Section 1. Developing a Plan for Communication

 

Developing a communication plan can help focus your message and reach your intended audience. A plan can also make your communication methods more efficient and effective. This section looks at what a communication plan entails, how and when to create one, and how to use a communication plan to raise awareness about your issue or project.

What do we mean by communication?

Communication is the process of sharing ideas and information. For a grassroots initiative or community-based organization, that means conveying the nature of your organization, the issues it deals with, its goals, and its accomplishments to the community.

Communication can take many forms, including:

• Word of mouth
• News stories in print, broadcast, and digital media
• Press releases and press conferences
• Posters, brochures, and fliers
• Outreach and presentations to other health and community service providers, community groups, and organizations
• Special events and open houses that your organization holds

To communicate effectively, it helps to plan what you want your communication to accomplish and what you need to do to reach that goal.

What is a plan for communication?

Planning is a way to organize actions that will lead to the fulfillment of a goal.

Your goal, in this case, may be to raise awareness about your initiative and its potential long-term benefits to your community.

To develop a plan for communication, you have to consider some basic questions:

• Why do you want to communicate with the community?  (What’s your purpose?)
• To whom do you want to communicate?  (Who’s your audience?)
• What do you want to communicate?  (What’s your message?)
• How do you want to communicate it?  (What communication channels will you use?)
• Whom should you contact, and what should you do to use those channels?  (How will you distribute your message?)

The answers to these questions constitute your action plan - what you need to do 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.

Communication is an ongoing activity for any organization that serves, depends upon, or is in any way connected with the community. The purpose, audience, message, and channels may change, but the need to maintain relationships with community members, partners, and media remains. As a result, an essential part of any communication plan is continuing to use and revise your plan, based on your experience, throughout the life of your organization.

Why should you develop a plan for communication?

• A plan will make it possible to direct your communication accurately. It gives you a structure to determine whom you need to reach and how.
• A plan can be long-term, helping you map out how to increase awareness of your organization and strengthen its reputation in the community over time.
• A plan can make your communication efforts more efficient, effective, and lasting.
• A plan can make the work easier. If you spend some time planning at the beginning of an effort, you can save time later because you have a clearer idea of what you should be doing at each point in the process.

When should you develop a plan for communication?

As soon as your organization begins planning its objectives and activities, you should also start planning ways to communicate them; successful communication is an ongoing process, not a one-time event.

Communication is useful at all points in your organization's development - it can help get the word out about a new organization, renew interest in a long-standing program, strengthen relationships with the community, or help attract new funding sources.

How do you develop a plan for communication?

Planning for communication is an eight-step process. The steps are:

1. Identify the purpose of your communication
2. Identify your audience
3. Plan and design your message
4. Consider your resources
5. Plan for obstacles and emergencies
6. Strategize how you will connect with the media and others who can help you spread your message
7. Create an action plan
8. Decide how you will evaluate your plan and adjust it, based on the results of carrying it out

1.  Identify your purpose

What you might want to say depends on what you’re trying to accomplish with your communication strategy. You might be concerned with one or a combination of the following:

• Becoming known, or better known, in the community
• Educating the public about the issue your organization addresses
• Recruiting program participants or people who could benefit from or contribute to your programs
• Recruiting volunteers to help with your work
• Rallying supporters or the general public to action for your cause
• Announcing events
• Celebrating honors or accomplishments
• Raising money to fund your work
• Responding to arguments, inaccurate claims, or misrepresentations about your work
• Dealing with an organizational crisis that’s public knowledge - a staff member who commits a crime, for example, or a lawsuit involving the organization

2.  Identify your audience

Who are you trying to reach? Knowing your audience makes it possible to plan your communication logically. You'll often need different messages, channels, and methods for different groups.

There are many different ways to think about your audience and the best ways to contact them. First, there’s the question of what group or groups you’ll focus on. You can consider people according to several characteristics:

• Demographics. Demographics are basic statistical information about populations, such as age, gender, race and ethnicity, income, education, and other characteristics.
• 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 human-made feature.
• Employment. You may be interested in people in a particular line of work or in people who are unemployed or seeking work.
• Health. Your concern might be with people who are at increased risk for or living with a particular condition - high blood pressure, perhaps, or diabetes - or you might be directing a health promotion effort toward the whole community.
• Behavior. You may be directing your message to people who smoke, for example, or to young people involved in violence.
• Attitudes. Are you trying to change people’s minds, deepen their understanding, or encourage them to consider a different perspective?

Another aspect of the audience to consider is whether you should direct your communication to those whose behavior, knowledge, or conditions you hope to affect, or whether your communication needs to be indirect. Sometimes, to influence a population or decision, you may also need to reach people they trust or people who influence the relevant conditions - clergy, community leaders, policymakers, family members, employers, service providers, or others.

For instance, beginning in the 1970s, advocates challenged Nestlé's marketing of infant formula in low- and middle-income countries, where concerns included aggressive promotion, the cost of formula after free samples ended, and unsafe preparation when families lacked reliable access to clean water. Rather than focusing only on the company or health professionals, advocates also reached consumers around the world through a boycott of Nestlé products. The campaign helped bring international attention to infant-formula marketing practices and contributed to changes in industry standards and policy.

3.  The message

When creating your message, consider content, mood, language, and design.

Content

In the course of a national adult literacy campaign in the 1980s, educators learned that TV ads that profiled proud, excited, successful adult learners attracted new learners to literacy programs. Ads that described the difficulties adults could experience because of limited access to reading, writing, and math skills attracted potential volunteers. Both ads were designed to make the same points - the importance of basic skills and the need for literacy efforts - but they spoke to different groups.

