, say the most outrageous, do the most shocking and gain their time in the spotlight. Did we always have such a thirst for attention? Social anxiety is at an all-time high, there are calls for moderation when it comes to advertising and messages which promote a certain way of being, the growth of Instagram and the perception of perfection all fuel the fire. Did we know what we were creating when we enabled the world to interact in this way?

Unless your audience is loyal and receptive to you already it will be hard to cut through the noise with regular messages and methods. You will need to join the disruption crowd, or incentivise your loyal audience to work on your behalf.

So how should businesses find the best routes to their target markets and build audiences who want to hear from them?

1. First of all, go back to the beginning, back to the businesses reason for being, only from here will you be able to map your audience with the messages and the story you would like to tell and more importantly that they would like to hear.
2. Develop the relationships you already have and then branch out to new ones.
3. Add value and find an emotional connection