How do you use rhetorical devices such as metaphors, analogies, and repetition to enhance your communication?

All communications should be, well, strategic. From a speech by a CEO to buying digital ads for the public, hopefully, every piece of communication has intent behind it. Organizational communications should have metrics, too. If you don't know how much or who is seeing your communications, then you may need to rethink your strategy. If your organization also finds itself saying "We've always done it this way," it may be time to evaluate your communications approach. This is especially true for internal communications for staff.

Strategic communication is essential to any law firm's overall communications mix. Alongside steady-state public relations and marketing and communications activity, it enhances the firm's brand value by projecting its vision for the future while scoping its strategic outlook in crucial practice areas vital for current and future profitability and client service. It ensures that partners can advocate a coherent vision of the firm's future while setting the terms of engagement for senior leaders.

At its core, strategic communication aims to build and maintain relationships, manage perceptions, and influence opinions. It is beyond simply transmitting information; it considers the context, timing, and audience to craft messages that resonate effectively. This field often involves understanding stakeholder perspectives, conducting research, and adapting strategies based on feedback. Effective strategic communication is crucial in navigating a complex and dynamic communication landscape. It plays a pivotal role in reputation management, crisis communication, and organizational success. Whether implemented by corporations, government agencies, or charity organizations, strategic communication should have the aim of mutual understanding.

Analogies, can be helpful in two ways. First it can remove the personal connection an audience has to what you're saying to prevent them from becoming defensive. Second, it can help an audience to grasp more difficult concepts and connect with the points being made.

Ensuring your message gets through is a numbers game. You need to deliver the same message multiple times before it sinks in with your audience. To use an analogy, rhetorical devices are like sending your message in different packaging and through different channels. That diversifies your communications so at least one version gets through. It also reinforces your communication by having your message get through in multiple ways.

While metaphors and analogies can help explain a concept, that can also have the opposite effect and further obfuscate the content if you include industry jargon or unknown acronyms. For example, some marketers may refer to "a tentpole event for our organization," but those not in that world may get distracted and think of a fair or circus rather than your important organizational event.

Analogies are most useful in explaining things. You make a more complex or obscure subject simpler by comparing it to a more familiar subject the audience already knows. (E.g., “Life is like a box of chocolates… you never know what you are going to get…” Metaphors are most useful to make your message memorable. It is like putting a brand on your point. (E.g., Prudential Insurance is the rock - denoting stability.)

When using analogies, give some thought to your audience and what will resonate with them. For instance, default analogies many executives use revolve around a particular sport. Is the analogy you're using accessible to your entire audience? Will everyone understand it? If not, do a bit more work and find another. They're great tools of course, but it's like using humor. One tasteless joke and you might be remembered for that alone.

Another way that repetition can bring unity or cohesion to your content is by using the device at the start of your content and then bringing it back near the end. For example, if you started an article mentioning how you're "proud of everyone's work, proud that the company is leading the way, and proud of our partnerships," you could end the content by again saying how you're proud.

Gen. Colin Powell described the communication strategy he learned in the military this way: “Tell them what you are going to tell them. Then tell them. Then tell them what you told them.” The first time is like breaking the ground in your audience’s brain so you can plant your message as a seed. The next time is like planting the seed. Subsequent times are like watering and fertilizing. The last time is like showing your audience the plant that has sprouted with your message.

"Brutus is an honourable man" - used by Shakespeare in one of the greatest speeches ever written. Up there alongside it is Martin Luther King's "I have a dream". Both demonstrate the power of rhetoric to create a movement of change.

One rule of thumb that I stick to is to save rhetorical devices for first-person, conversational content. They could belong in an internal communications memo or email from a CEO or perhaps be tool used in a blog post, but they'd only weaken the message of an industry report or formal presentation.

Misused metaphors are accidents waiting to happen. Confusing analogies is like saying “north, south, east, west” when someone asks you for directions. Abusing alliteration asks audience attention to go astray.