How often do you feel like you fall down a rabbit hole when it comes to marketing and communications? You decide to do a Facebook post, then realize you should update your website first, which leads to creating a graphic to put on your website, then you decide you should share the information with the newspaper through a press release, too. What starts as a simple social media post, can lead to hours of unorganized and unplanned work.

When you have news to share—whether it’s an exciting announcement, upcoming event, or urgent message— having a communication strategy can help you share it in a more planned and efficient way.

At the Chamber, we have six steps we take/questions we consider before sharing our message, and we suggest trying them for your own business or organization:

• Key Messages: What is the main message you want to get across? Write 1-2 sentences to represent that message, and have all your team members become familiar with it.
• Audience: Who is your audience? Where does this audience access information?
• Goals & Objectives: What is your goal with the communication and what does success look like? Create SMART objectives: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound. Ex: Get 25 people to register by January 10 for the webinar
• Strategy: What approach will you take for getting this information out? Will you share it across online platforms or maybe rely mostly on traditional direct marketing, like mailings and phone calls? It’s important to consider your audience when deciding this.
• Tactics: This is where you take action. Most people start with tactics, but it’s important to have an understanding of the first four steps beforehand. Create a list of specific tasks, and keep it updated. This can include: social media, email, website, newsletter, email, calls, flyers, traditional media, and events. When you’re ready to carry out a plan, use this list as a resource to keep you on track.
• Measurement: This step is often skipped, but always make sure to see how your plan worked. Review metrics (Facebook insights, event attendees, etc) and consider how this is different than what your goals and objectives were.

It may seem time consuming to create a plan and follow it, but it can help keep your marketing and communications organized and intentional.

This article was published in the Venango Chamber’s January 2021 VenangoWorks! Newsletter.