21st CENTURY COMMUNICATION TRENDS

21^st century communication trends

Man has been communicating since thousands of years. But the 21^st century we have seen a sea change in the communications sector. Now the information is transmitted at a very fast pace rescinding all the geographical boundaries.

World is growing rapidly and people need to communicate faster. In today's organization employees are provided with numerous communication facilities to communicate faster with the organization's constituencies. Some of the recent trends in 21^st century communication are:

Virtual presenters: Virtual weather presenter.

Growth of VOIP: Internet phone calls on the rise

Relating items through tags

Blogs

Online bullying

P2P e-mail

New forms of collaboration: Networking

Physical and virtual social networks

Dual mode phones

Data and voice access

At an end user level I have experienced the rapid changes in the communication sector. A decade back people used conventional telephones for communicating. Pagers were used to send quick and short messages for a brief time. But there was a revolution when the mobiles entered the market. Today every one has a mobile phone irrespective of his financial status, and today's phones are far more than just phones.

http://www.byz.org/~rbanks/movableType/webLog/trends/archives/cat_403_new_communication_trends.html

Relevence Of Corporate Communication

Relevence Of Corporate Communication

Corporate communications is the process of facilitating information and knowledge exchanges with internal and key external groups and individuals that have a direct relationship with an enterprise. It is concerned with internal communications management from the standpoint of sharing knowledge and decisions from the enterprise with employees, suppliers, investors and partners. Examples include:

• Enterprises use annual reports as corporate communications tools to convey information related to results, processes and relationships of the enterprise. Typically, these communications occur on a yearly basis.
• Corporations use electronic and print newsletters to share corporate diversity hiring practices and information on new hires.
• Enterprises use corporate Intranets to create a corporate communication platforms to formalize processes around announcing requests to supplies to submit RFPs.

In corporate communications the object of communications work is company/enterprise itself as opposed to marketing communications where the object of communications is product/produce or service provided by the company/enterprise. The aim of corporate communications is building company's reputation among its stakeholders (as opposed to brand building in marketing communications).

Examples of corporate communications that we come across are the financial results. The quarterly results are announced by the companies in order to communicate their performance to the stakeholders. It has been very common now especially in the IT sector, where they announce the results quarterly and the share prices of the particular companies shoot up. This is one of the objectives of the corporate communications.

Communication Technology

Communications Technology

In the last century, a revolution in telecommunications has greatly altered communication by providing new media for long distance communication. The first transatlantic two-way radio broadcast occurred on July 25, 1920 and led to common communication via analogue and digital media:

• Analog telecommunications include traditional telephony, radio, and TV broadcasts.
• Digital telecommunications allow for computer-mediated communication, telegraphy, and computer networks.

Communications media impact more than the reach of messages. They impact content and customs; for example, Thomas Edison had to discover that hello was the least ambiguous greeting by voice over a distance; previous greetings such as hail tended to be garbled in the transmission. Similarly, the terseness of e-mail and chat rooms produced the need for the emoticon.

Modern communication media now allow for intense long-distance exchanges between larger numbers of people (many-to-many communication via e-mail, Internet forums). On the other hand, many traditional broadcast media and mass media favor one-to-many communication (television, cinema, radio, newspaper, magazines).

Mass media is a term used to denote, as a class, that section of the media specifically conceived and designed to reach a very large audience (typically at least as large as the whole population of a nation state). It was coined in the 1920s with the advent of nationwide radio networks and of mass-circulation newspapers and magazines. The mass-media audience has been viewed by some commentators as forming a mass society with special characteristics, notably atomization or lack of social connections, which render it especially susceptible to the influence of modern mass-media techniques such as advertising and propaganda.

EXPERIENCE:

The technologies are changing in a very rapid pace, and communication is no exception. Though man has been using technologies in communication since the inception, now we are seeing a sea change in the technology development. Information is disseminated at the speed of light and there is a need for more. Few decades ago corporate communication were done primarily through print media and public and stakeholders functions. Now with the advent of IT, companies interact with its constituencies through internet, video conferencing and telecommunications, thereby literally evading the geographical barriers.

Investor Relations

Investor Relations

Investor relations is a set of activities which relate to the ways in which a company discloses information required for regulatory compliance and good investment judgment to bond and/or shareholders and the wider financial markets. Investor relations is considered a specialty of public relations by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Most public quoted companies now have dedicated IR officers or managers who looks after the company's investor relations activities and deal with investors wishing to know more about the company. Functions of investor relations personnel often include collection of information on competitors and dissemination of information via press conferences, one-on-one briefings, investor relations sections of company websites, and company annual reports. The investor relations function also often includes the transmission of information relating to intangible values such as the company's policy to corporate governance and its wider corporate social responsibility.

