Digital Strategies For Powerful Corporate Communications

The explosion of blogs, social networking sites, wikis, video sharing sites, and other powerful digital communications platforms may be the biggest game-changer to impact business since mechanized manufacturing. In today’s Web 2.0 world, company stakeholders--including employees, customers, and investors--are empowered in ways unimaginable just a few years ago, and traditional corporate hierarchies are yesterday’s news. Rather than attempt to turn back the clock and reassert strict, top-down control over stakeholder relationships, the smartest companies worldwide are responding with bold new digital communications strategies based on transparency, authenticity, and inclusion, instead of secrecy, artificiality, and exclusion. International corporate communications guru Paul A. Argenti provides a lively, up-to-the- minute review of the Web 2.0 landscape and analyzes the increasingly central role corporate communications plays in virtually every organizational function. Argenti and coauthor Courtney Barnes advise corporate leaders on how to deploy proven strategies for using new and emerging digital platforms to Manage brand identity and company reputation Build a culture of engagement and transparency Turn stakeholders into “company evangelists” Manage internal communications across time zones and language barriers Recruit and retain the best talent Develop compelling messages based on customer and investor needs and desires Argenti and Barnes provide case studies illustrating digital communications best practices at HP, Southwest Airlines, Sony, Dell, IBM, Starbucks, HBO, FedEx, GE, and other major players. This groundbreaking book will teach you how to gain real, manageable control over your organization’s communications in today’s virtual world.

The advents of blogging, mashups, and wiki programs have introduced chaos in the world of business communication. Digital Strategies for Powerful Corporate Communications explains how to use these same digital means, among many others, for bringing order to this information-saturated environment. Deploying the lessons inside, communication directors will be able to build symbiotic relationships with stakeholders, develop key messages based on customers needs and desires, managing the company s reputation, and executing efficient leadership strategies. Case studies of leading global companies are included.

Used by nearly 25,000 students in over 50 countries, this book incorporates current thinking and developments on corporate communication from both the academic and practitioner worlds. Combining a comprehensive theoretical foundation with numerous practical guidelines, insights will assist managers (or soon to be managers) in their day-to-day work and in their strategic and tactical communication decisions. With cases and examples from across the globe including Apple, BMW, Uber, L’Oréal and Starbucks, the new edition is updated to include more material on social media, employee communication, leadership communication and anti-corporate activism. The Fifth Edition of Corporate Communication is supported by a Companion Website and includes Full text SAGE journal articles, glossary, web links for each chapter, author-selected videos relevant to the key themes and hot topics, an authors’ blog and author videos for students as well as case study notes, PowerPoint slides, and additional case studies for lecturers. Suitable for students at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate levels on business management, marketing, corporate communication, public relations or business communications programmes as well as practitioners in the field.

Corporate Communication, 6th Edition shows readers the importance of creating a coordinated corporate communication system, and describes how organizations benefit from important strategies and tools to stay ahead of the competition. Throughout the book, cases and examples of company situations relate to the chapter material. These cases provide readers with the opportunity to participate in real decisions that managers had to make on a variety of real problems.

Social media are rapidly and dramatically transforming the communication landscape. They are purported to provide reputational benefits by promoting transparency and enhancing possibilities for stakeholder engagement. However, they also present reputational risks by exposing organizations to new types of crises, stakeholder criticism, and digital activism. This textbook provides a comprehensive look at social-mediated developments in corporate and organizational communication and examines the consequent implications for reputation management. The book takes a grounded approach in bringing together perspectives from communication and management and from scholarship and practice. It helps the reader make sense of digitalization in corporate communication and its consequences for organization–stakeholder relationships, trust, engagement, leadership, and reputation. Covering a wide spectrum of topics such as branding, consumer engagement, employee relations, crisis communication, corporate responsibility and sustainability, and the return on investment (ROI), the book maps key changes in the evolving communication landscape, with an understanding of the strategic benefits and challenges for corporate reputation. Key Features • Blend of theory and practice of social-mediated communication and implications for reputation management • International focus with contemporary (and classic) examples and cases • Link with professional practice in “Voices from the Field” feature • Discussion questions and activities to encourage critical reflection and informed application

The distinctive point of the book is its innovative interdisciplinary approach to business communication, with interconnections between linguistics, sociology, and critical organisational studies as applied to the corporate world. It offers a first-hand insight into primary business discourse with a deeper understanding and analysis of business processes and mechanisms underlying and reflected in enterprise software-mediated communication. It answers the question what ‘doing business’ in the digital age is about and illustrates ‘business discourse’ from practitioners’ point of view. Grounded in the analysis of empirical data, pertaining both to internal and external business communication, the author reflects on the reality of accelerated and pressurised communication in global IT corporations. Following a communication-centred approach, this monograph puts the topic of enterprise software-mediated business discourse into a multi-layered perspective of how global corporations operate, what their primary goals are, and what kind of (political) power they execute. Moreover, it demonstrates how profit-driven corporations can be viewed and interpreted as strategically acting systems within a specific sociological framework.

Technological advances, alongside increasing globalisation and growing awareness of socio-cultural and socio-political issues, are driving corporate branding innovations, and organisations must react and adapt quickly to compete. This book investigates and explores the impact of digital transformation on building corporate branding, identity, and reputation. The book brings together international contributors to provide examples from a wide range of industries and fi rms, including the retailing and agri-food industries, and illustrates the many dimensions of corporate branding and theories, and how they can be aided by digital transformation. It explores the connection of branding with artificial intelligence, social media networks, and technologies 4.0 as well the limitations and challenges they might deliver. Using a combination of theory, primary research findings, and practice, the book offers viewpoints and expertise from multiple regions, appealing to a global audience. This edited collection serves as an importance resource for researchers, scholars, and postgraduate students of marketing, brand management, and corporate communications, and those interested in the emerging relationship with technology.

Provides much-needed thinking on the topic of public trust in business, blending current academic research with conclusions for future practice.