Miquel Brown probably never thought one of her most famous songs would inspire a grad student to write a blog post about the work of communicators. For the millennials reading this post, Miquel Brown is a Canadian actress and singer who recorded So Many Men, So Little Time in… wait, what? Oh, you have already found that out on your Wikiwand app. Ok, you beat me. Such is life. Technology has introduced multitudes of platforms on which we can interact, learn things, share knowledge, etc. And that is a great thing! We like to have new digital communication options to explore, don’t we? If you are not sure, ask a millennial! Whether or not you like to have all these options, the truth is that they are out there for everyone to use. The other side of the coin is that as our number of choices become bigger, the time professional communicators have to reach their audience seems to be getting smaller. Not only must communicators today work faster than ever to beat the competition, they also must be able to cover a myriad of platforms that are now available for digital communication. Today’s communicators need to be good at the traditional skills they already have, but also continually use them in combination with new skills they need to learn as technology brings yet newer tools to work with. For example, as Brian Reid of W2O Group explained in an article, even though communicators nowadays still need to have excellent reading and writing skills, the increasingly electronic and interactive nature of professional communications—think social networks—requires them to also strive to have skills in programming, engaging audiences though social media, creating and sharing content as events are still happening, and, perhaps most importantly, coming across as a human being with a sense of humor (Reid, 2012).
All that said, how might communicators train themselves to keep up with so many skills to learn, things to consider, and platforms to use? Well, many just don’t, and while this is fine—many communicators are not necessarily trying to be everywhere—if they are performing in a very competitive field, trying to increase online presence, stand out, or simply reach a wider audience, they must make sure their messages are loud and clear everywhere their target audience might happen to be; again, think social networks. Of course, that includes a lot of learning the peculiarities of each social media platform. I once thought all social networks basically worked the same way but, even though I still do not consider myself ahead of the game in that arena, I can at least now tell you with confidence, trust me, they don’t. Therefore, in their training, modern communicators must learn the important characteristics of each platform that affect how they should write for it, such as what tone to use, how many characters, etc. Once they learn all the peculiarities, if they find that there is not much time left to actually transmit their messages, they can help themselves by learning about tools that can help save time when managing multiple social media platforms, such as social media management apps (Moreau, 2016). There are many of these apps available to assist communicators in taking their online presence to the next level and, Elise Moreau, who is a professional editor, copywriter, and blogger compiled a list of 10 of the best of these apps available today. You can check the list for yourself by clicking the link below. Now, go get social!
Check out Elise Moreau’s list of 10 of the best social media management apps available today: Best Social Media Management Applications
Reference
Moreau, E. (2016). Best social media management applications. Retrieved from https://www.lifewire.com/social-media-apps-for-managing-everything-3486302
Reid, B. (2012). The 10 skills modern communicators have (or need to get). Retrieved from http://blog.wcgworld.com/2012/05/the-10-skills-modern-communicators-have-or-need-to-get