The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.
—Joseph Priestley
Learning Objective1: How to select the proper communication
plan?
According to wisegeek.com, different types of business communication plans are internal, external, and crisis, with the latter possibly a mix of the first two.
Internal business communication plans represent messages intended only for those stakeholders inside a business. These are often owners, managers, and employees. Different types of communication methods may be present with this plan, such as telephone, e-mail, conferences, or face-to-face meetings and reviews. The communication plan receives frequent use as the stakeholders pass messages back and forth through the system. Outside users are rarely active in this communication plan as message content may be highly secretive and contain sensitive business information.External business communication plans are simply the opposite of the above plan; external stakeholders needing information use it. Though it may sound that internal and external business communication plans carry the same information at times, this is not always so. For example, publicly held companies often have a specific individual or office that handles all external communication or messages. This allows for a united front as companies go through difficult business periods or need to send messages to external groups. Owners and executives are often highly involved with these plans to ensure no negative messages or tones are sent to outside stakeholders. A crisis communication plan is a special form that works only during a crisis experienced by the business. All business communication plans have some form of a crisis element. A business may go through many different crises during its lifetime, though not all situations are crises for all companies. One internal crisis, for example, may be a sudden lack of natural resources. The company then needs to communicate to internal stakeholders how the company and its elements will respond to this crisis and maintain normal business operations. In my opinion, there could be (1) Regular/On-going communication plan, which everyone works upon on a daily basis, long-term objectives. Example can be found in more details and explainations here: http://www.hfrp.org/evaluation/the-evaluation-exchange/issue-archive/strategic-communications/the-abcs-of-strategic-communications (2) One-time/Event-driven, which is rather good for short-term/campaign as its name.
1. What – This entails what sort of communication will be offered. For example, will it be a status report, a team meeting, or a kick off plan? 2. Who – This part of the plan determines who will need to be part of the identified communication tool. 3. Purpose – Here you identify why regular communication is needed for each item. 4. When – The frequency of each communication. 5. Method – How will communication take place for each tool? Will it be a meeting, a report, emails, or an interactive web-based plan? There is one thing in common: six basic elements of marketing communication plans: 1. Who - target audiences/receiver 2. What - key messages should be articulated 3. When - time frame, appropriate time of delivery for each message to audiences 4. Why - the desired outcome 5. How - the way of delivering message, which are communication channels 6. By whom - communicator (the person who deliver the message and information)' Mr. Dean, which I found out on Youtube series of training for Project Management. He simplifies communication plan by Item/Event and by Person with all the possible touchpoints.
Comms plan by Item or Event
Comms plan by person
1. Measurable goals and strategies – The communications plan should include clear and measurable goals and strategies. These goals should be as specific as possible. Avoid generic goals such as “raise awareness”, and make sure communications goals are realistic and can be accomplished with the human and financial resources available. 2. Target audiences You will want to have agreement about who are the key internal and external audiences, what they key messages are for each audience, and what you want each audience to do as a result of hearing those messages. Be as specific as possible about what you want to accomplish with each audience, and how communications can help. For example, communications with state policymakers will differ if you are trying to create policy change, or if you are trying to get a new line item in the state budget. Think about audiences in two groups: those who will support your effort, and those who will be against it. Be sure to have strategies that address those who will be barriers to success (e.g., to see if you can turn some of them into supporters, or “frame the debate” to prevent their negative messages from taking hold) Delineate the different sectors of audience (public, private, nonprofit, etc) as well as the different levels (local, regional, state) News media is both an audience and a vehicle, so you should be clear on the role of media for each. The “general public” is not a target audience. You need to be specific.
3. Identification of the message “frame” – The plan should describe how the initiative should be framed (e.g., “education will lead neighborhood residents to economic opportunity”). It should also identify what people’s current frame is (e.g., “schools in this neighborhood are horrible and students are getting a terrible education”), how you can communicate with them within their current frame, and how you will move them to the new frame. 4. Key messages and persuasive strategies – As mentioned above, while there might be one overarching message, different audiences will need different key messages. You will also want to identify the readiness of each audience to hear and act upon these messages, their core concerns so that you can ensure your messages are meaningful to them, and the messenger to share your message. Additionally, there are different types of persuasion, and the plan should address how each persuasive strategy will be used to gain support. For example, rational persuasion uses technical data and logical arguments, while emotional persuasion uses values and emotion, such as photographs of happy children, to convey messages. 5. Opportunities and barriers for reaching key audiences – The plan should identify different strategies for and opportunities to reach key audiences with your messages. It should also identify barriers and how those barriers can be overcome. 6. Communications activities – For each goal and strategy, there will be a series of communications activities, or tactics, identified. Each activity/tactic should have a clear timeline, communications vehicles, people assigned to them, and a budget. 7. Communications vehicles – Within each goal, strategy and tactic there will be different communications vehicles to use to carry your message to your audience. This includes face-to-face meetings, telephone calls, e-newsletters, blogs, grassroots mobilization, policy reports, op-eds, community meetings, etc. 8. Crisis communications – The communications plan should include how to manage and communicate about any crises that might arise. 9. Implementation plan – The communications plan should be accompanied by an implementation plan. This should be a very clear road map that lays out specific timelines, deadlines, activities, who is responsible, etc. 10. Monitoring and evaluation – You will want to track and measure success, so each communication goal and strategy should be measurable and evaluated. That way you can also make adjustments if certain strategies and tactics aren’t working. 