Table of Contents >
Chapter 6. Promoting Interest in Community Issues >
Section 1. Developing a Plan for Communication >
What do we mean by communication?
Why do we need better communication?
What is a plan for communication?
Why should you develop a plan for communication?
When should you develop a plan for communication?
How do you develop a plan for communication?
What do we mean by communication?
Communication, for the purposes of this section, is the process of transmitting ideas and information about your initiative and your issue throughout the community.
This doesn't mean merely advertising or promoting your program, but communicating the true nature of your organization and the issues it deals with. If your organization wants to achieve its goals, you have to get your message out to your target population and beyond.
You may have several different reasons for wanting to do this, depending on the character of your effort.
Take a hard look at your work. You may be doing a great job, but does the community know about it? To raise the level of awareness about your organization or initiative, you will need to communicate what you're all about.
Communication of this type can take many forms. Some of the most common include:
- Word of mouth.
- News stories in both print and broadcast media.
- Press releases and press conferences.
- Paid and public service advertising (again, in both print and broadcast media.)
- Posters, brochures, and fliers.
- Email or postal mail.
- An organizational website.
- An organizational newsletter.
- Outreach and presentations to other health and community service providers and to community groups and organizations.
- Special events and open houses that your organization holds, to raise either funds or your profile in the community. These might also include a booth at a fair, trade show, or similar event.
You’re probably unlikely to use all of these methods at once, although you might use most of them over time. This is by no means a complete list, either. You might, for instance, get the local soccer team to put your organization’s name and phone number on its scoreboard at a game, and you could probably come up with any number of other possibilities.
To communicate effectively, it helps to plan out what you want from your communication, and what you need to do to get it. This section will attempt to show you how to create such a plan, and future sections in this chapter will guide you step by step through specific actions – holding a press conference, writing a letter to the editor, handling crises – that you might adopt to get your message out to the community in the best way possible.
What is a plan for communication?
Planning is a way to organize actions that will lead to the fulfillment of a goal. (For more information on planning in general, see Chapter 8: Developing a Strategic Plan.) Developing a plan for communication is one application of planning principles.
Your goal in this case is to get the word out to the people you're aiming at and beyond in order to make the most out of your initiative's long-term benefits to your community. If you have created something of value, you want the community not only to recognize, but to take advantage of it.
To develop a plan for communication of any sort, you have to consider some basic questions:
- Why do you want to communicate with the community? In other words, what’s your purpose?
- Whom do you want to communicate it to? In other words, who’s your audience?
- What do you want to communicate? In other words, what’s your message?
- How do you want to communicate it? In other words, what communication channels will you use?
- Whom should you contact and what should you do in order to use those channels? In other words, how do you actually distribute your message?
The answers to these questions constitute your action plan, what you need to do in order to communicate successfully with your audience. The remainder of your communication plan, involves three steps:
- Implement your action plan. Design your message and distribute it to your intended audience.
- Evaluate your communication efforts, and adjust your plan accordingly.
- Keep at it as long as you’re doing this work.
Communication is an ongoing, core activity for any organization that serves, depends upon, or is in any way connected with the community. The purpose, audience, message, and channels may keep changing, but the need to maintain relationships with the media and with key people in the community remain. As a result, an important part of any communication plan – and we’ll repeat this in the “How-to” portion of this section – is to continue using and revising your plan, based on your experience, for the life of your organization.
These questions are, in fact, the reason you need a plan. If you simply throw information out haphazardly, without thinking carefully about what exactly you want to say and why, who needs to hear it, and how to reach them, the chances are you’ll miss the mark, and be left wondering why no one seems to know you exist.
We’ll discuss ways to answer these questions a little bit later, in the “How-to” portion of the section.
Why should you develop a plan for communication?
You may have the best program ideas in the world, but if nobody knows about and takes advantage of them, then your ideas have no practical value at all. You must remember, however, that communicating your initiative's goals will not necessarily solve all of your problems. Getting the word out will help you attract people, but you have to give them a reason to keep coming back.
