[00:00:00] Mel: Hi, and welcome to Less Chatter, More Matter, a podcast about all things communication without the waffle. I'm your host, Mel Loy, and in this show, I will give you short, punchy, practical communication tips and insights, you can start using in your communication practices right away. I'm a former corporate communication executive who happily took a redundancy, started my own business, and never looked back.

[00:00:27] Mel: These days, I use my 20 plus years of experience to help guide organizations of all shapes and sizes in how to communicate more effectively. I'm wife to Michael, cat mum to Cookie, aunty to 12 nieces and nephews, a yoga teacher, and a group fitness fanatic. I promise these episodes will always be short, sharp, and helpful, so let's get amongst it.

[00:00:52] Hello, friend, and welcome to the last episode of Less Chatter, More Matter for 2023. [00:01:00] Goodness me, what a year it has been. I was doing a bit of a stock take of this year for myself and my own business.

[00:01:08] Mel: For background, my mantra this year was all in. So it'll probably come as a surprise or no surprise, rather that I was crazy busy, but gosh, it's been an exciting and rewarding year. A few of the goals I kicked were number one, securing more training and speaking gigs, which was awesome. I did more learning and networking by going to a bunch of events and conferences.

[00:01:30] Mel: And it also helped that I'm a member of IABC and the chapter president for Queensland. So that did help, but I also joined a CEO mastermind group for six months, which was... also really brilliant. Uh, I traveled more. So I actually started the year, New Year's Eve, we flew back to Australia from the UK where we had been visiting my brother.

[00:01:50] Mel: And, uh, that kind of set the tone for the year ahead. I ended up having four overseas trips. To be honest, most of those were work related, but still had some fun. Uh, six trips [00:02:00] around Australia to places like Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Jindabyne, which is where there's a, it's kind of a snow area and we're flying out on New Year's Eve to head to New Zealand.

[00:02:11] Mel: So we're starting the year the way we, or ending the year the way we started it with an international flight. Uh, I started this podcast this year. That was a goal. So... tick, tick. Done. I launched my first ever evergreen online course. That means it's available at any time. And that's the communications career fundamentals course.

[00:02:32] Mel: So that's going along nicely. And I'm actually working on a... A second iteration of that right now, which I'm going to launch in the earlier in the new year, I launched the pilot of my Fresh 2 Freelancing course. So that's been fun. We've got our last, uh, meeting this week for that course, the last of six.

[00:02:50] Mel: So that's been really cool. So I'll launch the actual course itself next year. I wrote the manuscript of my first book. I've gotten back into regular [00:03:00] reading and I've cleared a bit of space to allow room for growth, which was a big goal of mine as well. So I'm pretty happy with that. And so my challenge to you is if you look back at your goals that you set at the beginning of this year, what did you achieve?

[00:03:13] Mel: What did you maybe add to the list throughout the year? And what got put on the back burner and look, it's okay. If some goals had to be set aside, that's life, it happens, but it's always just a good idea to reflect on what's been and set yourself up for the year ahead.

[00:03:28] Mel: Now, speaking of the year ahead. This episode is a bit of a recap of the communications world in 2023 and my predictions for 2024. I have to say, when I was doing the research for this episode and looking back at the year, there's so much that went on this year and honestly, it's amazing how quickly we forget and move on.

[00:03:49] Mel: So let's get stuck into it, starting with the key communications themes in 2023. Number one is, of course, artificial intelligence and machine learning. [00:04:00] And while AI has been around for a while in various forms, this year saw this explosion of tools that everyone can use. And it had a massive impact on our sector.

[00:04:11] Mel: The tools that have gone absolutely gangbusters are all tools that could appear to make some parts of our roles obsolete. So particularly copywriting and design. And some of those tools include, of course, ChatGPT - that was really the one that changed the game to begin with. Google BARD, which is Google's answer to ChatGPT.

[00:04:29] Mel: Canva's artificial intelligence suite; they've got a whole bunch of tools in there now. DALI, so many more. They're all designed to essentially generate word and image outputs. And there's also tools that are doing deep dives into data sets and telling us exactly what copy and images we should be using in our advertising, which is amazing.

[00:04:51] Mel: But of course that's had many communications professionals worried, like, will I still have a job now that AI is on the scene? And you know, good question. [00:05:00] The good part is that while these tools initially saw quite an explosion of worry, I guess, as they've started to be adopted, the limitations of them have become very clear.

[00:05:11] Mel: They are not perfect by any means, but the opportunities have also become clear. Like getting us out of the non strategic copywriting kind of work, letting others use tools like Google Bard to start their drafts. That's awesome. Being able to take an image you have pop it into Canva and expand the background or have it recreated in your brand colors.

