7 key roles for corporate communicators

First, the bad: “There’s never been a harder time to be a communicator than right now.” Why? Everyone has attention deficit disorder.

“Nobody can pay attention to anybody for more than a minute,” Crescenzo said. What’s worse, corporate communicators have to compete with hundreds of other media and activities for employee attention. Would you rather read the Cosmopolitan.com’s write-up about the best time of day to have sex or “A Word from the President?”

Nobody wants to plow through boring copy when there’s interesting, fun, or even naughty content they could be reading, Crescenzo asserted. It’s up to communicators to make sure their content isn’t boring, even if that’s what the company has always served up.

“Left to their own devices, corporations and organizations will always create really bad content,” he said. It’s up to communicators to say that things can be better.

Luckily—and this is the good news—communicators have more tools at their disposal than ever before to make that happen. If they can find their way into the following seven roles, Crescenzo said, they can push their organizations out of their ruts.

Role 1: The social media spy