Here are some reasons to you should develop a plan for communication:
- A plan will make it possible to target your communication accurately. It gives you a structure to determine whom you need to reach and how. The difference between planning and not planning is like the difference between aiming a rifle at a target and simply spraying bullets every which way. You might hit something, but the chances that it will be the target are pretty small, and you probably will do a lot of damage in the process.
- A plan can be long-term, helping you map out how to raise your profile and refine your image in the community over time. Each piece of your effort fits with every other piece, your message remains consistent, and you continue to reach the audience that you’re concerned with.
- A plan will make your communication efforts more efficient, effective, and lasting. A plan is important because it focuses on the set of steps you will need to go through to achieve your ultimate goal. A planned effort will almost always be superior to an unplanned, disorganized attempt.
- A plan makes everything easier. If you spend some time planning at the beginning of an effort, you can save a great deal of time later on, because you know exactly what you should be doing at any point in the process.
Tip: Although it may seem obvious, you’ll also save time if you write down the answers to questions as you go .
When should you develop a plan for communication?
A.S.A.P. As soon as your organization begins planning its objectives and activities, you should also begin planning ways to communicate them to your intended audience and beyond. This is because successful communication is an ongoing process, not a one-time event.
You should start publicizing your organization as soon as you’re ready to start activities, even if the activities are only initial outreach. The more people know about you, the sooner you’ll find volunteers and participants knocking at your door. If you are planning a kick-off event, it is important that you start publicizing your initiative and event as soon as possible. You want people to show up, don't you?
If your organization has been around for a while, you may want to renew public interest in it. You should start on a plan to do so. What are your new communication goals?
And are you looking for funding? If so, wouldn't this be a good time to communicate the nature and accomplishments of your initiative to possible funding sources? The right kind of public exposure sure would be helpful here, wouldn't it?
Communication, as we’ve mentioned, is not a one-time thing, but an ongoing organizational activity. If you don’t have a plan, now’s the time to make and start using one, wherever you are in the life of your organization.
How do you develop a plan for communication?
One way to look at planning for communication is as an eight-step process. The steps are:
- Identify the purpose of your communication.
- Identify your audience.
- Plan and design your message.
- Consider your resources.
- Plan for obstacles and emergencies.
- Strategize how you’ll connect with the media and others who can help you spread your message.
- Create an action plan.
- Decide how you’ll evaluate your plan and adjust it, based on the results of carrying it out.
We will go through them one step at a time.
1. Identify your purpose.
What you might want to say depends on what you’re trying to accomplish with your communication strategy. There are some communication goals that may be ongoing – raising your profile in the community, informing people about your issue – while others may vary, depending on circumstances. You might, at any particular time, be concerned with one or a combination of the following, and/or with something else entirely:
- Becoming known, or better known, in the community.
- Educating the public about the issue your organization addresses.
- Recruiting program participants or beneficiaries – folks who can benefit from services you provide.
- Recruiting volunteers to help with your work.
- Recruiting members or supporters for a cause.
- Rallying supporters or the general public to action for your cause.
- Announcing organizational events or schedules.
- Celebrating organizational honors or victories.
- Raising money to fund your work.
- Establishing yourself as a credible and competent organization with funders, the field, and the community.
- Cementing your organization’s image in the community. That might be as a champion of the underdog, as a guardian of democratic and inclusive principles and practice, as a defender of social and economic justice and social change, as an advocate for a specific cause, as a community leader, or simply as the place to go for people who need the kind of services you offer.
- Countering the arguments, mistakes, or, occasionally, the lies or misrepresentations of those opposed to your work.
- Dealing with an organizational crisis that’s public knowledge – a staff member who commits a crime, for example, or a lawsuit aimed at the organization.
