Are You Speaking with One Voice? A Roadmap to Aligned Communications

By Jana McGuire, Senior Account Director

Your website says one thing. Your social channels say something else. Your CEO has a presentation that hasn’t been updated for years. The sales team developed its own talking points. The digital lead launched a new video series because, well, “everyone loves video.” 

Sound familiar?

Often, with many players communicating through a variety of channels, communications can become fragmented and get off course.

Or maybe you never had a “course” to begin with.  

A communications roadmap is essential to making sure your organization isn’t just producing content and reactively responding to opportunities and challenges as they arise. An effective plan lays out a shared understanding for the entire team – not just the comms folks – for a thoughtful engagement strategy. The plan should include:

• Messages that reflect your mission, vision and values
• Priority audiences and what each should know
• Channels most important to reaching those audiences   

Without that alignment, audiences get different versions of who you are depending on whether they visit your website, talk to an employee, hear your CEO speak, see a social post or read a news story. That inconsistency creates confusion and weakens the brand.

It’s time to get intentional.    

A thorough communications audit is the place to start when establishing communications guardrails. That begins with a thorough communications audit.

At Look East, we’ve taken deep dives into organizations’ communications and analyzed every touch point: brand standards, websites, social media channels, presentations, newsletters, sales materials, trade show assets, annual and sustainability reports, flyers, media pitches, strategic plans. The list goes on.

We also interview important stakeholders, including internal leadership, board members and customers. How do they define the organization? Do the mission, vision and values (if they exist) reflect today’s reality? What do they see as organizational priorities and are they being met? What is the organization communicating – and what should it be communicating? How – and where – is the organization showing up?

This process reveals where communication is aligned and where there are gaps. It allows us to see where the brand standards are being used consistently and where it has gone rogue.      

From there, we define audiences, identify organizational spokespeople (and train them, too), create message pillars from which all communications flow and develop a comprehensive, aligned engagement strategy that consistently and repeatedly reflects what the organization stands for.

An effective plan should leverage all channels. These include owned media (assets you control like website, blog, social channels and flyers), earned media (third-party validation through media coverage, shared social, stages and podcasts) and paid channels (digital ads, sponsored content, influencer engagement geotargeting) – reaching key audiences where they “live.”      

Speaking with One Voice

It’s an approach where every communication ladders up through the defined message pillars – where every touchpoint reinforces the others.

It allows your team to communicate with one voice so no matter where an audience connects with your organization they know who you are. It’s a strategy that builds familiarity, credibility and ultimately trust.

The guardrails establish focus. Instead of trying to communicate everything to everyone, each blog, interview, presentation, video and social post serves a purpose and adds another layer to the same story. You go from asking “What should we post this week?” to deploying a long-range plan with frequent content that intentionally leverages priority messages and audiences.

A communications roadmap helps you respond under pressure, too. When an issue emerges or crisis strikes, you’ve already established what you stand for and the principles that will guide your response. You’ve earned credibility and trust that helps you weather those storms.     

In the end, your reputation isn’t built with more communication through fragmented tactics; it’s built through hundreds of interactions that consistently reinforce your story. From the CEO to the digital manager, everyone is speaking with one voice and following the same roadmap.

The key is knowing where you’re going, getting the team on board and making sure every communication moves you closer to your destination. Discover more about how we’ve organizations define and reach their destinations.