Best practices come from gathering the best information together and applying it as appropriate to new endeavors in order to obtain a desired outcome with as few problems as possible. From a communications standpoint, best practices are past successful ways of communicating (which include information, methods, modes, ideas, and tactics) that can be used to shape effect excellent strategic communication going forward. However, best practices are rooted in history and can only serve as a beginning point for future scenarios; best practices are not necessarily next practices.
This course focused on digital communications strategies, and helped us identify the major functions of strategic communications. We looked at how business structures are changing internally and externally to embrace the new realities of communication and changing stakeholder demands. We explored online platforms and looked at the new media relationships in our changing world. We looked at the impact of technology on corporate investor relations, crisis communications, the growing call for environmental corporate responsibility, and the affect the Internet has on business/government relations.
Approximately half of the class occurred online; we used Moodle for online discussion boards, we posted our assignments, and we conducted several classes over the Internet as well. While there were bumps in the execution of our digital strategic communication, it was a valuable exercise even though I personally did not like parts of it. I found that the online class was not as conducive to discussion as face-to-face classes are for me. Online class was comprised on one-liners, of quick, short ideas that generated (or not) quick, short responses. The depth that I enjoy from exploration of topics did not come forth in our online sessions. Technology may improve this, as will practice on my part in learning to be effective and strategic in my communications given this new milieu.
Each person in the class created their own communications case study (mine was on the opening of the NASCAR Hall of Fame and the public relations, messaging, and media tactics involved with building support for this new organization - detail of my case analysis is further down this blog). Each person then analyzed their particular case and extracted what they felt were the "best practices" used in the communications strategy/s. As a class, we discussed our ideas for best practices and discovered that they broadened significantly when the variety of cases (along with the separate "best practices") were combined - showing me that the more history you have, the broader the ideas in retrospect about optimizing the related communications. However, just because you have these best practices, it does not mean that things will work well. The NASCAR Hall of Fame, while doing a good job incorporating best practices into their kick-off communications plan, is struggling. Current events (the recession, changing entertainment tastes to name two) had a significant impact on the viability of this organization, and yet they were not addressed using the backward-looking best practices. This is exactly why best practices should be viewed with some caution.
It seems to me that each experience offers new inputs into "best practices". While on-going learning and questing is good, it shows the limitations of "best practices". They end up being best guesses, helpful most of the time, but there is a flip side to relying on them; best practices can be potentially blinding when innovative or creative strategic communications are called for.
Course syllabus COMM 626 Syllabus
This was a hybrid course, and as such a significant amount of class discussion occurred online. As a culmination of our classroom and online sessions, along with our research experiences, the group created a combined Best Practices for Strategic Communications: Best Practices-Strategic Communication.
Each student chose a chapter of our textbook, Digital strategies for Powerful Corporate Communications (2010) by Argenti and Barnes, and led the discussion on it in class. The following is my summary of the first chapter that dealt with broad issues for best practices in strategic communications Chapter 1 - Class Discussion
We worked a lot with case studies in this course, as a way of building knowledge of best practices in a variety of business situations From the International Association of Business Communications Best Practices in Communication Planning and Implementation (2010) book I did a best practices analysis on a case study involving Raytheon Missile Systems Raytheon Case Study IABC.
My final project case study of best practices for strategic communications looked at the opening day events of the NASCAR Hall of Fame NASCAR Hall of Fame Case Study.
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