Zoom on higher education: the Internal Communication Manager
Nowadays, social media are part of the everyday business, when it comes to animate a community. While this fact is largely accepted by the population as well as the institutions, the actions and the consequences of this evolution are still somewhat unclear.
Tools are digitalized but the conquest of social networks seems to only be a concern for a small amount of schools that were able to mobilize their community. According to a 2016 study about “the communication in higher education”, less than 25% of schools have more than 3.000 Facebook followers and less than 20% have more than 2.000 followers on Twitter. As well, only 16% of the schools have a cumulated number of 5.000 followers on their different Linkedin pages.
In the global context of communication, if higher education systems are sharing the same problems as companies and administrations, their knowledge when it comes to digitalization is still feeble which makes the management of their internal communication much more difficult. When asking communication specialists in the field of higher communication what main difficulties they were facing, the most often recurring problems which were quoted were the lack of time to achieve their goal, the low number of exchanges between colleagues which makes the collection system difficult, the budget and the fact that their teams were often way too small in order to enable an effective strategy.
Furthermore the main concerns expressed by many communication directors were the creation and the animation of the community, the notoriety and the branding politic and also the growing influence of stakeholders.
Communication : accompany and innovate
With the growth of digital dimensions such as Internet and other networks, communication managers have to clearly define their branding through the history of the institutions but also their working forces and their accreditations. “A brand is like a suit we have to conceive for someone by using their history. But how can we be different when we want to be liked by everyone?”, question Brigitte Fournier, founder and CEO of the communication agency Noir sur Blanc. Higher education institutions have to create a clear identity, to be able to follow the fast-pace at which communication systems and codes are evolving.
In 2015, Olivier Cimelière claimed that communication manager had to reinvent themselves if they didn’t want to disappear, in front of a younger community and communication now moving toward a 100% digital distribution.
Linkedin, Twitter, blogs…, yet, all of these medias makes it impossible to control every part of the communication process. Used to be in charge of everything from the creation of the schedule to the proofreading of the end product, communication manager have to let go of certain aspect and reconsider the role of the communication. Their job now consist in encouraging the community — teachers and students alike, to invest themselves in social medias.
But in that case, what is the best profile when it comes to communication manager ?
“Today, job posts are asking for a ‘rare bird’ that must be able to speak five languages, have experiences and master the whole digital universe. But a communication manager must before everything is a judge for the quality of information”, says Nathalie Le Calvez.
Especially during testing period, communication services are being attentive to the answer that student of the institution may give to potential candidates, as “it’s always better than the words of the institutions”, says Nathalie Le Calvez, communication manager at Mines of Nantes.
It is therefore possible to give the possibility of speech to everyone. Like said before, the profusion of all social medias, makes it easy for form and share an opinion. The more developed the media become, the younger the target becomes as well, which makes it the best way to communicate to students. But how can an institution choose between all of these networks, while still taking into account its image and its budget ? Is it really necessary to be part of all of them, like Google+? While most of them are free, chargeable services are now becoming a trend, but are they really useful ?
Answering the constraints while still taking into account the digital turmoil, is one of the key challenges that a communication manager has to face.
The main difficulties
Following the answers of several communication managers in higher education institutions, there were several issues to manage. Indeed, in main of the cases, schools have a lack of financial resources face to the plentiful of different missions, but also a lack of time. One major point revealed by the study was that it’s actually hard to capture information to use, due to the subjective opinions of everybody and the lack of exchanges with counterparts.
Internal Communication Managers then have to create a cooperation in a community composed by administrative, professors, students, other employees, etc. by building a strong internal communication strategy and optimizing it thanks to the multitude of new communication channels, which can be used as much for short-term actions than for long-term ones, depending on the media.
However, the internal communication, as much important as it is, was for a long time not in the center of the institutions communication strategies. But these last times it has changed, for example, the Audencia group owns a large network composed by about 20 internal communication correspondents.
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