2. Identify your audience. Who are the folks you’re trying to reach? The answer to that question come from your purpose: who needs to hear what you have to say in order for your organization to achieve its intent for communication? Your answer may be extremely specific – women between 18 and 30 who are currently married, and have more than one child, for example. If you’re concerned with your organization or issue becoming better known or understood, your answer might be extremely general – everyone.
Knowing who your audience is makes it possible to plan your communication logically. As we’ve discussed, you’ll need different messages for different groups, and, as we’ll see, you’ll need different channels and methods to reach each of those groups.
There are many different ways to think about your audience and the ways they could best be contacted. First, there’s the question of what group(s) you’ll focus on. You can group people according to a number of characteristics:
- Demographics. Demographics are simply basic statistical information about people, such as gender, age, ethnic and racial background, income, etc. You might want to separate your audience by one characteristic – people over 30 years old – or by several – married black men over 30 years old with college degrees.
- Geography. You might want to focus on a whole town or region, on one or more neighborhoods, or on people who live near a particular geographic or man-made feature – a mountain, a lake or river, a dam, a railroad, a factory.
- Employment. You may be interested in people in a particular line of work, or in people who are unemployed.
- Health. Your concern might be with people at risk for or experiencing a particular condition – high blood pressure, perhaps, or diabetes – or you might be leveling a health promotion effort – “Eat healthy, exercise regularly” – at the whole community.
- Behavior. You may be targeting your message to smokers, for example, or to youth engaged in violence. If the purpose of your organization is behavior change, there’s a good chance that this will be at least one characteristic by which you’ll define your audience.
- Attitudes. Are you trying to change people’s minds, or bring them to the next level of understanding? Especially if you’re recruiting volunteers or fundraising, attitude may be one of the most important factors you consider in putting together and distributing you message.
Another aspect of the audience to consider is whether you should direct your communication to those whose behavior, knowledge, or condition you hope to affect, or whether your communication needs to be indirect. Sometimes, for instance, in order to influence a population, you have to aim your message at those to whom they listen – clergy, community leaders, politicians, etc. sometimes policy makers are the appropriate target, rather than those who are directly affected.
| In the 1970’s, advocates decided to try to stop Nestle from selling baby formula in the developing world, and paying doctors and nurses to recommend it to parents of new-borns. Since most parents couldn’t afford formula after the free samples ran out, and since many didn’t have clean water to mix it with, the practice led to large numbers of unnecessary infant deaths. Rather than target Nestle or the medical professionals who were selling the formula, advocates aimed at Nestle’s customers around the world, instituting a boycott of Nestle products that lasted for over ten years. Ultimately, the company agreed to change its practices. |
These are only a few of the many possible ways to identify your audience. Once you’ve done that, it should give you some ideas about how to reach them.
3. The message.
Your message may be one of inspiration, pure information, education, persuasion, request, explanation – the list goes on and on. It can vary in content, in mood, in language, and in design . Let’s consider some possibilities.
a) Content. In the course of a national adult literacy campaign in the 1980’s, educators learned that TV ads that profiled proud, excited, successful adult learners attracted new learners to literacy programs. Ads that described the difficulties of adults with poor reading, writing, and math skills attracted potential volunteers. Both ads were meant to make the same points – the importance of basic skills and the need for literacy efforts – but they spoke to different groups.
By the same token, your message will be very different if you’re recruiting participants for a job training course than if you’re trying to rally the public to protest the demolition of a historic building, or if you’re trying to convince a population at risk of heart attack to change their eating habits. Planning the content of your message is necessary to making it effective.
b) Mood. An aspect of message related to content is mood. What emotions do you want to appeal to?
Your message may be upbeat – “Look at all the wonderful things our participants have accomplished!” or “Our program has resulted in a 30% decline in sexually transmitted diseases among teens in the last year.”
Your message may be angry – “We’re tired of seeing sludge from the factory floating on the river, and we’re not going to stand for it any more.”
Your message may be determined – “It’s time to roll up our sleeves and make hunger a thing of the past in our community.”
