or
or
or
&
&

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

Coming home…to strategy
changingtheterms.com
Card image

embracing and sharing the power of communication strategy much more broadly to help drive results and performance... supporting practitioners and clients to rediscover communication strategy as a source of real advantage.... the opportunities available to use targeted, intelligent approaches to getting the right people talking with the right info…

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Marketing Communications
medium.com
Card image

A communications strategy answers the question, “Why are we doing these activities?”... if you’ve been doing customer discovery and using the value proposition canvas, you know a lot about each customer/ beneficiary.

No one should have the word ‘strategy’ in their job title
qz.com
Card image

the distance between strategy and execution is unfathomably wide for most businesses and executives... Strategy people too often have ideas that aren’t rooted in the reality of the operations. And operations people too often aren’t invested in executing the plans that the strategy people craft for them.... saying a specific individual is responsi…

Institutional communications: strategy & tactics
mathewlowry.myhub.ai

I’ve just spent a few days running the Discovery phase of a new project to further develop the communication strategy of an EU Institution, with a particular focus on retooling its online, social media and publications tactics. Apart from focusing on developing a new information architecture, I’m running the overall project. This means not only en…

Tested & approved: communication strategy development process
mathewlowry.myhub.ai

I’m now at to the point where I can spend a few days interviewing key people in an organisation to develop a complete communication strategy.

06/02/2016
Time to integrate Innovation into your Comms strategy
mathewlowry.myhub.ai
Card image

Any decent Communication Strategy will integrate offline, online, internal and external communications. But what about your organisation's Innovation Strategy?

How asking the right questions will deliver the best results
www.melcrum.com

"When starting a new [internal] communication project, asking the right questions of your customer sounds like a no-brainer. But are your questions right? ... Richard shares his method of developing the right questions to deliver the best results –  to start your IC projects right." - The power of critical thinking: How asking the right questio…

Facebook’s Organic Reach Decline
socialmediatoday.com
Card image

Place all your content eggs in someone else's basket, you'll get what you deserve. Facebook it, after all, a business. Some basic advice here, but it amounts to the same thing: monitor, optimise & diversify: "Facebook organic reach was around 6% in February, 2014 — a decline of 49% from October. For brands with more than 500,000 likes, the fall-o…

Write An Effective Website Tagline
www.shoutmeloud.com
Card image

Applies equally to projects, where for step 1 (quoted below) the focus should be the project's USP: "Define what exactly your company is, its motto and the sole purpose of its existence. Write down everything that you think your company/website is about. Is it about marketing tips, social media, mobile apps, etc.? Define the existence of your com…

Influencer Outreach
spinsucks.com
Card image

These questions are worth asking whether you're thinking of Influencer Outreach or not. "There are all sorts of tools you can use to reach your marketing goals, but before even getting into the discussion of goals and influence marketing, you need to ask yourself these questions: - Who are you targeting? - What are your objectives? What does…

An integrated communication strategy (2002-07) for DG INFSO
mathewlowry.myhub.ai
Card image

The comm strategy for DG Information Society revoled around a segmentation of the target audience based on their level of interest in - and hence understanding of and motivation to visit/read/learn/share - the work of the DG.

Cookies disclaimer

MyHub.ai saves very few cookies onto your device: we need some to monitor site traffic using Google Analytics, while another protects you from a cross-site request forgeries. Nevertheless, you can disable the usage of cookies by changing the settings of your browser. By browsing our website without changing the browser settings, you grant us permission to store that information on your device. More details in our Privacy Policy.