Over the last month or so, I’ve had the chance to teach a handful of workshops on creating a comprehensive communications strategy – one that combines both traditional approaches with the use of social media and mobile engagement activities.
Below is the slide deck from my workshop for the National Conference of State Legislatures‘ Super Professional Development Series (Hat tip to my co-presenter Don Stanley from 3Rhino Media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Props as well to my colleague Adam Schultz at Pruvop who originally designed and delivered much of this workshop material with me):
The 7 P’s of a Comprehensive Communications Plan
- Purpose: Why are you communicating with an audience?
- People: Who are you trying to reach and who will be doing the reaching?
- Plan: How do your activities integrate in order to achieve your desired outcomes?
- Produce: What kind of content will you be sharing?
- Promote: Where are you sharing it?
- Participate: How will you move from exclaim to exchange?
- Progress: How will you know how you’re doing and make adjustments?
In many ways, the overall structure of a communications plan probably hasn’t changed much in centuries, but the question of where to share your message has evolved with the availability of new communications vehicles, usually enabled by advances in technology. While I advocated for using social media to reach a broader segment of an organization’s target population, I also acknowledged that social media in isolation is likely not going to be much help without connecting it back to a website or using it as a tool to get people to show up to a good ol’ fashioned town hall meeting.
So I’m curious:
Do you have a comprehensive communications plan?
Do think through these questions as you map out your approach to reaching citizens?