Commscrafting [ kɒmz-kraft-ing]
Verb. Commscrafting is an Inkvine process that helps companies find the right words to shape the future of their business.
Commscraft [ kɒmz-kraft]
Noun. The art of crafting the perfect message in order to attract, persuade and engage effectively.
What is Commscrafting?
Commscrafting is an Inkvine process that helps companies find the right words to shape the future of their business.
Brands that use the right words make it look easy to do. Commscrafting, especially for technology firms, requires empathy, understanding, creativity and craftsmanship in equal measure.
The right messages, wherever they appear, will work their hardest to attract, persuade and engage. The right words just fit. They do the work they’re supposed to.
Trying to craft your own comms is like trying to take out your own appendix.
Just like simple design, people underestimate how hard it is to craft coherent, consistent and engaging messaging that just works like it’s supposed to. It’s particularly hard to do for yourself, a bit like trying to take out your own appendix.
Commscrafting – Jargon explained
Where Commscraft should be applied:
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- Vision. What kind of future do you want for humanity?
- Your mission: How is your business going to play a part in making that future a reality?
- Company values: What are the behaviours that you will and won’t tolerate? Name them. Then hold yourself accountable to them if you want to be trusted, by your customers, your suppliers and your people.
- Homepage messaging – The front door greeting, who are you and what do you do? Here’s a great example of wonderful homepage messaging from Mmhmm.
- Investment decks – An investment deck is oneo if the hardest working pieces of communications in any business arsenal. It must communicate expertise, potential and remarkability. It needs to provide validation and proof. And most of all, build trust with authentic and impactful communication. Here’s the deck Rank Fishkin used to raise funds for Moz.com in 2011.
- Value proposition – How do you solve your best customer’s problems better than anyone else? Slack does this really well! It’s critical to articulate value using the language of your best customer. Often we don’t use the same words our customers do.
- Positioning statement – Speaking of your best customer, who are they? What are they comparing you to? Positioning guru April Dunford says getting this right is like “having the wind at your back”. We love her approach. Read her twitter thread. You’ll thank us.
- Careers page – Attracting te very best people is a rare skill. Finding people that will fit perfectly with your culture is even harder! Two career pages we love are from WUNDER (An ecommerce AI firm) and Axonista, a world leader in video commerce and shoppable video.
- Video storyboard – Shooting or animating a great video takes time and effort. It’s not cheap to get this right. The very first step in getting an amazing video that not only looks good, but does the work it was supposed to – is with the storyboard. What story are you trying to tell, and what action do you need the viewer to take.
- Tag line. The hardest working line in marketing, and the least understood. And no, you can’t ‘just do it’. In fact, don’t mention Apple, or Nike until you get down and dirty with the basics.
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Inkvine Consulting
Inkvine is a specialist consultancy firm that provides support to fast-paced technology firms through the provision of marketing communication services. We are not an agency, and we don’t want to sell you hours, we like to solve problems. Our team provides expertise across all aspects of growth-focussed communication.
We work with established technology companies and a small number of HPSUs to help accelerate growth. We work with a limited number of clients at any one time with a focus on expert high performance marketing campaigns.
