In this episode of frankly…
Ready to hit refresh on your comms strategy? Our frankly… duo rolled up their sleeves for a little spring cleaning – communications edition.
Follow along as Rachel and Dan share practical ways to declutter your communications approach, from revamping outdated messaging and media lists to streamlining event planning and reporting. They explore how shifting economic and global dynamics should shape your strategy – and why now’s the time to revisit what really resonates with your audience.
Plus, discover how AI can help lighten your workload and streamline everyday tasks.
Let us know what you took away from this week’s conversation, and, as always, be sure to rate, review, and subscribe!
Tune in every other Wednesday and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts (Spotify).
The transcript below is AI-generated and may contain minor inaccuracies. Tune in to the episode audio to hear the full conversation!
Transcript
Dan
Hello. And welcome to frankly.
Rachel
Hello, welcome.
Dan
So today just the two of us here, Rachel and myself, and we’re going to be talking a little bit about some spring cleaning for communicators. What to think about as we’re kind of now, I guess we’re a month into springs, but into spring and going into summer. What are some things that? That everyone should be thinking about maybe looking at as they reset. Ready for their strategies for the rest of the year?
Rachel
Yeah, I feel like now in like there’s so much heavy stuff going out in the world right now across the board politically, even just like environmentally and the way that businesses are operating. And so there’s a, it’s a really good time to take a look at. Your brand, your messaging. I think that’s really where we’re going to start. And it goes back to if you haven’t listened to last week’s episode with Alex, Go listen to that. His Three Knows of Marketing, you know, really take the time to sit down and and think about this for your brand. Do you know yourself? Do you know your audience? Right. Yeah, because your audience’s problems are probably changing.
Dan
Yeah, a lot has happened. I mean, to put it absolutely in the most mild way path possible, a lot has happened in the last few months and is happening, you know this month as well
Rachel
And rapidly, like fast.
Dan
it’s changing, it’s uncertain. Nobody knows what’s happening next week so a lot of a lot of brands, companies, maybe your potential clients are not maybe looking at the same set of challenges they were at the end of 2024 and that means the way that we talk to them also has to shift a little bit. And starting with, as Alex said last week, again going back to that, if you don’t know what your customer is dealing with, how are you going to help them solve their needs?
Rachel
Yeah, and it doesn’t have to be so specific, right? Like you don’t have to know immediately their exact problem, but you have to understand how what’s happening is probably affecting the way that they’re doing business. I feel like too this is a good time to look at your company, right? So the knowing yourself is important too, is how you’re doing business is shifting and changing. Do you have new priorities? It’s a good reminder that the, you know, 2025 strategy you put together, you have a fully different lens on now.
Dan
Yes.
Rachel
So how does that shift a little bit if it’s a good strategy, it shouldn’t need an overhaul, right? But. Look at some of those topics you’ve gotten there and and things that for you or your clients that needs some tweaking to make sure they stay relevant. Don’t just plug it into the strategy and keep going and ignore everything else going on.
Dan
Yeah. And I I think one thing to think about also is is just being conscious and trying to be mindful of the situation right now. If your customer is in an industry where they’re struggling financially, they’re not sure what’s to come over the next couple of months here. Now is not a great time maybe to be pitching a $1,000,000 product line
Rachel
No.
Dan
You know I mean I think not saying change your change your product development plans, but just maybe tweak that message and do some cleanup and think about you know what’s going to hit home and what’s going to on the other side, what could potentially annoy the people that you actually want to reach?
Rachel
Yeah. And that’s another, so if you get, if you get your messaging in a good spot and you understand your audience and who you’re talking to, you’ve identified their problems, how your product. Or, you know, service can be the solution to that. That’s kind of, you know, definitely first step in understanding, but then go through your matrix, your strategy right, and check out your media list, the events that you have planned, maybe the paid ad campaigns you have that we’re supposed to start running soon. And see if they still fit.
Dan
Right. And I think you know at the simplest level is is just, you know, if you’re looking at media relations, you mentioned media lists, the the world of journalism is changing maybe just as quickly as as the rest of the world here. You know, we’ve seen a lot of reporter moves in the past six months. We’ve seen publications merge or close all together or in separate operations, yeah.
Rachel
Even retirements, I feel like there’s, you know that really. Strong course, especially in automotive. I know locally like those journalists are retiring, but they’re not necessarily leaving the profession either, right? They’re freelancing or they’re creating sub stacks or like they’re kind of staying in the mix. But you have to know where they’re at and what they’re covering to be able to pitch them.
Dan
Yeah, it and it goes to broadcast. It goes to all different types of consumer and B2B media and you mentioned sub stack there and that’s that’s actually a really good kind of secondary thought to this is what are some of the non-traditional media that are popping up.
Rachel
MHM.
