Do you know that communication can make or break your business? Many people think business communication is easy but it really isn’t. There is more to it than just words.

Communication is an essential tool for building your business and brand online. It actually has a direct relationship with content development and content marketing.

If you have an email list and social media community, you’ll need to know how to communicate with them.

In order to communicate effectively, there are nine questions you’ll need to ask yourself:

1. Who is the message for?
2. What relationship do you have with your target audience?
3. What is the actual message?
4. Will your message be useful to your audience?
5. Is the timing right?
6. What barriers are you likely to encounter?
7. What communication channel will you use?
8. What feedback are you likely to get?
9. How will you work with the feedback?

Basically, there are 4 characters involved in the communication process; the sender, the receiver, the message itself and channels.

Many people assume communication as a system that only has to do with words

The roles of the sender include:

• Developing the appropriate message/content for his audience: I once came across a college Twitter account with an update that said something like, “Get 1,000 followers in not time. Click here” or so. Please don’t do this. I was shocked when I saw it.

• Identifying channels for content distribution. Channels include: e-mail, social media and video sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn, etc., whitepapers, ebooks, etc.

• Identifying barriers that may hinder the purpose of the message. Likely barriers include email filtering (to prevent spam), nature of your list (e.g. demographics, income levels, etc.) and language.

• Analyzing response: The kind of feedback you get will let you know how effective your message was. This is an essential part that is actively being considered by both new and old businesses.

As the sender, you have many tasks on your hand and you should make sure to follow through the above roles if you want to be effective. For example, once you identify appropriate channels for certain types of messages, you’ll not have to worry about what type of message to communicate and how to deliver it.

The receiver’s roles include:

• Consuming message
• Sharing message to other people who may be interested
• Giving Feedback
• Doing any other thing the message asks them to do.

The receiver has the magic wand when it comes to sharing and acting on your content.

Your message could be any of these types:

• Newsy
• Sales pitch
• Survey/feedback request
• Tips/tutorials

Messages can serve the following purposes:

• Inform
• Educate
• Convince

Messages can be converted to the following formats:

• Video
• Audio
• Document files; .PDF, .doc, .txt, etc.
• Graphic; .gif, .jpg, .png, etc.
• Regular text/ undocumented text
• Regular speech

Channels are paths for communication; email, social media, telephone, TV, Radio, etc..

The channels I currently use to communicate Sociatic are Q&A sites, Twitter, LinkedIn, Junta42, Social Media Today, Bizsugar, Delicious, Google Buzz, blogs (via this blog and via guest posting on other blogs) etc.

When you identify and recognize the communication process like this, you can easily convince and convert your leads into sales.

Let me know if I left something out.

Customers follow or ‘unfollow’ brands because of their experience with them. They follow brands because of their faith in that brand. Because they know what they will always be getting from that brand. Because that brand has a unique spot that serves the industry in which they find themselves.

Apple is followed because of their revolutionary and innovative products. Mercedes is followed because customers are assured of luxury and quality engineering. CNN is followed because they are first in news. The list of unique, remarkable brands goes on and on.

Now let’s shift focus to you. What makes your brand unique? Before people will follow your brand, you need to show them something they can have faith in. Something that is difficult to find in your competitor’s products. Something that will stand for your brand; be your brand’s definition.

There are a few ways you can achieve this. One way is to be unique in a remarkable way. Creating a remarkably unique brand image helps you dodge most of the competition. Facebook understood this when they started. They didn’t want to be just another social network, they wanted to be more and they succeeded.

There are millions of businesses trying to copy each other. The sad thing is, most of them die fast. Most become bankrupt because they spend lots of money to advertise their ‘common’ products; products just like the others. This is no way to win. Something has to be different about you.

Building a remarkable brand takes lots of creativity and innovation. Counterfeiters know this, that’s why they spend money producing product look-alikes instead of investing that same money into their own product ideas.

If you want to run a ‘monopoly’ in today’s marketplace, build a unique brand. If you can get your customers to have faith in your brand’s attributes, you have a ‘monopoly’. Apple is running a ‘monopoly’ in their marketplace because they are remarkably unique in everything they do. What can you do to make your business a ‘monopoly’?

The second way you can build a faithful customer base is to treat all customers equally. Treat the $1 item buyers the same way as $1,000 item buyers. When you do this, people become more attached to you and your business will grow. A $1 item buyer could bring you a $1,000 item buyer through word of mouth so why don’t you treat them equally eh?

The third way you can bring in faithful customers is to be consistent at what you are best known for.  If you are remarkable, stay remarkable. Start with innovation and continue with innovation. Complacency is not accepted in business because your customers and competitors are watching you. In fact, your customers are watching you and your competitors at the same time. Once they notice you have stopped evolving, they will move on to the other company that has evolved.

Consistency builds faith.

How do you know if you have faithful customers?

Your customers have the best answer to this question. They don’t have to tell you in words. Their actions are there to assess yourself.

5 ways you can tell if you have faithful customers are:

• They refer other customers to you
• They give you feedback about your products
• They buy from you for the second time…third and fourth times …again and again.
• They defend your brand when people spread negative rumors about it.
• They give you a second chance when you flop. Please Note: Second chances are mostly given to brands that have been consistent at something for a long time and then all of a sudden, slack a bit.

If your customers do this for you, then you earned their trust.

It doesn’t matter if you agree with me or not but your customers are your most valuable assets. Like all your other assets, you need to get them to work for you. You need to understand them in order to leverage them. Don’t focus all your efforts on advertising. Focus a big chunk of your efforts on your building customer relationships too. If you’re in business for the money, you lose focus on the customer but if you decide to be in business for the customer, you build a better business.