Communication planning is an important tool for any business regardless of scale or size. Done well, communication planning will help your message get to the right people at the right time, in a format they can understand. Done badly, and you risk alienating the very people you are trying to influence and persuade.
1. When to plan?
Right at the beginning of a project or campaign is the best time to plan your communications. A communications plan should be a live document which is updated frequently.
2. Think about your stakeholders
A stakeholder is anyone that can influence the impact and end result of what you are planning. Not all stakeholders are created equal. You need to identify your key stakeholders, what is the impact of the change on them, communication preferences, their current mindset and the support needed from them. i.e. whether it matters if they are positive about a change. Then think about for each population, for your campaign or project, what’s in it for them and what resistance they have. Your communications plan needs to decrease their resistance and highlight to them what they will gain.
3. Think about how you will communicate – ‘your channels’
Everyone has preferences how they like to be communicated with. Some people (particular introverts) like to read and have time to think about the communication. Others want a phone call or to discuss what you are proposing in a group environment.
4. Why?
Efficient communication planning requires you to think about why you are sending out this message. You may find that you may not need to send out something – which saves you time and resources.
5. Timing is everything
There is a right time and often a wrong time to communicate a message. Unless everyone is clear when press releases are due and the website will be updated, the message may slip out in advance. This could be very costly if you are planning an organisational restructure. On a personal note, I was involved in sponsoring a competition. Because I hadn’t explicitly been told when to communicate about this competition, I jumped the gun by a few weeks….
6. How often?
The old adage, communicate, communicate, communicate normally holds true. The more you communicate a consistent message the more likely people are to ‘get the message’. However, you can over communicate your message. For example, a very frequent recurring message can cause the very people you want to read and act on your message to ‘tune’ or ‘zone’ you out.
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