Someone recently asked what undergraduate studies in Communication taught me. After a brief pause and moment of reflection (because my college days were a long, long time ago), I offered up the following four pearls of wisdom…
#1 – You are always communicating. From birth until death, you are constantly communicating with the world. And the world is interpreting and processing more information than you are intentionally transmitting:
- Shouting communicates, as does silence.
- Hand gestures communicate, as does sitting still.
- Eye contact communicates, as does looking away.
In short, you cannot not communicate because no communication is a form of communication (you might need to read that again, but you’ll get the point). For example, a friend recently commented he “no longer communicates” with one of his siblings. But this is in fact a very strong form of ongoing communication. What message is sent when his birthday passes without receiving a phone call? Or when Christmas comes and goes without a card? Or when he becomes an uncle and hears about it second-hand? You may not be actively transmitting, but radio silence sends a message as well.
#2 – Delivery matters. How you package and deliver the content of your message affects the message itself. Case in point, if the content is “I love you”, does the message remain the same when it is delivered:
- Via face-to-face conversation?
- Over the phone?
- In a text message?
- On a billboard?
Maybe, maybe not. But how the content is received will certainly be considered, and that enables your message to be interpreted differently than how it was intended.
#3 – Context matters. How you deliver content makes a difference, but so does when and where you deliver it. Imagine someone nudges your side and states “Look, that guy is sweating buckets!” What is the intended meaning of the message if the man brought to your attention is:
- playing basketball while you sit in the stands?
- speaking on stage while you sit in the audience?
- eating a bowl of chili while you sit at an adjacent table?
The content is essentially the same, but the context—when and where the message is received—drastically changes your interpretation.
#4 – All messages are subject to noise. There are numerous things that can interfere with the reception of your intended message. Sometimes you know about it and try to compensate (shouting in a packed stadium or signaling with hand gestures on the dance floor) and other times you are oblivious to it (wishing “Merry Christmas” to someone who, unbeknownst to you, is Jewish). Bottom line, effective communication often depends on your ability to account for noise between you and your audience.
Admittedly, an undergraduate degree in Communications is not required to grasp these concepts. Through everyday experience we come to understand these four aspects of communication and we do our best to apply this knowledge in our daily face-to-face interactions with others. We focus on the content of our message and whenever possible give consideration to how, when and where it is received.
But now in the information age, we frequently push digital content to our audience with little concern for these four communication tenets, largely because they are often beyond our control. Case in point, I control the words of this blog post but have willingly given up power over how you receive it (email, internet browser, iPhone, iPad, word of mouth, etc.), when you receive it (alert in the morning, tired at night, today, three weeks from now, etc.) and where you receive it (work, home, airport, restaurant, waiting in line, sitting in the bathroom, etc.). In addition, I can do nothing to account for possible noise (poor word choice, distracting environment, your emotional state, etc.) that might interfere with my intended message.
And so when it comes to marketing via digital communication the challenge is creating content strong enough to overpower everything else beyond our control that contributes to the message. In essence, you need to make sure there is amazing stuff inside the bottle before throwing it into the vast ocean of information.
Sounds easy enough.