11. Timing considerations – A realistic time horizon for a strategic communications plan is three years. However, the communications plan should include immediate-, short-, and long-term goals and strategies. The implementation plan should help in determining how to prioritize and roll out the different communication components, strategies and tactics. Since your initiative will have immediate communications needs, you should identify what needs to happen immediately and what are some “low-hanging fruit” tactics that could be implemented to meet those needs, even before a full communications plan is developed. Some ideas include: Initial materials Fact sheet – This would be a simple document outlining the aim of your initiative, the timeframe, and who is involved. PowerPoint deck that describes your initiative and conveys key messages. This can be used for both larger presentations, and also to “talk through” the initiative during one-on-one meetings. There might be slightly different versions of this for different audiences. Talking points to ensure internal stakeholder leaders are conveying the same, clear messages. E-newsletters or email updates to key stakeholders (brief) Conducting a series of individual meetings with key stakeholders who have not yet been engaged to inform them about and begin to involve them in your initiative. Identifying “ambassadors” who can help tell the story about your imitative. This can be helpful when many one-on-one meetings or group presentations are needed (so one person is not burdened with conducting them all). 12. Staffing – If a foundation has internal communications staff, it is very helpful for them to begin participating early in planning conversations. This enables them to understand the initiative so that they know how to communicate about it, and also ensures that planning happens with a communications lens. You might need to retain a communications consultant. It will be helpful to have one person/firm responsible for creating a communications plan, and that this could be in-house staff or a consultant. Whoever creates the plan should be someone with experience conducting strategic communications planning, preferably with complex, community-based initiatives. 13. Budget – There should be a detailed communications budget developed as part of the plan. This way, choices can be made regarding where to focus limited resources. Like anything, communications can get very expensive, and the plan needs to match the resources available.
Learning
Objective2: How to
implement a communication plan successfully?
In my opinion, if you follow this diagram well then communication plan will be implemented smoothly
 Another thing I found is DRIP model, which is used to support marketing communication planning and is useful when setting broad communication goals. It can be applied when launching a new product or repositioning an existing business, for example. It is suitable for both B2B and B2C. DRIP stands for Differentiate, Reinforce, Inform and Persuade, which is mentioned in his book Marketing Communications.(2002) Third edition. Harlow. Pearson Education. To apply this model, there are aims within each elements: - Differentiate: Differentiate your product or service by defining where it is positioned in the market. - Reinforce: Reinforce the brand's message. Consolidating and strengthening your messages and experience by demonstrating why your product is different. - Inform: Inform people to be aware of your brand. Illustrate and educate your features and availability to audiences. - Persuade: Persuade your audience to behave in a certain way, encouraging further positive purchase-related behaviors such as visiting the website or requesting a trial.
- Differentiate: Lumia had a differentiator, which was zoomable camerea lens, with a 41 mega pixels auto focus and digital zoom. - Reinforce: partnered with Carl Zeiss for its camera lens. They explained about the camera's features and promised blur-free photos every time, reinforced by Pureview technology as well. - Inform: encouraged social conversations by giving away phones on two week trials to inform people about the brand. - Persuade: started a Twitter campaign, setting up a handle and hashtag to engage and demonstrate the number of those switching. Case studies: Learning Objective3: Measuring and monitoringAccording to Four Leaf Public Relations LLC (http://fourleafpr.com/), there are important following things should be measured of Communications plan:
Or more specifically in marketing cases, Hubspot pointed out 6 measures:
1. Unique visitors: The best indication of your site’s overall traffic, unique visitors refers to thenumber of individuals who visit your website during a given period of time, where each visitor is only counted once. This number will vary dramatically depending on the size of your company, your industry and, of course, the amount of content you’re producing. 2. Page views: The cumulative number of individual pages that your visitors click on during a given period of time. If your page views are higher than your unique visitors, that may be an indication that your audience is finding your content engaging because individuals are clicking around to multiple pages. 3. Search engine traffic: The amount of traffic being referred to your site through search engines, such as Google or Bing. This number will give you a clear indication of how effective of a job you are doing at optimizing your content for search. 4. Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors who come to your site and then immediately “bounce” or leave before clicking on any other pages. A bounce rate of less than 40 percent is considered good. If it is any higher, it may be an indication that visitors to your site don’t like what they find there. 5. Conversion rate: The percentage of visitors to your site who take a specific action that your content encourages them to, such as signing up for your newsletter. Conversion rates vary considerably based on industry, but tend to hover around 2 and 3 percent on average. That said, aim for a conversion rate of approximately 5 percent, or even higher if you are creating specific landing pages for specific audiences. 6. Inbound links: The number of external links to your site, an indication that other people have found your content important enough to link to it. Importantly, the more high-quality inbound links you have, the higher your content will rank on search engines. They also refer how to track these is to use Google analytics.
Sources:
Fill, C. (2002). Marketing Communications. Third edition. Harlow. Pearson Education http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-the-different-types-of-business-communication-plans.htm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUE2GqpZbpw https://bch.cbd.int/protocol/outreach/wallacefoundation.pdf http://putnam-consulting.com/philanthropy-411-blog/philanthropy/effective-comm-planning/ http://www.brighthubpm.com/project-planning/72911-why-you-need-a-project-communication-plan/ http://www.mycustomer.com/news/infographic-meet-consumer-2015 http://www.hfrp.org/evaluation/the-evaluation-exchange/issue-archive/strategic-communications/the-abcs-of-strategic-communications |
Monday, October 26, 2015
Communication plan
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