Dan
Because as quickly as the traditional man, traditional landscape of media is changing and reporters are moving or retiring new publications, new blogs, new sub stacks, new podcasts are popping up just as quickly and a lot of those hold great value for your brand. I mean, sometimes getting in early with a content creator on some of these non traditional types of media can be a little bit easier as they’re working to build their network or they’re working to kind really better understand the industry, even if it’s not an immediate placement to be part of that education process as they’re getting into it can be really great.
Rachel
Right. I think too from a consumer angle, something I’m thinking of is being aware of your product and. The cost and a need versus want economy, yeah, you’re probably going to have to shift maybe where you’re meeting your audience or is your audience changing? Are they reading different publications? Are they listening to different, you know, podcasts? I thought about this recently, and I think a lot more people are trying to be more financially literate and listening to financial podcasts or understanding what implication that has. So if you are a consumer product, there are other avenues you maybe haven’t thought of in this economy that you might reach your target audience. Yeah, just, like, kind of thinking outside the box and trying something new that might actually help. It’s not a great situation for the consumer, but it does potentially open new doors for you as a company.
Dan
Yeah, and and I think talking about that and getting further into the matrix and things, things along those lines, you know, beyond the traditional media or even non-traditional media looking at the overall picture of thought leadership and and where you are from an event standpoint. One thing that we’ve seen, not just this year, but maybe a little bit more. So at least for me as clients are taking a second look at some of these massive mega events, every one of their customers is probably there. But at the same time, you have to cut through the clutter of 5000 other brands or exhibitors or people vying for a speaking slot at these events.
Rachel
Or that are trying to pitch that maybe like we said, media landscape changing fewer media at the event and now everybody is going at hem for things that might not be news.
Dan
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And when you’re up against, you know, the Fortune 10 who are also going to be at some of these events, it’s it’s so hard for a for a smaller business to truly cut through that and get to media. I mean, these shows and especially media days are usually one to two days where you get most of the reporters there. There’s just only so much time.
Rachel
Yeah.
Dan
And there’s some things that they’re going to have to be at.
Rachel
Yep, absolutely.
Dan
So I think that’s kind of another spring cleaning topic to go back to that is is take a look at your event strategy. And once again going back to know your customer, but look at where they are and some of these maybe smaller niche events where you might have a smaller total group that you could speak to there, but it’s really a targeted and directly relevant that you could sell to.
Rachel
You might stretch your investment further too, right? A lot of these big shows are very costly to be at, whether it’s really large displays or trying to staff a larger booth so more people have to travel or whatever it is.You might be able to do two or three smaller shows for the cost of that one, so it might not even change your budget or the financials, but you could stretch your dollar further, potentially send less people more targeted people, and be able to spend just more time with who you really want to reach.
Dan
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s something that we’re gonna see a lot more of as, especially with more of the content creators looking to either create their own events for their audiences at the micro level or kind of that in between state where it’s like a piece of an industry rather than the entire world of a single industry.
Rachel
Yeah. Sure. Yeah, I feel like that’s sort of been a discussion since 2020.
Dan
Yes.
Rachel
Really. Since COVID, when everything stopped for a minute, it’s never come back the same. Never.
Dan
No, we see it in. We see it in auto shows. You know the big, the big show floors and the big flashy events for reveals are kind of taking a backseat and we’re seeing more of these technical conferences pop up that are. That are more specifically related to one thing or another within the industry. I think, yeah, you’re right. We’ve seen it across the board, I think.
Rachel
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that brings up a good point of being stretched thin and everybody being stretched, thin budgets and staff and all of the above. It’s probably a good time to take a look at your To Do List and your task list and things. Maybe that you are. Being asked to do repeatedly, think about reporting, think about some of agendas, project management, there are certain things in there. Take a look at and and kind of do some spring cleaning of your task lists and ask yourself where you could be more efficient and think about how AI might be able to help you automate or just make your life a little bit easier so that you can use your expertise and strategy a lot more more time with that stuff.
Dan
Right. Just more, yeah.
Rachel
The stuff that matters, just more of it. And I think that like that brings up a good point. We’ve talked about this before. I know it’s been a minute and then we had Katie from Trust Insights on, but I wanted to share the six kind of major use cases for generative AI, large language models that Trust Insights notes because I think they’re super. I mean, I had it on a sticky note on my computer for a while. Because before you start something, you can glance it and say like can I try this with AI first?
Dan
Yeah, that’s a good fit, yes.
Rachel
Yeah, and it’s just keeping it top of mind, so every time you start a task, you run it through these six things and see if you can get, you know, a head start before you really have to put your brain into it. So first one most commonly: Used generation, right? You’re making stuff.
Dan
Yeah.