The investor relations function must be aware of current and up-coming issues which the organization may face, and which may have an impact on the organization. In particular, it must be able to assess the likely impact or reaction of any announcements (or any research reports issued by Financial analysts) to be made on the share price of a company. It will have top-level access to the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman or President of the corporation to ensure that the image of the corporation is maintained in a coherent fashion.

Example: www.ibm.com/investor/

Investors are the backbone on the company. The primary objective of the corporate communication department is to build a better relationship with the investors.

In the recent times companies are understanding the investor relations in a better way and are trying to service the investors on a broader arena. The world wide web is helping the companies to service the investors in a better manner and more efficiently. Any information required by an investor or the prospective investor in available in the company websites. For example the Infosys website provides a wide variety of information such as financials, notices to the investors, information about future projects and acquisitions.

COMMUNICATION THEORY

Communication as a named and unified discipline has a history of contestation that goes back to the Socratic dialogues, in many ways making it the first and most contestatory of all early sciences and philosophies. Aristotle first addressed the problem of communication and attempted to work out a theory of it in The Rhetoric. He was primarily focused on the art of persuasion.

Humanistic and rhetorical viewpoints and theories dominated the discipline prior to the twentieth century, when more scientific methodologies and insights from psychology, sociology, linguistics and advertising began to influence communication thought and practice.

Most theories associated with communication are based on notions that can be traced back thousands of years. In ancient Greece, the subject we now refer to as communication was rhetoric, using language to persuade whoever was listening to do something. Practicing the art of rhetoric was highly regarded by the Greeks.

Whether an organization is trying to enhance its reputation through corporate advertising, to communicate effectively with employees about the rising cost of health care, to convince shareholders that the company is still worth investing in, or simply to get customers to buy more of its products, using a coherent communication strategy is critical.

REFERENCE

http://www.tcw.utwente.nl/theorieenoverzicht/

http://users.fmg.uva.nl/lleydesdorff/montreal.htm

CRISIS MANAGEMENT

Crisis refers to the uncertainty that may occur because of natural calamities, economic instabilities, and internal factors such as labor unions and malfunctions in the domain process. With respect to a corporate crisis, the main objective of crisis communications is to maintain stability and continuity in the business process of the organization. As the crisis is not predictable, it's very difficult to manage when it occurs. Though crisis management team is not a separate department, during a crisis the team consisting of the people from corporate communication department, company advocates and the specialized managers should join hands to overcome the crisis.

One can ensure to overcome the crisis by sticking to the following guidelines.

• Maintaining centrality in disseminating information
• Look for facts and not base decisions on rumors.
• Act prudently but in a quick and efficient manner.

The recent Mumbai train blast was a typical crisis. As soon as the blast occurred there were voluntary groups formed among the public who helped the survivors. The state police also acted in a timely fashion to take the situation under control and also to identify the suspects. There were rumors spreading about the attack and the consequence, but the authorities revealed the fact and figures through media in a very efficient manner.

REFERENCES

http://www3.niu.edu/newsplace/crisis.html

http://www.lsu.edu/pa/crisis.html

MEDIA RELATION

One of the most important areas within any corporate communication function is the media relations department. It refers to the relationship that needs to be built upon by the company with the media by interacting with them. Here interaction means providing the required information to the media which in turn is passed on to the customers and end-users. The media has a direct link with the prospective and current customers. It helps in creating a favorable image among the customers. It is through media that most of the information is publicized. A good relation with the media can act as a potion and a bad one can produce a deadly poison for the company.

The following steps may be considered in the process of Building relationship with media.

• Conducting a research for targeting media
• Responding to media calls
• Preparing for media interviews
• Gauging success

One example that comes to my mind while talking about media relations is fashion. The fashion gurus when they come up with new designs, they specifically target particular journalists to pitch their information. Because a fashion designer will have nothing to do with a crime reporter. Generally the fashion news does not turn up in daily papers and magazines. They get published in fashion magazines which are meant for the upper class people.

REFERENCES

http://www.managementhelp.org/pblc_rel/pblc_rel.htm

http://www.aboutpublicrelations.net/mediarel.htm