Communication Strategy towards Success

Communication strategy is the “what, who, why, when, how, and where” of conveying a message. In this fast paced world, information travels at the speed of light and leads to undesirable consequences if only half the story (or a one sided opinion) is echoed in the marketplace.

Communication strategies help the companies to propagate information in a structured and controlled manner. An ideal strategy details the structure of information flow, the message, the correct audience to address, potential vehicles to carry the message, resources required to fulfill, and feedback mechanisms to learn from the whole exercise.

These strategies form the blueprint to build a campaign to inform, as well as to be informed by others. Communications strategies also can be used to expedite the flow of information in sudden, unfolding, but structured events. Communication Strategies can help you think your way through a situation.

Why would you need a communication strategy?

For the same reason an army would need an assault plan or a football team would need a defense layout. When a strategy is built, resources of the organization are matched up with the needs and are appropriately allocated.

Imagine what would happen if you send out a medic to recon a terrain?

Communication strategies help you to plan communication with your target audience, the stakeholders, and your colleagues. Good strategies can improve the interactive nature of communication and help you receive information from your audience.

It is a two way process, to gather information as well as receive information. Communication strategy provides a structure for identifying events (e.g., issues, problems, and actions) that need to be addressed; it considers potential audience and the appropriate messages; it also develops vehicles to deliver information.
On a lighter note, Here is how leaders of yesterday would think

Napoleon, Caesar and Alexander the Great watched the army parade in Red Square, as visitors of honor...

'If I had Soviet planes,' Caesar speaks, 'I could have conquered the whole world!'

'If I had Soviet tanks,' Alexander said, 'I would have been invincible!'

'And if I had had "The Truth" (The newspaper),' Napoleon said, 'the world, even now, would not have found out about Waterloo!'

A good strategy of communication helps you to think about and plan audience involvement, which saves time and money. Communication strategies maximize shared information and minimize misinterpretations. An Advertisement might be a small chunk of a larger communication strategy,

The Basic steps of developing a communication strategy are:

1. The Need for the Communication Strategy: Identify the Reason

Determine why the communication is necessary would be the first step in developing a communication strategy. You should devout some time defining a single, focused message that requires communication. Ask yourself:

What is the issue to which you are responding?

What actions are you taking that warrant development of a strategy?

Is this a launch of a new product or an information campaign?

Also, decide what you want to achieve with this communication. Are you asking for a response, providing information, encouraging an action, increasing awareness, building consensus, changing behavior or something else?

2. The Message: Identify the message that is to be conveyed.

To determine what you want to communicate, identify and define all messages. This step might involve a brainstorming session where all possible message ideas are listed. Focus on two to three key messages and rank them by importance, timeliness, or other factors. Bring the whole message together and look at it from a Big Picture perspective to see if it conveys what needs to be conveyed

On a lighter side, take a moment to go through this funny piece about a President who knows not how to communicate and definitely no Strategy for communication… it is actually a Tragedy of communication I guess :-)

President Bush was visiting a school. One class was amidst a discussion related to words and their meaning.

The teacher asked the president if he would like to lead the discussion of the word "tragedy." So the illustrious leader asked the class for an example of a tragedy.

Little Jimmy stood up and offered, "If my best friend, Cheney, living in the farm, were playing in the field and a tanker ran him over and killed him, that would be a tragedy."

"No," said the great leader, "that would be an accident."

Little Susie said: "If a Fun bus carrying 65 students drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a tragedy."

"I'm afraid not." explained Mr. Bush. "That would be a great loss."

The room went totally silent.

No one else volunteered.

"Isn't there someone here who can give me an example of tragedy?"

Finally little Johnny raised his hand. In a shy voice he said: "If Air Force One carrying Mr. and Mrs. Bush was struck by a "friendly fire" missile and blown to smithereens that would be a tragedy."

"That's right!" exclaimed Bush. "Can you tell me why that would be a tragedy?"

"Well, you see" says little Johnny, "it has to be a tragedy, coz it certainly wouldn't be a great loss and it wouldn't be an accident either."

3. The Audience: Identify the target audience for the Communication

Once the messages are identified, ask yourself:
Who is involved, affected, interested? What information do they need? How are they likely to react? What are their concerns? What information do they already have?

By answering the probable audience questions, you will improve the effectiveness of the message and increase the efficiency of the delivery mechanism to be developed. You also need to spend some time finding out the best time and place to communicate. Some messages are best received on weekdays, others on weekends.

Understand how the setting might affect the message. Once you have made a list of all potential settings for message delivery, analyze how the settings might affect the way your messages will be received. Will the setting be formal or informal? Perhaps “good news” should be shared in formal settings and “bad news” in informal settings—or vice versa.

4. Determine measures for success

How will you know your message has been well received and understood?
One measure might be the number of people who attended i.e. quantitative
Or
The subscriptions picked up or qualitative like ending up on national television. What are the end results of your communication? If you understand this well, you can direct the flow of information effectively.

5. Identify the modes of delivery for the communication

Explore vehicles and tools for delivering the message. How will you reach key stakeholders? Note that the reach and impact of your message will increase if the same message is distributed via multiple vehicles more than one time.

Some of the vehicles and tools for delivering the message include:
Presentations
Public notices
Briefings
Exhibits
Responsiveness summaries
Telephone
Internet
Mailing information

By planning out a proper utilization of existing resources, you can minimize cost incurred on building additional vehicles for communication.
Example: Enthusiastic word of mouth publicity would be far more effective than printing of hundreds of handouts. It would be cost effective as well. I cannot emphasis the importance of identifying potential human assets within the organization who can implement these into the main communication strategy as it would go a long way in making all communication cost effective.

Actual Delivery of Your Message.

Sometimes it is better to put forward an Expert / Specialist to deliver the message rather than the primary stakeholders. Example a scientist communicating the importance of new research will be a lot more credible than the lead sponsor taking over the mike when the intention is to gather attention and interest of public. A better role for the lead sponsor would be in raising more money for the cause.
A Good Communication Strategy should identify good human assets within the organization for each program and keep them ready to fly when required.

Gathering Feedback

Any professional worth his dime will tell you even the best strategy will fail if it is not dynamic. The only way to be efficient is to learn from experience. Hence make it a point to design a few different methods of collecting feedback. Setting a target and comparing the actual results to it can be one of the readily available feedbacks.

Encourage feedback by showing the audience how their input was used. Evaluate the results and refine the strategy. Based on audience feedback and measures for success, evaluate the implementation of your strategy. What are its strengths? Where can it be improved? How should your communication strategy be amended to ensure continued effectiveness?

Remember any communication strategy is just that, a strategy. It should not replace the process of actually communicating with your audience. It needs to be flexible enough to allow for a change in the message or in the audience. Consult your strategy often to remind yourself of your goals, messages, and audiences. Document successes and shortcomings to learn how your communication strategy can be improved.

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