A Perspective on Communications and Cross-Department Collaboration
By Micah Gibson, April Sramek, and Emily O’Connor, writing for the American Society of Association Executives
Communications professionals must adapt to working among all departments, especially at associations, where teams are often small and require cross-collaboration.
This article provides tips on how to get started clarifying your team’s role or strengthen existing internal partnerships, using an example scenario of working with a multimedia team to provide content such as videos or podcasts.
Understand Their Needs and Explain Your Potential Solutions
Ask specific questions to determine objectives and target audiences. This way you can create messaging that aligns with what the team is trying to achieve and provide format options that will support their goals.
Example questions: What is unique about this initiative? Are there any roadblocks you anticipate?
Make sure your non-communications colleagues have a clear understanding of the platform for the multimedia project and use data to demonstrate how audiences interact with media on that platform. For example, a social media video will have different length requirements than a video embedded on your website.
Be thorough in reviewing formats and destinations in this pre-production phase. Some non-communications professionals may not be aware that video aspect ratio, for example, won’t be easily interchangeable once a project is complete.
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