External Comms

Communication skill in external communications implies the capacity for an iterative and sustainable relationship in reputational terms between the organization and its external audiences, which is not limited only to its clients and involves stakeholders, providers, the community, and public opinion in general. In other words, external communication is the strategic relationship between those who buy from you, follow you, or will never follow or buy from you and the general public.

In this path of increasing integration between the institutional and commercial dimensions of organizations, different professional practices were generated and various communication techniques were applied that make up a more than interesting range of combinations when dealing with management programs in external communication.

Institutional Dimension:

Press management: consists of establishing from within the organization a constructive, permanent, and long-term relationship with journalists and representatives of the different graphic and audiovisual media.

Public affairs: refers to the action of establishing a strategic relationship between the company and the public sphere.

Social Responsibility: develop actions with the community linked to the defense of human rights, guarantee labor rights, protect the environment, and collaborate with good practices in the fight against corruption.

Social media: assuming the strategic management of social media as one of the key elements for the effective communication of an organization

Branding and Brand Management: the permanent administration of each of the elements that make up the brand system of an organization, its products, and its services.

Commercial Dimension:

Sales: today we have an unprecedented capacity to design "tailor-made" sales strategies and pitches. The old conception of the "sales force" as a military troop has given way to the permanent training and information of highly qualified salespeople, both in person and online.

Advertising: diffusion and promotion of specific goods and services in traditional communication media (off advertising) and social media (on advertising, social networks, internet, etc.), integrating skills for the development of creative teams applied to programming, target identification, concept, tone, media planning, supports, etc.

Marketing: based on adapting the supply of products and services based on the needs and desires of the target market in order to satisfy them, moving from placing communication in the marketing mix from the peripheral role assigned to it by the 4 P's of the marketing model (Product, Price, Place, Promotion, 1960) to a central role in the model of the 4 C's (Consumer, Cost, Convenience, Communication, 1990).

In this context, it is required that the person in charge of external communication management, responsible for the preparation and implementation of an external communication strategy, have the following key skills:

Development of the necessary capacities to increase the visibility of the organization;

Convey an image defined in the communication strategy or, at least, an image consistent with the one desired by the organization;

Promote a positive judgment towards the organization, provoking movements of empathy and understanding;

Disseminate all useful information to the organization's public map;

Transmit all information concerning the organization linked to a key issue of current affairs or general interest.

Precision to explain to all audiences the characteristics of the organization, and to the organization the characteristics of all its audiences.

It is also essential to pay real attention to the fact that external communication is also internal communication. Everything that is communicated to the outside in a public way also reaches the internal public. If we design an advertising campaign in contradiction with the messages that go through our internal networks, the levels of conflict can reach epic proportions. The integration of the activities of organizational life with those that benefit and represent its people and its environment makes it possible to strengthen and enhance the sense of belonging while favoring the participation of the different components of an institution in the development and appropriation of your organizational culture.

For all this, in the construction of external communication actions, it is very important to take into account the codes that are recognized within the organization and on which they are based. Not knowing it would be like breaking or putting up a barrier from the past, constituting forms of communication that, no matter how creative and valid they may be, when reaching the specific or general audiences of the organization, will not have the expected effects of recognition and effectiveness.

Among the external communication channels and supports are: communication in traditional and social media; business-to-business; crisis; marketing; financial; visual; press; actions with the community; communication at the point of sale; and design of communication systems. visual identification, brand management or branding, journalistic tools, communication risk management, direct marketing, media planning, social responsibility, advertising, public affairs, etc.

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