Rachel
When you’re doing that, remember that the more information you feed the AI, the better. Don’t rely on it pulling a bunch of information from the web, right? Feed it all the information that you want it to use to create whatever you’re creating. That’s just a best practice. The second one is extraction, so this is pulling data out of a source and reformatting it. This one’s going to be a little harder to do. You probably have to be really specific in your prompt. It’s going to take a little bit more, but it’s absolutely doable. If you’ve got a massive data set that you want small pieces of, think about that. The third one is summarization, so they say turn big data into small data, right? Yeah. I think when we report especially on ads or socials or things along those lines where it’s a lot of numbers and data can be hard to make heads or tails of all of it, ask AI to summarize it for you to start and pull out the important pieces that then you can dive into further.
Dan
Yeah, and and the data side is a great use case for that, but also I mean it could be something as simple as simplifying or summarizing a transcript or something along those lines from a call.
Rachel
That’s a good point. Yep.
Dan
It doesn’t have to be a major project that you’re putting in here, if it can save you 30 minutes here and there throughout your week
Rachel
Think about your action items, right? If you’ve got a transcript or your, I always like to put in if if not a transcript, my meeting notes.
Dan
Yeah.
Rachel
And have it pull out action items for us and action items for client to be able to really quickly send an e-mail after. So it’s summarizing that too in that case and pulling it out for you.
Dan
Yeah, small things, but.
Rachel
Of course, check the work and make sure that you’ve noted everything but.
Dan
Yeah, right. Yes, this goes for all categories here, yeah.
Rachel
Yeah. The 4th one is rewriting so this is a really good. I think it’s my biggest use case for it is if you write a blog, you write a white paper, you write whatever it is right. You know that on the first draft it’s probably not going to be perfect. It’s going to need some refinements. I usually like to get it all down on paper and if no, it doesn’t. Sound good? And then run it through AI and have it refine it, right?
Dan
Yeah. Help me tell this story better.
Rachel
Yeah, like make it sound a little bit more professional. That’s a really good time to add in your like tone of voice for the client or for your company. Just again feed it all the information it needs. Who is the company? What kind of tone are they using? Give it, you know, the brand guidelines if you need to and have it fit or examples of things you’ve posted before for them and have it kind of fit that tone really good use. It’s still all came from your brain, you’re still, you know, the engine behind it, but it’s just refining it.
Dan
Yeah, I think that’s a good. Like it’s a good time saver for that middle part of writing because you can put together, like you said, a rough draft, have have AI kind of give you the V2 and then go back to your own knowledge and expertise to really hone it back. We can get that down and make sure everything’s correct and then the way that you wanna see it on paper and kind of take out that middle chunk of time where you’re doing the more tedious refinements.
Rachel
Yeah. Ohh yeah. Absolutely. The next one is classifications. This is really just organizing data. So this could be a whole lot of things, right? A full meeting transcript that becomes meeting notes, action items, it’s classifying it, but it’s organizing it or just making something a little bit more streamline and easy to read, use understand whether it be number data or written, so that sounds pretty straightforward. And last one is question answering. So answering questions about data so be careful when you ask AI to pull straight from the web to answer your questions. Ask at its source if you’re going to do that so that you can make sure you understand where it came from.
Dan
Yes.
Rachel
And if you do this, I would recommend using like Gemini because it’s Google so just a little smarter about where it’s pulling from. still ask it to give you its sources but even if you have questions about something you’ve put in there previously, whether it is big data or whatever it is, ask it a question about it, ask it what’s the biggest take away that you’re seeing here? What’s the pattern of something?
Dan
Right. Whereas the trend lines lie within this.
Rachel
Exactly. Yep. Yep. So. So those are the six main use cases, generation extraction, summarization, rewriting, classification and question answering. So if you need a sticky note on your desk on your computer, just put it there and spring clean-up that task list.
Dan
Yeah, yeah. And really free up some time for yourself to do, not just focus on the strategic work and the relationship building that is is so important to the world of communications, but also, you know, I think that gives you a chance to really focus on building your own skill set, your own network, saving some time for professional development because the technology is changing so much because the world around us is changing so much. Like we’ve said before, there are so many new skills and new, I guess, experiences that you can take the time to get involved with or build your experience with.
Rachel
Yeah, you give yourself the time to do those important things.
Dan
Yeah, yeah. You can become a better, a better marketer or a better communicator if you spend some time, you know? Just learning and also the experience of trial and error with some of these AI tools can really I think it’s so overwhelming to some people, you know, myself included when I first started to try to, you know, get involved with some of this to take AI on head on.
Rachel
Yes.
Dan
And understand what it can do and how it can do it
Rachel
Because the better you are as a user, the better outcome it gives you.
Dan
Yes.
Rachel
And, so I think it’s important to not rely on AI to give you exactly what you want off the bat, but to focus on how you can use it and inform it better to get what you need.