The mood of your message will do a good deal to determine how people react to it. In general, if the mood is too extreme – too negative, too frightening, trying to make your audience feel too guilty – people won’t pay much attention to it. It may take some experience to learn how to strike the right balance. Keeping your tone positive will usually reach more people than claiming disaster is just around the corner...or already here.
c) Language. The language you use to get your message across is related to both content and mood, but it’s also very important for reaching your desired audience. There are two aspects to language here: one is the actual language – English, Spanish, Korean, Arabic – that your intended audience speaks; the other is the kind of language you use – formal or informal, simple or complex, referring to popular figures and ideas or to obscure ones.
You can address the language people speak by presenting any printed material in both the official language (English in the U.S.) and the language(s) of the population(s) you’re hoping to reach, and by providing translation for spoken or broadcast messages.
The second language issue is more complicated. If your message is too informal – too “street” – your audience might feel you’re talking down to them, or, worse, that you’re making an insincere attempt to get close to them by communicating in a way that’s clearly not normal for you. If your message is too formal – too stiff, too many “educated” words – your audience might feel you’re not really talking to them at all. You’ll usually do best by using plain, straightforward language that says what you want to say simply and clearly.
d) Channels of communication. This relates to the medium you use, but within media, there are various ways you can communicate, and various channels you can choose. You wouldn’t try to reach older adults by advertising only on a hip-hop or heavy metal radio station, for example. What does your intended audience read, listen to, watch, engage in? You have to reach them by placing your message where they’ll see it. Here’s a list of possible channels, most from Chapter 45, Section 5: Promoting Awareness and Interest Through Communication.
- Posters. In appropriate locations, couched in simple language, and with tear-off phone numbers or other information, these can be very effective.
- Fliers and brochures. These can be more compelling in places where the issue is already in people’s minds (doctors’ offices for health issues, supermarkets for nutrition, etc.). (Please see Chapter 6: Section 11: Creating Posters and Fliers, and Section 13: Creating Brochures.)
- Organizational and community newsletters. These may range from church bulletins to the internal newsletters of global corporations.
- Promotional materials. Imprinted items – caps, T-shirts, mugs – can serve as effective channels for your message.
- Comic books or other reading material. Reading matter that is intrinsically interesting to the target audience can be used to deliver a message through a story that readers are eager to follow, or simply through the compelling nature of the medium and its design.
- Internet sites. In addition to web pages, interactive sites like MySpace and Facebook, as well as YouTube and similar video sites, have increased the possibilities for Internet communication.
- Letters to the Editor. (See Chapter 33, Section 2: Writing Letters to the Editor.)
- News stories, columns, and reports (on TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines) that you suggest, are featured in, or contribute to. See Chapter 6, Section 4: Arranging News and Feature Stories, and Section 6: Preparing Guest Columns and Editorials.)
- Press releases and press conferences. These may announce the kick-off or status of a campaign, simply provide information about your issue, or showcase new information that may help to change people’s perceptions or behavior. (See Chapter 6, Section 3: Preparing Press Releases, and Section 8: Arranging a Press Conference.)
- Presentations or presence at local events and local and national conferences, fairs, and other gatherings.
- Announcements and presentations at public and institutional or organizational gatherings. This can include anything from a short presentation at a local church or school to a fleet of sound trucks blanketing a city with a social marketing message. (Please see Chapter 20, Section 10: Developing a Speaker’s Bureau.)
- Community outreach or street work. Having one or more staff members spreading your message in the community can be very effective if they have the right connections and networks.
- Community or national events. The Great American Smokeout, National Literacy Day, a community “Take Back the Night” evening against violence, and other community events can serve to convey a message and highlight an issue.
- Public demonstrations. A public demonstration on your issue doesn’t have to be confrontational: it can be positive and upbeat, and still grab the public’s attention. (Please see Chapter 33, Section 14: Organizing a Public Demonstration.)
- Word of mouth. If you can get to a few key influential people, they can help to extend a social marketing message to a whole target population simply through their networks and their day-to-day contacts.