[00:05:31] Mel: Just those simple little things that have saved us a lot of time and have been able to help us boost our creativity and our productivity. The downside has been that some of these tools have been very, very expensive. Now that said, now that there's such an influx of these tools and more competition, I'm really hoping we'll see those costs come down.

[00:05:53] Mel: The second big theme has been hybrid working. Now, this year, post pandemic madness, [00:06:00] we've seen a lot of businesses officially settle into hybrid ways of working. So what I mean by that is they've got policies, procedures, et cetera, now in place.

[00:06:10] Mel: Particularly in the first half of the year, there was a lot of stories about businesses putting those policies in place that required staff to be in the office a certain number of days a week. It wasn't just a matter of whatever you want anymore. And look, there's many reasons for that. One is that businesses had committed to long term, very expensive leases on office space that was going to waste.

[00:06:31] Mel: There were also concerns about productivity, uh, but also you will always get a few bad apples who take the piss and decide hybrid working means permanently working from home, essentially. Now, from a communication perspective, that's meant we've had to completely rethink our internal communication strategies, those bandaid fixes that we rolled out during the pandemic now needed a review as well, because what was fit for purpose two years ago probably needed some tweaks for our new [00:07:00] reality.

[00:07:01] Mel: And so, for example, I know a few businesses I've worked with this year rushed to bring in Yammer and Teams and so forth. During the pandemic, but now it's all a bit of a schmuzzle because nobody can find anything. There was no governance about what these channels should and shouldn't be used for. So that's meant a big review of channels, what's working, what's not, what functionality have with existing channels that needs to be considered and so on.

[00:07:28] Mel: It's also about content and how we target that content to different audiences. People who work fully remotely as well as hybrid as well as full time in the office. Now, one of the challenges with hybrid working has been the proximity bias. Essentially, it means that you're more likely to get opportunities or be promoted if you are seen more frequently by your leader.

[00:07:50] Mel: There's been a big piece of thinking required as a result about equitable access to leaders and how communication channels and [00:08:00] practices can play a part in that. Hybrid working is here to stay, but this year was really about how we professionalize the communication in that environment, and I think we've still got a way to go.

[00:08:12] Mel: The third key theme I want to touch on from this year has been crisis communication, particularly in the technology sector. And this year, we've seen more businesses become victims of cyber attacks. And these kind of attacks are just becoming more and more frequent. They're often big attacks as well, and they're not going away.

[00:08:32] Mel: Some of the big stories this year, at least in my neck of the woods, centred around Latitude Financial. So back in March, they were the victims of a data breach that impacted over 14 million people across Australia and New Zealand. Another breach just recently was DP World Australia. They are our largest operator of shipping ports, and they had to close their Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Fremantle operations temporarily.

[00:08:58] Mel: So you can imagine. The [00:09:00] impact that's had on profit and on supply chains. And of course we saw Optus's nationwide outage, which I did an episode about a few weeks ago. Now that's just the ones we know about because they are big players. What these breaches and technology failures showed us was how critical good crisis communication is in managing reputation damage during these events.

[00:09:22] Mel: And we saw that fail spectacularly with Optus. And actually, since I recorded that episode a few weeks ago, if you haven't kept up to date, The CEO of Optus has since resigned. Now it's become clear this year that a, having a well prepared crisis management and communication plan and capabilities is essential and b, despite it being essential, too few companies have invested in it.

[00:09:46] Mel: So I'm very hopeful that we'll see more investment of time and resources in crisis communication planning and capability building in 2024. And crisis comms leads me to the next trend, which was [00:10:00] social media chaos. So this year, goodness me, we've seen some big headlines.

[00:10:06] Mel: Let's start with X, which was formerly known as Twitter. But basically creating and then fueling its own bin fires constantly because Elon Musk has now directed the removal of a number of safeguarding mechanisms and moderation of content on the platform. There's been some very vile content allowed back on.

[00:10:27] Mel: And as a result, we've seen some big names pull out their advertising altogether or reduce it. And in some cases even remove their Uh, profiles from the platform altogether. I mean, we're talking about Disney, Warner brothers, Paramount, Apple, IBM, Unilever, Coca Cola, Nestle, Wells Fargo, LinkedIn, Dell, Mars, and so many more.

[00:10:52] Mel: Elon and his CEO have constantly been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. And I think their lack of empathy and [00:11:00] understanding of the environment they're in has really shown through. But it did pave the way, however, for Meta to launch its rival platform, Threads. Now, Threads has just been launched in the EU, but it has been available since July in Australia and about 100 other countries around the world.

