The new year ushers in new business goals and offers opportunities to begin again. By taking a long-term, strategic view as a communicator, you’re able to craft an annual communication plan that’s aligned, integrated and holistic.
You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don't believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can't possibly foresee now.
– Harry S. Truman, the 33rd president of the United States
Today, let’s dive into four strategies for mastering the art of annual communication planning. As corporate communicators, our role isn’t just about words. It’s about crafting narratives that inspire and empower, steering businesses toward success. We create plans that serve as a framework to deliver that narrative to the right audience at the right time. At the same time, we remain poised to refine, flex and adjust when priorities change.
So, grab your coffee and let’s chart a course for a year of communication that makes a positive impact.
1. Aligning Communication with Business Goals
In business, communication for communications’ sake is just noise. Busy leaders and even busier employees are bombarded with messages vying for their attention. Avoid contributing to the noise by ensuring your message matters.
In the dynamic world of corporate comms, the first step to a successful annual plan is alignment. Your communication strategy should seamlessly sync with the overarching goals of the business. Here’s how:
Define Clear Objectives and Desired Outcomes
- Meet with the leader(s) of the business you support.
- Identify their priorities and key business objectives for the year. Gain insight into the timing.
- Determine their desired outcomes.
- Translate their priorities into themes (by quarter, if possible) and their objectives into measurable communication goals.
Stakeholder Mapping
- Audience first. Understand your audience(s) – internal and external stakeholders (e.g., demographics, job type, culture). Who are they? How do they receive / consume news and information?
- Create simple personas so that you have a clear picture in your mind’s eye for whom you’re crafting your message(s). Use a data-driven approach to create employee personas. Use the data and insights to identify their needs, preferences and motivations. Not sure where to start? Check out Dovetail’s guide to employee personas.
- Establish overarching messages to be used in mass communication (i.e., all leaders / all employees), but don’t stop there. Tailor messages that will resonate with each persona / group. This enables you to craft targeted communication that will cut through the clutter, grab your audience’s attention and hold it.
Integrated Planning
Ensure your communication plan integrates with other functions like brand, marketing, operations, people solutions / HR and other functions.
- To gain a 30K-foot view of what other functions are planning, meet and collaborate with your Corp Comms colleagues and division communication partners.
- Identify opportunities to align campaigns and messaging.
- Maintain open lines of communication with the leaders you support, giving them a line of sight into what other functions are planning to avoid potential collisions and mixed messages.
2. Crafting Authentic Narratives with Integrity
Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.
– C.S. Lewis, British writer, literary scholar, and Anglican lay theologian
Now that you’re aligned with business goals, it’s time to infuse your communication with authenticity and integrity. Here’s your roadmap:
Honesty and Transparency Matters
- Be open and transparent about challenges and successes. Transparency doesn’t mean being an open book. Be thoughtful about what your audience needs to know, when and particularly how.
- Through open and honest communication, you’ll cultivate trust. When you don’t know something, admit it and promise to share more when it’s known. To maintain and strength trust, deliver on your promise.
Master the Art of Story
- Develop compelling narratives that reflect your company’s purpose and values. People love stories about real people. And today, more than ever, employees want to contribute to something bigger than themselves.
- Include anecdotes and real-life examples to make messages relatable.
- Use images and infographics to capture attention and cut through the clutter
- Incorporate inclusive language so that the audience feels like you know them and are talking to them.
Consistency Across Channels
- Repetition is important. Maintain a unified voice across all communication channels.
- Sweat the assets. In other words, repurpose the same asset in a variety of ways.
- Reinforce key messages through various communication platforms. Make every effort to meet leaders and employees in places they already go frequently.
Dig Deeper: To learn about the attributes of key messages and the steps to develop them, read “How to create compelling key messages.”
3. Let’s Talk Tactics
Bringing your communications strategy to life hinges on identifying effective tactics tailored to the available resources and channels. Employ tactics that are a practical but with a flare of creativity to ensure maximum impact within the constraints of your resources. But remember…
Tactics without strategy are the noise before defeat.
– Sun Tzu, Author of The Art of War
Begin by conducting a thorough assessment of your available channels, be it email, internal publications, large-scale meetings, events, digital displays, posters, or social media platforms. Consider incorporating indirect tactics, like leader toolkits, huddle sheets, download-on-demand resources like team huddle sheets and FAQs. Simultaneously, take stock of your resources—human, financial and technological.
Select tactics that leverage your resources optimally, aligning with your overall strategy. Whether it’s harnessing the power of storytelling in internal meetings or using social media campaigns to engage external stakeholders, the key is to strategically allocate resources where they’ll yield the greatest results. Flexibility is crucial; be prepared to adapt your tactics based on real-time feedback and emerging opportunities, ensuring a dynamic and effective approach to your communication.
4. Measuring and Adapting for Continuous Improvement
The secret sauce to a stellar annual communication plan lies in your ability to measure, adapt and evolve. Let’s explore:
Measure for Impact, not Activity
- While not always easy, establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that align with your communication goals that are designed to contribute to business outcomes.
- Be numeric as much as possible.
- Regularly assess and analyze metrics to track progress. It’s not enough to review the data. It’s important to ask, “what’s the data telling us?”
Feedback Loops
- Encourage feedback from your audience throughout the year. Be systematic but be open to taking it in whatever form you’re able to capture it (e.g., likes, comments, surveys, focus groups).
- Look for themes and patterns of engagement. What’s resonating? What’s not?
- Use feedback to refine your communication strategies and adjust your tactics.
Be Flexible and Agile
- Fact: business priorities change. Understand your comms plan is a work in progress and the ink is never dry. Embrace an agile mindset – be ready to adapt to changing circumstances and feedback.
- Continuously learn and evolve your communication plan.
Your Strategic Roadmap, To Do List and Status Report
Your annual comms plan is an effective way for you and your team to work smarter. It’s your strategic roadmap for the year. Once you’ve included specific dates and tactics, it becomes your action plan, your proverbial To Do list.
As you make progress, keep your plan current, marking activities as ‘scheduled,’ ‘in progress’ and ‘complete.’ By sharing a link to the plan with your business leaders and partners, it becomes your status report that’s available upon demand.
Parting Thoughts
Plans are the foundation upon which success is built.
– Nelson Mandela, South African anti-apartheid activist and politician who served as the first president of South Africa
Remember, great communication is both a skill and an art. Mastering the annual communication plan ensures that your efforts aren’t just heard but resonate, inspire, drive action and produce desired results. Communication… keep it flowing.
Inspire On!
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