You should craft your message with your audience in mind; planning the content of your message is necessary to make it effective.

Mood

Consider what emotions you want to appeal to.

The mood of your message can strongly influence how people react to it. Messages that rely heavily on fear, guilt, shame, or anger can sometimes push people away or make them stop listening. At other times, those emotions may be part of how people already experience an issue and should not simply be ignored. The goal is to choose a tone that fits your purpose, audience, and evidence while treating the people involved with respect. Hope, possibility, shared values, and clear opportunities for action can often help people stay engaged.

Language

There are two aspects to language here. One is the actual language - English, Spanish, Korean, Arabic, American Sign Language, or others - that your intended audience uses. The other is the style of language you use - formal or informal, simple or complex, familiar or technical.

You can address language access by translating written materials into the languages used by the people you hope to reach and by providing qualified interpretation, captioning, or other communication supports for spoken, signed, or recorded messages when needed.

The second language issue is more complicated. If your message is too informal, your audience might feel you’re talking down to them or making an insincere attempt to sound like them. If your message is too formal or full of jargon, your audience might feel you’re not really talking to them at all. Use clear, respectful, straightforward language that expresses what you want to say in a way your intended audience can readily understand.

Channels of communication

What does your intended audience read, listen to, watch, use, attend, or participate in? You have to reach them by placing your message where they’ll see or hear it.

• Posters
• Fliers and brochures - These can be especially useful in places where the issue is already likely to be on people’s minds, such as health care settings for health issues or grocery stores for nutrition.
• Newsletters
• Promotional materials - Items such as caps, T-shirts, and mugs can serve as channels for a concise message or organization name.
• Comics, graphic stories, or other reading material - Material that is interesting and relevant to the intended audience can communicate a message through story, illustration, or other engaging formats.
• Websites, social media, video platforms, messaging apps, podcasts, and other digital channels
• Letters to the Editor
• News stories, columns, and reports
• Press releases and press conferences
• Presentations or presence at local events and local, regional, and national conferences, fairs, and other gatherings
• Community outreach
• Community or national events - The Great American Smokeout, National Literacy Day, a community “Take Back the Night” event against violence, and other community events can serve to convey a message and highlight an issue.
• Public demonstrations
• Word of mouth
• Music
• Exhibits and public art - The AIDS Memorial Quilt, with panels created in memory of people who died of AIDS-related causes, is a prominent example.
• Movies - Since the beginnings of the film industry, movies have carried messages about race, gender, adult literacy, sexual orientation, mental health, HIV and AIDS, and numerous other social issues.
• TV and streaming video - These can carry straightforward messages such as ads and Public Service Announcements (PSAs), as well as news, documentaries, and entertainment programs that deal with your issue or profile your organization.
• Theater and interactive theater - A play or skit, especially one created with people who have experienced what it illustrates, can be a powerful way to present an issue or underline the need for services or change.

Several interactive theater groups in New England have used performances based on real experiences of staff members and adult learners to invite audiences into conversations about adult literacy. By pausing the action and encouraging questions and discussion, these performances have helped challenge assumptions and bring information about adult literacy and learning into the community.

4.  Resources

What do you have the money to do? Do you have the people, time, technology, and relationships to make it possible? If you’re going to spend money, what results are you hoping for, and are they worth the expense? How will your use of financial and human resources affect other priorities?

Your plan should include careful determinations of how much you can spend and how much staff and volunteer time it’s reasonable to use. You may also be able to share materials, air time, and other goods and services with individuals, businesses, other organizations, and institutions.

5.  Anticipate obstacles and emergencies

Any number of things can happen in the course of a communication effort. Someone can forget to send a press release or leave out an important phone number, website, or e-mail address. A crucial word on your posters or in your brochure can be misspelled, a social media post can contain incorrect information, or a reporter might get an important fact wrong. More seriously, your organization may have to respond publicly to a crisis that threatens trust or credibility.

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 what to do when a problem or crisis occurs. Crisis plans should include who is responsible for gathering accurate information, who can speak for the organization, how misinformation or errors will be corrected, how affected people will be informed, and when materials or messages need to be withdrawn or replaced. The plan should be flexible enough to respond to situations that cannot be predicted in advance.

6.  Strategize how you’ll connect with the media and others to spread your message

Establishing productive relationships with individual media representatives and media outlets can be an important part of a communication plan, as is establishing relationships with trusted individuals and institutions in the community and among the people you’re trying to reach. Make genuine contacts, provide accurate and useful information, respect people's roles, and follow through to sustain relationships and keep communication channels open.

The individuals who can help spread your message can vary from formal community leaders - elected officials, leaders of local businesses, clergy, educators, and others - to community activists, neighborhood leaders, and other trusted community members. Institutions and organizations, such as colleges, hospitals, service clubs, faith communities, and other health and community organizations, may also have relationships with groups of people you hope to reach.

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 is already done, for the most part. You know 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 a matter of putting the details together - composing and designing your message or messages, making contact with the people who can help you, assigning responsibilities and timelines, and getting everything in place to start your communication effort. And finally, you'll evaluate your effort so that you can continue to make it better.

8.  Evaluation

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. Look not only at how many people received or saw a message, but also at whether people understood it, whether it reached the audiences you intended to reach, whether it was accessible and respectful, and whether it contributed to the action or understanding you hoped for.

And there’s really a ninth step to developing a communication plan: as with just about every phase of health and community work, you have to keep up the effort, adjusting your plan and continuing to communicate with the community.