We are living in the era of reputation management and the management of intangibles. Today, this has to be viewed as a strategic weapon and should be monitored meticulously. Corporate communicators must be innovative, passionate, and adaptive as brands are the glue of reputation. The important purpose of corporate communication is to develop its equity internally and externally. With changing times, reputation management is not only a senior management and customer facing staff but it is all pervasive, all employees should be involved.

As corporate communication team is the enabler. For the top management, getting organisational structure right and managing structural capital is critical. The latest trends emerging are use of videos for communication, rise of enterprise social network and the artificial intelligence are the things to look out for. Corporate communication is a management function or department like marketing, finance, or operations dedicated to the dissemination of information to key constituencies.

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In a global business, this function serves as the conscience of the corporation and is responsible for the organisation’s reputation. The department usually oversees communication strategy, media relations, crisis communications, internal communications, reputation management, corporate responsibility, investor relations, government affairs and sometimes marketing communication. Employee, community, and media relations are just a few aspects of an effective corporate communication strategy.

The person running the department is the chief communications officer of the firm, and reports directly to the chief executive officer in many of the top global organisations. One can expect a lot of career options in this sector. It can be classified into two main categories—internal communications and external communications. Under the internal communication, you can work as a human resources manager, applied communications manager, organisational communications specialist, and computer systems engineer.

Some external communications jobs are public relations director, media relations manager, director of public affairs, associate programme manager, online editorial director, et al. The skills of writing and developing stories are exactly what companies need.

One needs to understand how to create interesting content for readers, potential customers, or the public and must understand what kind of stories will attract the attention of social media users or public. Also, should understand the tactics of the press release and press conference content, or PR marketing strategy, so that it will become an interesting topic for media people and engaging for public. Students are required to understand the work of Search Engine Optimisation in order to develop the site and save time.

So put keywords that fit with your content, so it will be easy to find. For corporate communication, colleges or universities play an important role. Over last decade or so, there are some really good colleges that have come up by providing relevant course for those interested in pursuing a career in this field.

Here are some of the colleges and universities in the country wherein one can pursue a degree or diploma in corporate communication —Indian Institute of Mass Communication, St Xavier’s Institute of Communications, The Delhi School of communication, Mudra Institute of Communications Ahmedabad, YMCA Institute for Media Studies & Information Technology, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Jadavpur University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Banaras Hindu University, Indira Gandhi National Open University, Delhi University, etc.

(The writer is a visiting faculty in institutes like IMT, Indian Institute of Mass Communications, and Delhi School of Communications)