Dan
Yeah, try it with something that you’ve already done, just as a test case to see how it works and you know what you did well, what you did maybe wrong and fix it for the next time when you want to use it, start to finish
Rachel
Totally.
Dan
That experience with it really does the work, it helps you helps you build the skill set quickly.
Rachel
Absolutely. This is a great point too. I know I just finished up a couple Q1 reports, so we’re officially 1/4 down in 2025. Yeah, which feels fast and simultaneously like it’s been forever with how much is going on. But yeah, I digress. Are your KPI’s, your metrics, your reporting? Are they actually telling the story that you want to know for this year and the rest of the year? Are they telling you what you’ve done better this first quarter versus last year? Is it giving you a foundation to compare Q22? Yeah. Make sure that before we get even further into this year. And you have to backtrack on data because that is the worst. That is like the worst way to spend your time. Is it telling the right story? Are you finding out what you want to know? Are you understanding the ROI?
Dan
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I’ll use media for an example and just kind of thinking about you know, more traditional media relations reporting versus versus looking ahead to maybe something that can tell a better story. If you’re looking at just the sheer number of placements, if if your after year, quarter after quarter, you say I got 10 placements last quarter I want 15 this like you know growth, sure. Great. Awesome. Always good.
Rachel
Quarters aren’t apples to apples. Yeah. MHM.
Dan
But there’s there’s other ways. Yeah, exactly. You might have had a product launch or a store opening in Q1 that you didn’t have in Q2 and you can’t compete with that. So I think taking a look and maybe share a voice is a better way to look at it. If you’ve got 4 to 5 direct competitors who are all working for that same media placement that you are and more the thought leadership side, how do you compare against them for the quarter? Can you grow or maintain that share of voice in the in the coming quarter or over the course of a full year? And even if you’re already doing that, do you have your current list of competitors in there? Have you taken a look at that in a while? You know, take a few minutes to clean that up as well as well, and think about we’re really against here.
Rachel
Yeah, well, and then understand is where’s their coverage coming from and is that the kind of coverage you want because not all coverage is created equally. Sometimes you’ll see that their share of voice may be higher, but it was about layoffs or it was about right. So understanding than even a little bit deeper of comparing the kind of coverage you have and that they have and if it’s even something you want to compete with.
Dan
Yeah, and and going all the way back to the first thing that we talked about on the or second I guess, but the media list kind of side of things, are your competitors in publications that maybe you’re not aware of or looking at reporters covering your industry who you may not have engaged with yet, their opportunity there?
Rachel
It’s a great, great point. I I know one client specifically. We’ve done that for. We’ve always added. Reporters and like relevant reporters and publications to our media list as we see them covered in them. If we weren’t aware of them and it just expands it and opens where clearly they’re interested in your field in, you know, a similar company. So what’s to say you shouldn’t be pitching them? So absolutely take a look at that. Even think from a social perspective, you know, algorithm changes. What’s changed? Do we need to rework our strategy for this next quarter? Should do we need to consolidate? Do we need post more? Is our creative working what’s worked or you know, is the campaign running smoothly? Is now the time I mean? There is something you should be looking at of course month over month, but I always think that having at minimum three months of data is the way that you can actually start to see trends and patterns. It’s really, really hard to do month over month because so much can change or there’s just different circumstances.
Dan
Yeah. Yeah, it’s a lot of anomalies can happen over the course of a month. You want to be able to kind of smooth that out over a longer period of time.
Rachel
And six months is ideal. Yeah, right. Like, that’s really where you’re gonna see, like, OK, this month, we did really well because we did XY and Z versus this one.
Dan
Yeah.
Rachel
I feel like if you can do all those things, yeah.
Dan
Right. You have time for that, right?
Rachel
Yeah, yeah, you say I right, go ahead. Absolutely.
Dan
Let’s start with one or two, you know, start with a start with a piece of that. You know, as as things warm up here, think about how you can, how you can revisit your strategy, whether that be messaging, whether it be your matrix and where you’re positioning that messaging, whether it be your own task list or your teams. Or just taking a look at reporting in KPIs, just a few yeah, buckets where everybody can always use a second look and a reminder to to freshen up.
Rachel
And to make it fun as the weather gets warmer, sit outside and do it.
Dan
Yes, I’m ready for that. I’m ready for that.
Rachel
That’s how you can make it this. Even more fun. Just change your location as weather gets warmer to to spring clean, make it more enjoyable. But. If you’ve got any other thoughts or spring cleaning ideas, let us know. This is just a small list of things that I’m sure there’s so many more out there.
Dan
Yes, for sure. Give us a shout if you’ve got something else.
Rachel
Absolutely! And we’ll be back with another guest next time. See ya.