[00:11:18] Mel: Threads is still in its early stages, so we'll give it that. There are updates to functionality being rolled out every few months, and they really seem to be taking on board user feedback. Now, while Threads made a really big splash when it launched, and we don't know the exact numbers, we do know that many of those initial users have since left, and Threads is struggling to attract and retain users.

[00:11:42] Mel: X still gets about a hundred times more web traffic than Threads worldwide. And it has about 11 times more monthly active users on its mobile apps in the US. So Threads still has a way to go, but it is in its infancy. And look, if Elon keeps going the way he's going. [00:12:00] Who knows? I think 2024 we will see a further decline of X and further growth in threads.

[00:12:07] Mel: The other big news that came out of the chaos of the social media world this year was TikTok's management being brought before a U. S. congressional hearing. There are concerns, and this is not just in the U. S., But in other countries around the world about data safety. Now, if you're not aware, the background is that TikTok is owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance.

[00:12:28] Mel: And countries like the U. S. and Canada and Australia are concerned about sensitive user data being made available to the Chinese government. And the use of the platform to spread misinformation. Now, we haven't seen a complete ban on TikTok come into effect, but many governments have banned the app on official devices.

[00:12:47] Mel: So, for example, staff who have work issued mobile phones. Now, that said, the governor of Montana in the U. S. tried to ban TikTok from operating in that state, but subsequent legal proceedings have [00:13:00] stopped that, as it most likely violates their First Amendment of the U. S. Constitution. So, we will see how that plays out in the months to come.

[00:13:08] So, that's four of the big comms themes we saw come out of 2023. What's in store for 2024? Well, none of us have a crystal ball. I'm well aware of that, but I'm going to make a few educated guesses and then let's just see what pans out.

[00:13:23] Mel: So firstly, AI is only going to continue to evolve in terms of the number of tools available, improved accuracy, and increased integration into our work as communicators. The challenge is going to be keeping up with all these new platforms and capabilities. We won't be made redundant if we embrace these tools, but it will mean that our roles will likely change significantly.

[00:13:48] Mel: We're not going to need to write as many first drafts or engage as many third party or external resources to help us develop our content though. So. For example, if a graphic designer can build you an amazing brand to [00:14:00] start, develop the basic templates, colors, and so on, from there, we can use a tool like Canva to do almost everything ourselves, like social media, content, presentations, videos, so on The use of these tools is also going to change how we think about external comms and marketing. So, for example, I'm predicting that Google Bard will become people's primary search tool rather than the Google search itself. Now, what that means is that when someone is searching for information using Google Bard, your website isn't going to pop up on their screen in a list of search results anymore.

[00:14:35] Mel: But if you've got great content, that content might appear, but again, it won't be attributed to you necessarily. So we're going to have to think really differently about our online content. There will need to be more of it. It will need to be highly optimized for search, and we're going to have to find ways to get our brand to show up in both Google Bard and Chat GPT and other similar platforms as well.

[00:14:58] Mel: So that's a big challenge. [00:15:00] Another piece in the AI and tech space is the continued growth of personalized communication, and we know how powerful this is. Thanks. What we can do and what I think we'll see more of is using AI to analyse user behavior and data and adapt our communication strategies so they're more effective.

[00:15:18] Mel: So it means we can create really highly targeted and personalized content delivered in highly personalized ways. So if you're not already exploring this opportunity, you really should. I really think this is going to explode next year. Another potential trend here will be... likely, I think an increased regulation around data collection, privacy and security, particularly given the level of cyber attacks we've seen. So my prediction is that legislation regulations will continue to result in more restrictions on businesses gathering and keeping data through their channels.

[00:15:52] Mel: I'm not just talking about the big players like our Optus or Unilever's, but even small businesses like me who have a mailing list, [00:16:00] we're going to have to make some changes to how we collect, store and use data and also how we communicate about those changes to our audiences. So that's a big one to look out for as well.

[00:16:12] Mel: Now, my second theme in the world of predictions is that geopolitical affairs are going to start making more of an impact on our profession. The war in Ukraine is ongoing. There's a war in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas. There's big tension between China and the USA. We've got climate change, food insecurity, and so much more.

[00:16:34] Mel: If there was one thing to enjoy about those pandemic lockdown years, it was that we got a bit of peace... but now it appears all bets are off and there's escalating tensions wherever you look. We've got right wing candidates still being elected around the globe into positions of power and huge disparities between the right and the left.

[00:16:53] Mel: More than we've ever seen, I think. Now, what does that mean for communication? Well, there's a few [00:17:00] issues here we may have to help respond to as a result of these geopolitical crises. The first one is supply chain issues. Now, this has been going on for a while, but I think it's only likely to persist or even get worse.