- Movies. Since the beginnings of the film industry, movies have carried messages about race, the status of women, adult literacy, homosexuality, mental illness, AIDS, and numerous other social issues.
| There are classic American movies that deal with alcoholism (“Days of Wine and Roses”), cognitive developmental problems (“Forrest Gump”), racism (“In the Heat of the Night”) – a complete list could fill a book. |
- TV. TV can both carry straightforward messages – ads and Public Service Announcements (PSAs) – and present news and entertainment programs that deal with your issue or profile your organization.
| In addition to being the message, entertainment can be used for getting out the message as well. An organization could, for instance, arrange a screening of a movie or TV show that highlights a particular issue, perhaps at a local theater, and/or with the cooperation or even participation of some of those involved in the creation of the piece. The media could be invited, and the event could generate a good amount of publicity. |
- Theater and interactive theater. A play or skit, especially one written by people who have experienced what it illustrates, can be a powerful way to present an issue, or to underline the need for services or change.
| Several interactive theater groups in New England, by stopping the action and inviting questions and comments, draw audiences into performances dramatizing real incidents in the lives of the actors, all of whom are staff members and learners in adult literacy programs. They have helped to change attitudes about adult learners, and to bring information about adult literacy and learning into the community |
- Music. Music can be used to cement your organization or issue in memory, through the use of a catchy theme or song; to highlight an issue, as in the case of Suzanne Vega’s song “Luka,” about child abuse; or to help to raise consciousness or funds through benefit performances or the statements of popular musicians.
- Exhibits and public art. The AIDS quilt, a huge quilt with squares made by thousands of people, commemorating victims of the HIV epidemic, is a prime example.
4. Resources. The first of these to consider is money, but it’s not the only one. The first question is what you have the money to do. The next is whether you have the people to make it possible. Who’ll design the ad (will you pay someone, is there someone on staff who’ll do it, or is there a professional who’ll do it for you for free)? Do you have enough staff or volunteers to run an event of the type you have in mind? If you’re going to spend money, what are the chances that the results will be worth the expense? What will you sacrifice by spending money on communication? What will you sacrifice in staff members’ or volunteers’ time by involving them in a communication effort? Who will lose what, and who will gain what by your use of financial and human resources.
Your planning should include careful determinations of how much you can spend and how much staff and volunteer time it’s reasonable to use. Another consideration here is where else you can get resources. We’ve mentioned pro bono (i.e., free) work by a professional supporter of the organization. You may also be able to get materials, air time, and other goods and services from individuals, businesses, other organizations, and institutions. If you need them, acquiring those resources should be part of your plan. (See Chapter 46, Sections 6: Sharing Positions and Other Resources, and 11: Securing Contributions and In-Kind Support, for more on acquiring non-money resources.)
You don’t have to have a huge amount of money to do a good job of communication. The point is that you must plan to use your budget as effectively and intelligently as possible. Do not be discouraged by having a low budget initially. Remember that word of mouth is free. Use it as much as possible.
Example 1:
| Leteisha had just taken over as director of an adult literacy program. The program's communication budget was relatively high compared to many of the other social programs offered in the city. Leteisha spent the majority of money allotted for communication on posters and billboards advertising the literacy program. However, she was surprised when there was a low turnout at the first classes. It didn't occur to her that printed material was probably not the best place for her program's money. The people she really wanted to reach couldn't read it! |
Example 2:
| Carlos is president of the Mexican-American Students Association of his university, which is located in a major urban area. Although they have a small but adequate budget allotted to their club by the university, there is no money available to promote Carlos' new ESL program. Although many of the club members have volunteered to help teach ESL to people in the community, there is no money for promotion. Fortunately, Carlos had a powerful idea. He and other members of the Mexican-American Students Association went around to many Spanish-speaking neighborhood institutions and places of businesses in the community, both to promote the program and to ask others' for help in promoting it. The program was highly successful. Most of the people learned of the program through word of mouth in their neighborhood. |
So it is possible to raise awareness of your initiative or organization with little or no money, and it is also possible to not raise awareness of your program with a substantial amount of money.
