ValueCheck! — How to Create the Real Value of Communication

 

ValueLearnings!

• Smart Communication enables relatedness
• Smart Communication is seamless and integrated
• Social Media is not the end, but the start of Smart Communication

 

By Şükran Ceren Salalı, Value Art&Communication Fellow

Almost seven years before now, in 2007, CEO and the brain of Value Communication AG, Andreas Weber, wrote a “smart communication white paper” in order to create a thought-provoking guideline that is named Smart Communication: Reaching Engaging Communication Beyond Ourselves. In fact, since that time, he shared his POV with more than 50k executives around the globe. My take: The white paper not only shows how foreseeing analyst and the expert of communication Andreas Weber is, but also draws readers attention to various important facts about the effectiveness of communication in the Social Media Era.

In the text, in order to show the effectiveness of communication the term smart communication is used. Applications that belong to smart communication are characterized as completely seamless and integrated.

What is still very relevant for today in the age of digital transformation, the growing gap between technology-weak corporations and technology-smart consumers, has already been mentioned by Andreas Weber seven years ago in a time when via Facebook, Twitter & others the communication world changed in an irreversible way. The important thing is, this growing gap causes services to fail and then immediately the dissatisfaction of the customer occurs. On that moment, smart communication techniques should step in so as to abolish the dissatisfaction and to strategize the whole business process.

 

 

The secrets of smart communication

The components of communication should take into consideration first in order to understand the real meaning of smart communication. These components are communicators (senders&receivers of messages), message (the content), medium (the particular means of conveying the message), channel (connector of communicators and accommodates to the medium), code (a system of meaning shared by a group), noise (any interference distorting or degrading the meaning of the message), and context (where all communication takes place). Those components built a symbiosis to create the real value of communication.

If you re-think what has changed through Social Media, you will see that beside existence and growth relatedness is a key issue. So its not about connectivity anymore, which is already given. Its about building relations as the foundation of the real value of communication.

Dialogue as the core of a relationship is very crucial to orientate the relatedness. A smart dialogue increases brand image, loyalty and sales. Also, a smart dialogue constitutes a smart relationship that reunites produces and customer which are also named as sender and receiver. In the past, before web 2.0 and Social Media, brand dialogue was a monologue with advertising rather than a smart dialogue. It used to be slow and tedious.

 

 

Our Take:

What smart communication provides us is a win-win effect for both the consumer and the brand. So, if when it comes to defining smart, smart is fun and easy, useful, understandable, personal, simple… Smart is communication… or let´s call it in the way Andreas Weber defines it: Smart communication is a breath of fresh air!

 

 

ValueTip:
Learn more about our Value Art&Com Project by Şükran Ceren Salalı