A Simple Process for Thinking About and Planning Communications
If you are trying to promote a nonprofit fundraising event, recruit members to your group, sell a product — really, pretty much anything that involves trying to get others to receive and understand your message — you need to spend some time thinking about how you to go about communicating that message.
Here is a simple process — research, plan, do and review — to help you think about your communications:
RESEARCH
Look into:
WHO do you want to reach? WHAT do you want them to do?
WHAT messages do you want to communicate?
WHAT available resources do you have?
PLAN
Think about:
Overall Goals
What are your big goals for changing the world?
Think: long term, broad.
Example: To become the most awesome clog dancing troupe in the United States.
Target Audiences
Who needs to know or understand what you’re trying to communicate?
The “general public” is not an audience. Break into smaller groups.
Example: Clog dancers in our town.
Objectives for those audiences
Short term, defines what behavior, attitude or opinion you want to achieve.
Be specific, realistic.
Include a deadline and a way to measure success.
Example: By the end of 2021, inform 100 clog dancers in our town about the camaraderie our troupe offers.
Strategies
Road map to achieve your objectives.
Example: Find clog dancers interested in getting together socially with other cloggers.
Tactics/Activities
Specific things you will do to support your strategy.
Example: Create a Facebook page for our Awesome Clog Dancing Troupe.
Materials
What do you need for your activities?
Example: social media account, poster board for making signs
Budget
What costs will there be?
Example: Facebook page-free
Timetable
Work backward from deadline and figure out who will do what when.
DO
Put your tactics and activities to work!
REVIEW
Is this working?
How can we improve?
What can we do differently in the future?