Types of Corporate Communication and How Video Can Help!

Communication with employees, partners, customers, and the general public is key to running a successful business. In this article, we explore the various types of corporate communication. We also discuss how video can help create effective and impactful communication with both internal and external stakeholders.

Jump to:

• What is corporate communication?
• The importance of effective corporate communication
• Challenges of corporate communication
• 2 types of corporate communication
• How video can improve your corporate communications
• Kaltura corporate communication solutions

What Is Corporate Communication?

Corporate Communication is the umbrella term for all forms of official interaction of a company with its stakeholders. These stakeholders can be internal (employees, managers, executives, …) or external (existing and potential customers, investors, media, lobby groups, …). That’s why we generally divide corporate communications into internal and external communications.

Corporate communications are delivered in three ways:

• Written communication: website copy, print copy, ad copy, reports, emails, …
• Visual communication: images, graphs, logos, and branding, …
• Audiovisual communication: video-based content, events, meetings, …

Or often a combination of the three.

The Importance of Effective Corporate Communication

Business is about collaborating, convincing, negotiating, educating, and organizing — all of which require communication. Internal communication consolidates the company culture and coordinates your entire workforce, whereas external communication sells your products and services and shapes your brand.

In a sentence, corporate communications help an organization streamline its many visions and values into a cohesive message to its audiences.

Effective corporate communication can do several things for your business:

• It aligns all members of your organization about what’s going on, what to do, and how to handle specific tasks and situations.
• It helps formulate an appropriate and unified message to internal and external stakeholders, in times of crisis (crisis communication).
• Two-way communication (top-down/bottom-up) creates transparency and increases productivity and employee satisfaction. Being in the loop of company affairs and having a channel to voice their opinion empowers employees. Engaged employees are 18% more likely to work together as a team.
• It helps grow your audience and your customer base through brand awareness, marketing campaigns, and public relations.
• It helps attract new talent, through employee advocacy and by showcasing your company culture. Social Media has become the tool of choice for many organizations to throw a fishing line in the highly skilled job seekers pool.

Challenges of Corporate Communication

If mismanaged, corporate communications can have an adverse effect. For example,

• Information overload can cause your audiences to ignore or unsubscribe from your communication channels and miss critical information.
• Inconsistent use of your communication channels and convoluted messaging can cause information to get lost.
• Contradicting information can harm your organization’s authority or credibility.
• …

It’s safe to say that corporate communications can make or break business success. That’s why a company’s corporate communications department plays a crucial role. It sends out the right and relevant messages, formulated in the best possible way, through appropriate channels that will reach the intended audience and elicit the desired action.

2 Types of Corporate Communication

We distinguish two types of corporate communications: internal communication and external communication. Both are very different in content, tone, approach, and tools. That’s why they are usually handled by different departments within a company. Let’s break them down for you:

Internal Communication

Internal communication takes place within company walls, between management, employees, executives, etc. Internal communication doesn’t have a commercial intention. Instead, it’s trying to “sell” something completely different: company culture and having all of your staff push the boat in the same direction. Effective internal communication is crucial and ultimately also influences products, services, and external image. 82% of CEOs and CHROs believe company culture forms a potential competitive advantage.

Internal communication is divided into different types that solve a specific task within the organization: change communication, crisis communication, top-down/bottom-up communication, peer communication, and culture communication.

Use Cases: The company’s mission statement, employee newsletters, the company intranet, corporate training, meetings, town halls, communication to shareholders, …

External Communication

External communication is your brand, your company image that you convey to the outside world. External communication can be official, in the form of press releases or annual reports. It can also be more casual, in the form of social media posts. Or it can be commercial, in the form of ads or events.

External communication is not always about putting up a happy face and selling your product and image. In case something goes wrong, crisis communication is crucial. History has proven time and again that a company’s handling of a crisis can make or break its image (and by extent, its success as a business) for a long time to come, if not indefinitely.

The content, tone, and approach of your external communication depend by and large on your industry, branding, and style choices. A company like Mailchimp can get away with a lot of silliness and humor in its external communication before raising any eyebrows. You wouldn’t be that tolerant with a company like Bank of America.

Use Cases: Websites, social media, annual reports, white papers, blogs, brochures and sales collateral, emails, events and webinars, advertisements, press releases, …

How Video Can Improve Your Corporate Communications

Video is the most powerful format to communicate to both internal and external audiences. In fact, 87% of millennial executives believe video has a significant and positive impact on company performance and 60% of millennials will rather watch a video than read a company newsletter.

The following use cases illustrate how you can use video to foster corporate communication in your organization:

Internal communications

1. Connect with colleagues and employees through video conferencing

Video conferencing became a business standard during the 2020-2021 pandemic. Compared to face-to-face meetings, it improves communication and collaboration and also increases productivity while saving time and money. Thanks to these benefits video conferencing won’t disappear with the end of the pandemic. So, it’s still relevant to invest in a platform that truly enables remote collaboration.

