As a long-time marketing/communication practitioner and academic, I’ve seen both awesome and atrocious trends in strat comm.  Digital skills (and divides) have transformed our ways of living, meaning that we must be more speedy, accurate, and credible for many audiences.  It’s all about getting your message heard successfully; unfortunately, some groups have yet to realize that we’ve moved from a top-down flow of information to a horizontal flow, meaning that the public has seized its huge voice. Whereas news and promotional materials were once broadcast, we’re now a narrowcast society, with fragmented media giving anybody the chance to create a viral video or crisis snapshot.  (Think about the United Airlines fiasco as an example of unforgiving publics.)  The Public Service Announcements I once wrote for corporations differ tremendously from the social media news releases I write now.  It’s incredible and exciting.

Transparency and accessibility are now enmeshed with goals and ethics which remain the core of strategic communications.  It’s interesting, isn’t it, that fluid deadlines are creating more problems with writers who dash off emails that live forever, often without checking details and grammar.  Our words live forever.  Our errors live forever.  And our clear, true writing lives forever.

My advice: Take five or ten minutes every day to send and receive information.  Use social media and subscribe to Poynter’s NewsU for many free, self-directed tutorials, as well as Ragan Communications’ PR Daily and For Immediate Release podcast.  And yes…use your real name before somebody else does.  Your business card is simply a Google search, so manage your name and your brand.