As a human being – let alone a person who works as a Jewish leader and in the nonprofit space – you need to be an amazing online and offline communicator. To that end, we aim to follow communication trends to effectively reach our students. I’m sure you’ve seen that LinkedIn has recently also added “Stories” to their platform. Why did LinkedIn copy “Stories” from Instagram and Facebook? Why did IG/FB copy it from Snapchat? What is everyone trying to copy TikTok?
According to Chris Brogan, “It’s about delivery. It’s about this one detail: people (of today) want snack plates, not the meal.”
Communication is Different Now
People want things delivered fast and brief, with the option of going deeper.
Every time I tell someone that small bites and brevity are the way people want to consume information, I’ll get pushback from usually 3 – 5 people: “But I love long-form.”
People – and especially those living through the current pandemic – say that they want small bites. Give me the information now.
As such, we encourage you to learn actionable communications and information delivery skills.
Make sure you focus on:
- How to package messages, ads, and communication for a faster snack-sized world.
- How simple story elements drive internal and external communications and business language.
- Why formats (plural) will be the norm from now on.
- How to put this into action today.
- Email, voicemail and text tricks to punch through the noise.
Regarding emails, Rob Asghar in the June 2020 Forbes edition advocates writing only two-sentence emails! “If you keep your emails to two sentences, you do a favor to yourself and to others. They’ll quickly know the key information you’re giving them or the key question you need an answer to. For a deeper dive, a phone or Zoom call is in order.”
Asghar concludes that that two-sentence email is really more of a guideline than a rule. There are cases when more description is necessary, but we need to know that emails need to be clear, direct, and actionable.
In our faced-paced world, strive for brief, focused, and informative content for the greatest impact.