[00:17:13] Mel: So you'll have unhappy customers, slow progress on building and infrastructure projects, more expensive projects, difficulty reaching regional populations with medical and food supplies, and so on. And as communicators, we're going to have a role in helping to manage the reputation damage around those supply chain issues.

[00:17:34] Mel: The second piece here I think is this polarisation and that's showing up in workplaces and sectors more broadly. Now this year's Edelman Trust Barometer showed that the world is more polarised than ever before, and as I said, I think that trend is only going to continue. The Trust Barometer also showed that people are far less likely to want to work with people who share different views, which is really horrifying when you think about [00:18:00] it.

[00:18:00] Mel: So we're going to have our work cut out for us in using communication to help create these psychologically safe and inclusive workspaces where people see beyond ideology and actually see each other just as fellow human beings. And I think the third piece out of this geopolitical theme is corporate social responsibility.

[00:18:21] Mel: Everything from battling climate change to being a good corporate citizen. Governance and supporting local communities. It's all up for grabs. And as communicators, we are often drawn into this CSR or ESG as it's sometimes known. Now we can use our communication skills to help gather support for initiatives that do drive change for the better.

[00:18:43] Mel: And certainly more and more customers and potential employees are expecting businesses to be good corporate citizens. And speak up on these big issues and given it's a very competitive customer marketplace and a very competitive talent environment, we are absolutely going to [00:19:00] have to up our game in this area.

[00:19:03] Mel: The third prediction is building on the trend we saw in 2023 with hybrid working being the new way forward. I think we're going to see some better communication tools being developed and better governance around how those tools are used. But I also hope we'll see businesses invest in training to help leaders navigate the hybrid communication more effectively.

[00:19:25] Mel: So everyone has equitable access, and we don't see that proximity bias occurring as often. I'm also hoping that team members will get more training in effective communication because one of the big problems with hybrid working and using predominantly digital communication tools is that we get misinformation and misunderstanding.

[00:19:45] Mel: People just don't have the opportunity to ask questions to help them understand things or sometimes the written word doesn't come across the way we intended. So we really need to build communication capability more broadly across. The [00:20:00] workforce in a hybrid environment. So that's 2023 and predictions for 2024.

[00:20:07] Mel: I'll go back over those now quickly in our usual podcast episode recap. So they are fresh in your mind. The big things that came out of 2023 in the world of communication were number one, the explosion of user friendly artificial intelligence and machine learning tools with chat GPT really leading the way.

[00:20:26] Mel: Hybrid working is now becoming an official way of working for many businesses, and it's meant that we've had to completely rethink our communication practices internally. The third theme was crisis communication, particularly in the technology world. It's been a big issue and between big data breaches and outages, we've seen just how important it is for businesses to invest in building crisis comms capability.

[00:20:53] Mel: And number four, social media has continued to create chaos for communicators with X becoming [00:21:00] persona non grata for many brands, Threads jumping into fill the void and TikTok under suspicion, it's going to continue to be a wild ride in the social media world. My predictions for 2024 are number one, AI is going to continue to evolve and we're going to see it become highly integrated into our way of working as communicators.

[00:21:22] Mel: And we're going to have to become the experts in using it. Number two is that AI will force us to think very differently about how our brands show up online. And how we ensure our content shows up in tools like ChatGPT and Google Bard and how it shows up accurately as well. Number three is that AI is also going to result in our ability to create highly personalized content and channels for our audiences.

[00:21:47] Mel: And if we don't start using AI for this purpose, we will be left behind. Number four, related to this, there's going to be increased scrutiny of data collection, storage, and use. [00:22:00] And that could have a huge impact on how we engage with our audiences, particularly through digital channels. Number five is that geopolitical affairs are going to have a big impact on both internal and external comms due to supply chain issues, increased polarization in views and opinions, and a stronger focus than ever before on corporate social responsibility.

[00:22:22] Mel: We have our work cut out for us in engaging both external and internal audiences. And number six is that hybrid working will continue to evolve, but our channels and content will become more suited to that environment. We're going to move beyond the quick fixes that were put in place during the pandemic and we'll be more targeted in how we communicate with equity.

[00:22:45] Mel: So this of course is the world according to Mel. If you've got ideas though, or thoughts after this episode, I would love to hear from you. Shoot me a DM or an email and let's have a chat. Would love to. This is our last episode for 2023. [00:23:00] Thank you so much for listening this year. If you've enjoyed the show, please take a few minutes to rate and review it and it would be a great way for both of us to end the year. In the meantime, I hope you have a safe, happy, and relaxing holiday season, and we will be back next week with another brand new episode. Keep doing amazing things. Bye for now.