What is Required by Professional Communicators?
Professional communicators today are faced with more and more challenges when it comes to gaining publicity and creating content that engages and reaches the right audience. This means the skills necessary to be successful are quite specific. This is likely due to the “meta” that is created on specific social media platforms. Meta refers to something that becomes the normal (most common) approach or strategy because of how successful and/or efficient it is. It is almost essential for professional communicators to have an exceptional understanding of the current meta that exists on each platform as this allows them to create content that will be the most relevant and engaging for that specific platform. Creating meta content is the safest way to gain success on social media as it has already been proven to work by other creators hence why it has become the meta. However, going against the meta is also a bold strategy that could result in even more success if executed correctly. Content that is against the meta can stand out more than meta content due to its differences in content, creative style, approach, and strategy but requires a lot more thought effort, strategic thinking, and digital media excellence.
‘As a professional communicator you must possess critical interpretative skills and technical competencies for digital media literacy’
(Johnston & Rowney 2018)
I think this is truer now than ever, as strong interpretative skills are required to understand and unpack the meta that exists on social media platforms. As an example, the corporate Tik-Tok meta that exists right now is strongly related to that of telling personal stories and highlighting the brand within those stories indirectly or directly. Although understanding the meta is important, it is only one part of the puzzle that is success on social media. The next step is creating strong content that will be engaging, shareable and bingeable. This requires strong technical digital media skills which is the second part of Johnston and Rowney’s statement in 2018.
Combining these two key skills is what is truly required from professional communicators today. Allowing them to create successful social media campaigns and stand-alone content pieces that connect with their audience and are in line with the current meta on a platform. If the approach by the creator is to create a non-meta piece of content these skills will need to be used with perfect execution as well as an immense amount of strategic thinking, ability, and implementation. When this is achieved a viral piece of content is generally created and results in a higher-than-normal number of interactions and awareness developed for the creator. Without these skills meta and non-meta content will not be achieved rather what is most likely to be created is filler content which does not generate a good number of views or interactions.
Overall, we can see through this discussion about meta and non-meta content creation why the skills of interpretation and technical competency for digital media literacy are essential for professional communicators today.
References
Johnston, J. and Rowney K., 2018 Media strategies: managing content, platforms and relationships Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, Sydney, ch 1.
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