5. Anticipate obstacles and emergencies. Any number of things can happen in the course of a communication effort. Someone can forget to e-mail a press release, or can e-mail the wrong information. A crucial word on your posters or in your brochure can be misspelled, or the phone number or e-mail address of your organization might be incorrect. A reporter may misunderstand important information, or simply get it wrong. Worse, you might have to deal with a real disaster involving the organization that has the potential to discredit everything you do. (For an example, see the Example #1 of Section 19 of this chapter, Handling Crises in Communication.)
It’s important to try to anticipate these kinds of problems, and to create a plan to deal with them. Crisis planning should be part of any communication plan, so you’ll know exactly what to do when – and it is when, not if – a problem or crisis occurs. Crisis plans should include who takes responsibility for what – dealing with the media, correcting errors, deciding when something has to be redone rather than fixed, etc. It should cover as many situations, and as many aspects of each situation, as you can think of, so that you won’t be too surprised and upset to do the right thing when one of them comes up.
6. Strategize how you’ll connect with the media and others to spread your message. Developing ways of contacting and establishing relationships with individual media representatives and media outlets is an important part of a communication plan, as is finding ways to do the same with influential individuals and institutions in the community and/or the population you’re trying to reach. You have to make personal contacts, give the media and others reasons to want to help you, and follow through over time to sustain those relationships in order to keep communication channels open.
(For more on working with the media, see Chapter 34, Media Advocacy; for more on establishing relationships in the community, see Chapter 5, Sections 2: Locality Development, and 4: Social Action.)
The individuals that can help you spread your message can vary from formal community leaders – elected officials, CEOs of important local, businesses, clergy, etc. – to community activists to ordinary people who are nonetheless respected and listened to by their neighbors. Institutions and organizations, such as colleges, hospitals, service clubs, faith communities, and other health and community organizations all have access to groups of community members who might need to hear your message.
7. Create an action plan. Now the task is to put it all together into a plan that you can act on. By the time you reach this point, your plan will already be essentially done. You’ve figured out by now just what your purpose is and whom you need to reach to accomplish it, what your message should contain and look like, what you can afford, what problems you might face, what channels can best be used to reach your intended audience, and how to gain access to those channels. Now it’s just a matter of putting the details together – actually composing and designing your message (perhaps more than one, in order to use lots of channels), making contact with the people who can help you get your message out, and getting everything in place to start your communication effort. Oh, yes...one more thing – there’s evaluating your effort so you can continue to make it better.
8. Evaluation. As a health or community service organization, evaluation should be part of anything you do. If you evaluate your communication plan in terms of both how well you carry it out and how well it works, you’ll be able to make changes to improve it. It will keep getting more effective each time you implement it. No plan is ever perfect, but you can make yours as good as it can get if you monitor and evaluate it continually.
The rest of the sections in this chapter and others elsewhere in the Tool Box (see Related topics) will help you to find techniques that you can use to make your plan a success.
There’s really a ninth step to developing a communication plan, one we’ve already mentioned several times. As with just about every phase of health and community work, you have to keep at adjusting your plan and communicating with the community for the life of your organization. If you let it slide, you’ll be invisible, even though you’re still in plain sight. People’s memories are short, and you have to keep reminding them that you exist, that you do important and successful work, and that your issue hasn’t gone away. Do that, and your organization should find the community support it needs to stay healthy.
We encourage the reproduction of this material but ask that you credit
the Community Tool Box: http://ctb.ku.edu
Resources
Planning for Effective Communication, U. of California Berkeley
“Strategic Communications Planning,” a free ebook, can be downloaded here
How to Develop a Communication Plan, with links to sample plans
Communicating change from Provience (UK)
Strategic Communications Planning from the Spin Project