“What’s a Communications Plan?”
A friend of mine asked me not too long ago “What’s a communications plan?” A communications plan serves as a guideline of your marketing and public relations efforts. It can be as simple and as comprehensive as you need it to be – depending on your goals.
The New Year marks a great starting point for your communications plan. Map out what kind of content you’d like to create over the year and what vehicles you want to use to distribute it.
Most entrepreneurs and solopreneurs can put together a plan on a simple Word document or Excel spreadsheet. There are a few elements, however, that a good communications plan can’t do without.
1. Make your communications about customers
Your customers are looking to you for advice and guidance. In thinking up what you can communicate to your audience, think about content that is helpful for prospects and customers. By providing content that your audience values and needs, you will establish yourself and your brand as a trusted resource that people will gladly come back to again and again.
2. Tell stories, not marketing blurbs
In all communications, you have 2 choices on how to present your content. You can write dry marketing blurbs tooting your own horn, or you can produce compelling stories that provide a solution to a problem, inspiration or a new perspective. The choice is yours.
Stories will grab people’s attention and will very likely trigger responses and engagement from your readers. And who doesn’t want a good story to go viral?
3. Be creative – and have fun
Communications is so much more than the written word. The social media space allows us to create creative stories in various forms at a very low cost. Think about how your story can be told in new ways, maybe through pictures or infographics. Or maybe you prefer to tell your story via video or podcast. Keep it creative and fun; and your audience will love you for it.
4. Choose your channels wisely
Think about why you’re communicating and what kind of audience you’d like to reach. Depending on your product or service, you might not need to be on Facebook, but rather use a Twitter stream or a newsletter format.
Make sure you publish your content on a channel owned by your company first, and then re-post or link to from third-party platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Your own blog is a great way to publish content first. That way you own your content and can syndicate your messages on social media in a second step.
5. Create a routine and stick to it
When putting together your communications plan, be very honest with yourself and determine how often (once a week, twice a week, bi-monthly etc.) you’re able to publish new content. Once you created your routine, it’s important to stick to it – it will help you staying on the ball. And your online visibility will benefit from a regular publishing activity; in other words web crawlers love being fed fresh content bites on a regular basis.
What elements have gone into your communications plan? Leave a comment about your experience and insights!
The featured photo, “Communication” is copyright (c) 2009 by elycefeliz and made available under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license
