The 3 C's of Strategic Communication

Clarity of Communication

The first C in the 3 C’s of Communication is clarity. In order for your message to be well received, it must be easy to understand. Confusing written, and verbal communication does nothing but make your job harder. The intended audience will likely come back to you with more questions or worse yet, walk away with misunderstandings. 

The best way to ensure your communication is clear is to set one “take away” for each piece of communication. What do you want your audience to walk away remembering? Focus your communication on achieving this goal. All details should provide more information about this goal, without discussing other goals or topics. 

An Example of Clarity of Communication: Meta Descriptions

Clarity of communication doesn’t just refer to long speeches or lengthy correspondences. All communication must be clear. That includes communication as small as the meta descriptions for the pages on your website. 

For example, if you write a blog post entitled “Top 5 Ice Cream Flavors” then your meta description shouldn’t include information about anything but ice cream flavors. For instance, the content of your article would become incredibly unclear if the meta description was “brownies, ice cream, and pie are all good dessert options.” Not only is this confusing to readers, search engines are far less likely to rank your content well when you don’t have clear meta descriptions.  

For clear communication, keep your communication on topic and your communication goals in mind! 

Conciseness of Communication

If you tend to be long winded in your communication, it’s likely you need to work on the second C in the 3 C’s of communication: conciseness. There is no award for a high word count or an extra long speech in the communication’s industry. In fact, the wordier you are the more likely you are to turn off your intended audience.

Concise communication is effective strategic communication. This does not mean setting yourself to a specific time limit or word limit in your communications but rather, reviewing your communication for redundancies, off-topic content, or content that isn’t directly assisting you in achieving your goal. Oftentimes this can be difficult to do on your own and involves enlisting the expertise of a strategic communications firm. An outside strategic communications consultant can help you understand where you can make cuts to communication to better achieve your communication goals. 

An Example of Conciseness of Communication: Keynote Speeches

If you have an hour long speech to give, you may not think conciseness is your main concern. However, just because you have a specific amount of time allotted for communication doesn’t mean conciseness shouldn’t be top of mind. Especially when it comes to longer form communication, it can be easy to stray off topic, use filler words, and make redundant points. To ensure your communication is concise, effective, and still meets time requirements— work with a strategic communications firm. 406 Strategic Communications provides keynote speech writing support to public speakers to ensure each point of your speech is concise, on-point, and achieves your speech’s objectives.

Consistency of Communication

Strategic communications isn’t a one-time project for any company. Effective communication requires consistent tailoring, updates, and messaging. Your intended audience should have no confusion about what your company does, stands for, and is driven toward in your communications. This is largely achieved by providing information that clearly supports your company’s mission regularly.

An Example of Consistency of Communication: Strategic Communications Plan