You're tasked with creating a strategic communications plan for your organization. What's the first step?

The first step in crafting a strategic communications plan is to thoroughly understand your organization's goals and audience. Start by defining clear, measurable objectives that align with the broader business strategy. Who are you aiming to reach? What action do you want them to take? This foundational understanding sets the stage for all subsequent decisions, from messaging and channels to metrics for success. It's about aligning your communications strategy directly with your organization's ambitions, ensuring every message contributes to the overarching mission. Getting this step right ensures your communications plan is targeted, relevant, and poised for success.

In addition to the SWOT analysis, it is important to learn how the company is perceived by its key stakeholders, and one way to do it is conducting a perception audit with samples. This could bring valuable insights on the company's reputation and challenges to be addressed in the communications plan.

The first step in creating a strategic communications plan for an organization is conducting a comprehensive situational analysis. This involves assessing the current state of internal and external communications, understanding organizational goals, and identifying key stakeholders. Engage in a thorough SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) to pinpoint areas for improvement and potential communication challenges. This foundational understanding will serve as the basis for developing targeted objectives, key messages, and an overarching strategy aligned with the organization's broader goals..

SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis to assess the internal and external factors that may impact communications efforts. This helps identify areas of advantage to leverage and challenges to address.

This is a huge task but it will be much easier if you have buy-in and awareness from your main stakeholders. Spend the time onboarding them and explaining where you hope to get to, and asking them what they would like to see in a communications plan. I would also recommend asking them to nominate someone in their team to be your point person - that way you will have an "in" to every department.

Your objectives should be driven by the analytics you wish to measure and the changes you wish to see. Examples of goals could include: 1. Create shared understanding and meaning among employees supporting the brand messaging. Increase employee understanding of how their role fits within a company by 8%, measured by internal survey. 2. Influence the organization’s communication efforts in determining the right voice for messaging, measured by number of ad hoc requests received versus strategic conversations. 3. Gain buy-in and develop consistent cadence of communication from executive leadership to ensure employees are hearing from the c-suite on a consistent basic, measured by engagement with material.

Identify and understand the key stakeholders and target audiences of the organization. This includes customers, employees, shareholders, media, policymakers, etc. What are their needs, preferences, and concerns?

The first step in creating a strategic communications plan is to conduct a situation analysis. This involves understanding your organization's internal strengths and weaknesses (SWOT analysis) and the external environment (opportunities and threats). Through this analysis, you gain a clear picture of your current communication landscape, forming a strong foundation for outlining your communication goals and strategies.

During the analysis of results, it's crucial to keep an open mind regarding the original plan. This is the critical moment to reassess and adjust. Do not hesitate to modify or abandon projects that are not working, no matter how promising they may seem. Keep the focus on the strategy to ensure that the work is aligned with the business objectives.