Developing a communication strategy

A communication strategy, like an HR strategy or diversity strategy, is usually a mini strategy developed to help you achieve your corporate aims.  It flows from your corporate strategy.  It is designed to improve your ability to get your messages seen, heard, understood and acted upon by the right people.  We can help you set up a process and see it through.

Review

When you are developing your communication strategy you will probably start with a review of your current communication.  You may need to do a communications audit and some stakeholder research.  Some of the key questions you will need to ask and answer are:

• Audience - who are they?  What makes them tick/what moves them? What do they need from us?  Are their needs changing? What do they think of our organisation?
• Culture - do we have a strong communication culture? Does our internal communication support external communication?
• Skills and resources - do we have the skills and resources we need to get our voice out there?
• Messages - do we have the messages we need?  are they clear?  Does everyone in the organisation know what they are?  How do our messages play with our audiences?
• Branding - Does our brand or positioning need refreshing in the light of the environment in which we work and our strategic aims?
• Hype and interference in your external environment - What aspects of the external environment have a postive or negative impact on our communication?
• Monitoring - do we collect the data we need to measure the effectiveness of our communication?

What we offer:  we have developed specialist tools for communications audit, and can conduct quantitative and qualitative research - focus groups, surveys etc.   We can also analyse the strengths and weaknesses of your messaging and help develop effective ways of getting your messages across.  We are brand specialists who will work with you to understand your brand position and strengthen it.  See our short guide to branding.

Developing your aims and objectives

Having completed your review, you will be able to identify aims and objectives for your communication strategy.  What outcomes are you looking for?

Once you are clear about what you want to achieve, you can develop a programme of activity to deliver your aims and objectives, and a monitoring and evaluation programme to measure your outcomes.

Innovative ways of getting your message across

Our team of experts can help you implement your communication plans. We have brand specialists, PR campaign strategists, writers, press officers who will sell in your stories to the media, designers (including specialist web designers, brand designers, and magazine designers), award-winning video partners, photographers, radio experts who can develop podcasts and celebrity strategists who can help you sprinkle a bit of celebrity stardust.

Training:  we are committed to skill sharing and will always seek to help you develop your skills in-house.  for example, our video partners specialise in working with organisations to develop their video skills, and our writers will help you develop your web-writing and newsletter skills.