How to Create a Communications Plan

Whether you work for an organization, advocacy coalition, or lawmaker you should have a communications plan to help advance your goals. A communications plan keeps you on track – it helps guide you toward where you should be investing your time and helps build name recognition.

If there are specific policy areas or accomplishments that you want associated with you, your organization, or your work, a communications plan is the tool that will help you achieve this goal.

You can make your communications plan detailed or simple, but either way, it’s important you give it some thought to ensure a polished and effective plan.

Step 1: What are your top issues or messages?

You likely have a few policy issues or pet issues that you have prioritized. If you’ve given any thought to your brand, you might know that you want to be the education candidate or the jobs candidate. Or maybe, you represent a coalition of organizations pushing to address climate change and you want your group to be associated with energy efficient development projects that create green jobs. Maybe your goal is to pass a piece of legislation and you want to advance that legislation in the public sphere. Identify what you want to be known for or the narrative you want to create around your work.

Many elected leaders will identify three of their top policy issues – they are likely many other priorities but identifying three helps cement your brand. Every piece of content you create should feed into one of these three issues. Once you’ve identified these three, start posting content each week that is within these three frames. Your communications strategy should filter through these three issue areas. If you stick to this framework, over time, you will come to define yourself through these three issues.

Step 2: Consider your audience

Depending on your goals, your audience might vary. If your goal is to grow name or brand recognition, your audience is the general public along with local press. If your goal is to pass legislation – and to therefore influence leaders who will have a role in voting for this legislation – your audience would be elected leaders and their staff.

Think about who you are trying to influence and find the right message and the right medium to communicate with them. Often, you might have multiple audiences and will need to run dual track communications to ensure you are speaking to them simultaneously.

Step 3 - How do you primarily communicate - what tools?

Now that you know your top issues and your audience, it’s time to communicate. Most elected leaders use social media, email newsletters, or mail to communicate with constituents. These are fairly standard, but you may have different tools – choose what makes sense for you.

Digital & Social Media

Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and email newsletters are all examples of social media tools that help you communicate with your audience. You don’t have to use all of these – especially if you don’t have the support staff to help you – but it’s best to find one or two and commit to regularly communicating on your preferred platforms.

Earned Media

This refers to news articles written about you or your issue. Earned media usually results from talking to reporters, hosting an event, and inviting press, or writing an op-ed for a newspaper. These are all ways to get your message to the masses who read, watch, or listen to the news.

Phone calls or letters

While phone calls and letters are more antiquated forms of communication, they work very well. A call or a letter allows you to control the message and makes recipients feel like you are going out of your way to speak with them.

All of the tools outlined here are strong options for communicating and in many cases, you will likely need to use all of them to reach your target audience. Your communications plan can include weekly or daily social media posts paired with a few earned media hits per month and at least one phone call or letter per month or every other month. A communications calendar like this will help build name recognition over time.

Step 4: Make a calendar and follow it

Now that you know the different tools you have at your disposal to communicate with your target audience, it’s time to create and implement your communications plan.

A good communications plan starts with a calendar – usually planned out by week or by month. With your top issue areas in mind, start scheduling when and what you’ll post about on your social media accounts each day. Schedule one newsletter per week or per month and make the most of scheduled events by inviting press. Make sure each social post or media event aligns with one of your top policy issues.

You can always adjust your calendar based on changing events or breaking news but having a calendar and sticking to it is key to building name recognition. It can take time, by regularly posting and weighing in on the issues you want to be known for steadily builds credibility and familiarity over time.

Step 5: Assess and adjust

After several months, take a moment to assess your communications so far and any earned media or other brand recognition you have developed. Does this reflect what you want? If not, or if you aren’t happy with it, adjust your plan. You can change a policy focus, switch to a different communications platform, commit to posting more, or double down on reporter outreach.

There are many options available to reassess your plan to ensure you are meeting your goals. If your goal was simply to raise name recognition so more people know your name, have you accomplished this? Do you have more followers on your platform and more media hits? If so, it could be time to start honing your narrative more specifically.

Conclusion 

A communications plan and a communications calendar are extremely helpful to ensuring you see results, however there are no firm guarantees that a plan will work. Often, it is trial and error. The most important thing is to keep going.

Consistency helps ensure you stay in the news and that your work continues to be referenced. Even if it feels like you aren’t seeing results, it’s critical to keep posting. Name recognition can take time. Often, it feels like you are shouting into a void, but the truth is communications and branding compounds over time. It can take months or years to build your brand before you start to see momentum around you or your narrative. Don’t get deterred, keep going.

If you feel stagnation, try something new: adopt a new communications tool, hold an event, partner with someone to boost your brand, or find something to shake things up while still staying true to your message and your communications calendar.