Strategic Communication Planning 101

4 Steps to Start Creating Your Plan

checklist

Step 1: Conduct a Situation Analysis

Creating a dynamic strategic communication plan requires dedicating significant time to research and analyzing the environment in which you will deliver your communication plan in. A situation analysis looks at external and internal factors that will influence your plan. External factors could include political, demographic, and environmental forces. Internal factors could include financical and human resources and IT capabilities. Part of developing a situation analysis is conducting a SWOT analysis. SWOT is an acronym for strength, weakness, opportunities, threats. Learn more about conducting a SWOT analysis.

Step 2: Identify Your Audience(s)

Who are your target audiences? During this step you'll need to break down your audiences & identify who you'll be targeting with your plan. Aim to be specific (e.g if your audience is lawyers are you communicating with all lawyers or only those practising in a specific province, or with a specific area of practice? etc.).

Step 3: Clarify Your Key Messages

What messages do you want your audiences to receive? Creating clear key messages for each of your audiences will help ensure the success of your strategic communication plan. These core messages should be concise and help to convey what you want your audiences to hear and remember.

Step 4: Set Out SMART Objectives

What specific outcomes do you want to acheive with your strategic communication plan? Set out objectives that are SMART (specific, measurable, acheivable, realistic and time specific). For example: Let's say you are surveying practising lawyers in January 2021 to gain insight into struggles they are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic. You want to receive a certain % of responses to ensure you have a solid base of feedback to evoke changes and create supports for these lawyers but you know typically only about 500 lawyers respond to your organization's surveys. A SMART objective would be: 600 lawyers respond to the call for feedback survey by February 1, 2021.



Coded by Collette Deschenes