Communication is hard at the best of times. Often you have to work out what you need to get across, who your audience is, and how to pitch yourself as an authentic messenger.

It’s even harder when you know – before you even open your mouth – that most people simply won’t be listening.

The political party conference season has come to a close and for the first time in 15 years, the Conservatives find themselves in opposition, spending their conference in Birmingham looking for a new leader while Labour get on and run the country, and the news agenda focuses elsewhere.

A few lessons for internal communications, having just returned from a few days in Birmingham:

Acknowledge your new audience

Accept that you need to earn the right for people’s attention, and don’t expect to get it immediately.

Now that the Conservatives’ decision making won't affect people’s day-to-day lives, the public has less need to pay attention. So, the candidates know they are not yet making a pitch to the country, but talking to a smaller group of Conservative MPs and party members, trying to convince them about their narrative for what went wrong, who was to blame, and what needs to happen next.

Acknowledge the reality of your communications challenge and fight one battle at a time to reach the prize of a much bigger audience down the line.

Don’t be complacent

No matter how small you think the bubble of people paying attention is, remember it can quickly get much bigger if you say the wrong thing.

The row over Kemi Badenoch’s comments on maternity pay cut through more than anything else at conference, and is likely to be the only thing the public will have picked up.

That was not the aim, and no matter how many clarifications followed, the damage was done.

Just because you are talking to fewer people doesn’t mean that what you say can’t go viral. And remember that rarely happens for the right reasons.

Plant a seed

It is possible to land a key message that might be remembered in the future even when fewer people are listening to you when you actually say it.

Think about the one thing you want people to take away.

In the immediate aftermath of the four leadership speeches given back-to-back to close out conference, former Home Secretary James Cleverly achieved the cut through with his message that the Conservatives needed “to be more normal”.

A simple one-liner might grab attention – however briefly – and also give you a flag in the ground to point to in the future to validate your judgement later down the line.

Communicating when you know you won’t reach most of the people you ultimately want to is tough.

But no communicator has the right to be listened to. They have to earn it. Which means taking it seriously even when fewer people want to pay attention.

At least to start with.