WHAT IS STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS?
Strategic communications is about being proactive and deliberate about your work. It helps you accomplish your mission and goals while making your work more influential. Strategic communications should be carried out in a holistic manner: identifying specific messages and necessary information, deciding who the audience is, selecting how you will get that word out—and who will get it out, and measuring your results in conjunction with tracking the overall success and failure of a campaign or project.
Strategic communications employs a full range of techniques to echo-out your work and, in some instances, to move public opinion or to change the landscape.
It amplifies and enhances an organization’s mission, whether the goal is to advocate for specific change, reposition a business for a new audience or community involvement, assist a foundation’s grantees in meeting their own goals, or to promote an advocacy, policy, or funding agenda among a community of funders or others.
Integrate strategic communications into every aspect of the work. The key question for strategic communications is this: Who do you need to reach and influence to achieve your programmatic, policy, and advocacy goals? Once you identify your programmatic goals, the communications strategy should flow accordingly.
A Strategic Communications Plan Can Include:
- A Scan of the Mission or Goal of Your Organization
- Branding and Framing
- Media Training and Public Speaking
- Earned or Free Media
- Paid Media
- Effective Use of Research
- Developing Targeted Print and Web-Based Materials
- Special Strategies To Reach Key Constituents
Communications work isn’t static; it’s as dynamic as daily life. If it’s successful, it needs to be ‘tweaked’ and updated as campaigns proceed.
