The Connected Content Guide to Digital Communications: Tell It

As the digital world continues to grow and evolve, audiences everywhere are changing and merging. In all industries, audience silos that used to exist for brands are falling away. Instead of looking at Investor Relations audiences, employee audiences, customer audiences, and more, brands are now met with groups that are melding together, who have all become more concerned with broader, globalized issues, and are seeking to find true connection with a brand. That’s why, at Investis Digital, we’ve put together our Connected Content^TM guide to Digital Communications, designed to help businesses understand how to reach these new groups of important audiences and foster and keep important relationships with them.

In the report, we discuss our Connected Content^TM Approach, which unites three different variables crucial to a successful digital strategy in today’s world and redefines how brands should look at their digital communications. The first of these arms is ‘Tell It.’

‘Tell It’ is all about being:

• Meaningful
• Purpose-led
• Value adding
• Consistent authentic
• Audience-centric

More than ever, it is crucial that brands own their own story and tell it in a sincere, authentic and transparent way. Audiences are expecting that businesses be sharing their stories and are looking to connect on a deeper level than ever before. According to the Harvard Business Review, 66% of consumers say they are willing to pay more from good from companies they know to be socially responsible, and 65% of consumers are more likely to buy from companies that treat their employees well. Havas Media has found brands that are perceived as making the world a better place outperform the stock market by 134%.

But an audience will not understand that a brand is value-driven nor that it is doing meaningful work, if a brand does not share its own story and message using its digital channels. Brands that don’t articulate their values across the digital landscape will lose control of their narratives, leaving it up to someone else to tell it for them, and maybe not in the way that they hope it will be told. Brand reputations have never been more crucial, but also never more fragile. Letting someone else tell a brand’s own narrative can be incredibly harmful.

Thus, it is up to brand communications to ‘Tell it.’ Communications need to be meaningful, purpose-led, and valuable to audiences, and corporate messaging should align with brand goals while meeting audience needs. If a brand has a strong story articulated, one that is based around its core values, then its messaging will always feel aligned, authentic, and transparent, and will in return, encourage audiences to engage positively with the brand.

In today’s world there are higher expectations for brands’ digital communications, greater risk to getting them wrong, but also real benefits to achieving resonance. Download our Connected Content^TM Guide to Digital Communications today, to learn how to ‘Tell It’ right, as well as more about the rest of our Connected Content^TM approach.