Overview: Communication Strategy
Communications appears complex. But a good communication strategy shouldn't be.
I generally boil it all down to five simple, interrelated tables, defining:
- Who you’re trying to reach: your audiences, including their needs and information preferences
- What you’re trying to achieve with them: your business goals for each audience
- Why they should pay attention to you: starting with you Unique Value Proposition, craft an Elevator Pitch, and from that derive Editorial Messaging for each audience
- How you will get those messages to those audiences: an integrated, mutually supportive communications portfolio
- When you will monitor and optimise those activities: key metrics, analyses and optimisation processes.
There are many ways to go about this. My favourite option is to spend a few hours a week interviewing diverse members of your team and holding one or two workshops. That way we'll develop buy-in together along the way, and I'll be able to mentor your staff so that they can better implement the strategy.
Because the last thing you need is a Word document gathering dust on a shelf.
Need help? Get in touch.
Related services: Content strategy, Online strategy, Online community management, Social media strategy, Content creation and marketing, Online architecture, Innovation strategy, Digital transformation, Change and project management.
Relevant resources
www.americanpressinstitute.org
Major enterprise stories — stories that take deep dives and attempt to inform readers in substantive ways or to elicit impact... require considerable resources... the potential audience is limited... how can journalists get readers to complete these long pieces?use multiple elements and platforms to tell the story... the parts that pull your reade…
Like
storytelling,
metrics,
journalism,
news,
interactive,
engagement,
multimedia,
longform,
transmedia,
snowfall
stratechery.com
"the Internet has dismantled newspaper’s geographic monopoly & business model ... & also upended the core assumptions underlying the actual journalism ... BuzzFeed as an organization has been figuring out what works online for over eight years now, and while “The Dress” may have been unusual in its scale, its existence was no accident... BuzzFee…
www.niemanlab.org
Excellent overview of a complex topic. Makes me think that a lot of EU communications could benefit hugely from reframing itself as "non-profit news", and considering these questions in depth. Alas, the only interesting debate in this field seems to be limited to the US. "The value of online and offline audience engagement is a question that bot…
paidcontent.org
A great article on preventing the data tail wagging the editorial dog. " It turns out that what loyal audiences care about is what good editorial teams care about too: great articles that capture time and attention."