2. Get your workforce aligned through town hall meetings

Town halls are one of the most effective formats to build the corporate culture and create a sense of community. It’s an impactful way to share important information, align all employees with the company goals, and enable interaction between senior executives and employees.

3. Onboard and train your employees with video (safety, tasks, company presentation)

Onboarding and training videos are a cost-effective way to bring employees up to speed with the company, its (new) work processes, and safety regulations. It shows the organization’s commitment to the success and safety of the employee.

4. Policy updates and change management through video

Video as a format is great at simplifying complex ideas and helping employees understand and accept changes. These videos can be delivered in real time or on-demand and the audience engagement can be tracked with analytics.

5. Replace email with video messaging

Video is easier to digest and more engaging than written text. Why not replace company-wide emails with short video messages that can be tracked for performance?

External communications

1. Connect with clients through video conferencing

Take the case of sales reps. How many customers could they visit in a single day, before the widespread use of video conferencing? Video conferencing with customers saves tons of time and money, increases productivity, and ensures the client’s full attention in a dedicated virtual environment.

2. Build your community and your brand with virtual events

Organizing industry events used to be a huge endeavor. With today’s virtual events platforms, you can set up events that cater to a global audience, for a fraction of the cost and resources. Plus, digital tools make virtual events much more efficient in collecting leads and data. The time and space independent nature of virtual events (and the lower price) drastically lowers friction of attendees to join.

3. Educate existing and potential customers with webinars

Webinars are extremely popular right now and for good reason. Webinars have a wide reach and are excellent for building authority and trust. They build connection between your audience and your brand and are a great source of high-quality leads.

4. Stay top-of-mind and convert users with on-demand video content

Video has become a wildly popular format for product presentations, company overviews, tutorials, branding campaigns, etc. Today, brands can keep 100% control over their video-based communications by producing, managing, and hosting video assets in-house.

5. Spruce up your email marketing with video messaging

Personalized video messages can be 300% more effective at getting your recipients’ attention. If open rates of your email marketing campaigns keep you up at night or if you’re looking for an original way to retain existing clients, video messaging is a good option for you.

Kaltura’s Corporate Communication Solutions

So, long story short, effective corporate communication is mission-critical to run a healthy business. The art is to keep full control over your internal and external communications and create an output of clear and impactful messages through the appropriate channels and to the right audiences.

How do you do that?

What if we told you that there is a suite of powerful solutions that covers every corporate communication need? Kaltura has made effective corporate communications its business and has developed and refined cloud-based video solutions that will enable you to optimize every aspect of your corporate communications:

Kaltura Meetings

Kaltura Meetings is so much more than just a video call. It’s a powerful collaboration tool that will transform your online meetings into productive collaboration spaces that will move your business forward. With colleagues or with customers, Kaltura Meeting rooms are persistent and contain all the tools you need to make your meeting a success: interactive whiteboards, shared notetaking, chats, content playlists, and much more. Experience for yourself how Kaltura Meetings outshines your current video conferencing solution, any day of the week!

Try Kaltura Meetings for Free, Today!

Kaltura Virtual Events

Kaltura Virtual Events makes organizing virtual events a breeze. Highlight your brand and your community with interactive branded experiences to audiences of any size, from sales kick-offs to multi-day, multi-track events. You’ll have all the tools at your disposal to create the event that will check all your objectives: reliable HD streaming, attendee registration features, chats and networking tools, personalized experiences, gamification and engagement features, extensive sponsor features, advanced analytics and data collecting tools to home in on those elusive qualified leads, and so much more!

Discover Kaltura Virtual Events

Kaltura Video Portal

The Kaltura Video Portal provides your employees with a central hub for video creation, management, sharing, and collaboration. This highly flexible platform lets you build your own corporate YouTube under your branding that will host your employee training videos, customer-facing product videos, tutorials, etc.

Try Kaltura Video Portal for Free, Today!

Kaltura Town Halls

Kaltura Town Halls broadcasts live webcasts to your workforce, no matter the scale or location. Add power to your message and nurture your enterprise culture with reliable live streaming, supported by advanced real-time analytics and post-event production features to repurpose your live recording to video-on-demand for continued engagement.

Discover Kaltura Town Halls’ Extensive Features

Kaltura Video Messaging

Grab your recipient’s attention with personalized video messages you can track. Whether for marketing purposes or internal communications, if email is your preferred channel, then crush those open rates and get your message across with engaging video emails for maximum impact. But don’t take our word for it. Try it yourself!

Try Kaltura Video Messaging for Free, Today!