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Build a Communications Strategy including social media

Communication Strategy PigeonBuild a communications strategy

The use of Social Media within the Voluntary and Community Sector is just beginning. For many organisations and people this is a worrying time with a real concern that organisations will lose control of their identity.

There is a danger that organisations, or individuals within organisations leap in without any planning and that the entry into social media is disjointed and fails.

As part of the ICT Champion role, funded by NAVCA, a series of publications and workshops have been developed to support organisations as they start to consider using social media.

Electroville - which hosts the Yorks/Humber ICT Champion has developed a Social media guide click the link to download a copy.

This article aims to look at placing social media into your communications strategy.

There is an audio podcast available as part of this article which is available via ipadio and on iTunes. You may also wish to download this document which has some ready made tables to help you devise your strategy. This can be delivered as a session in a staff or trustee meeting.

Stage one: Who to communicate with

Stage two: types of communication

Stage three: methods of communication

Stge four: looking at the effectiveness of communication

Stage five: cost of communication

Stage six: preferred methods of communication

Author: Pete Read from Illuminateict

Who to Communicate with

The first stage is to identify the people and groups you want to communicate with. This list should include, clients, customers, staff, colleagues and other people and groups.

You should try to include all the different types of people and remember some people may fall into many categories.

This list can be added to but will already identify that you will need to vary the way a communication is delivered dependanty upon the recipient.

Types of Communication

By types of communication, I really mean the purpose of the communication. For example the types of communications I have include: Give instructions; Warnings; to Inform; to entertain; to resign etc.

List all the type of communication you can think of and then consider how each one may vary according to who you are communicating with.

Methods of Communication

The methods of communication the looks at the how we communicate, for example face to face or one to many.

The type of examples I have include:

one to one
one to many
many to one
email
letter
twitter
facebook
skype
letter

There are many more including pigeon and semaphore but realistically look at the ones you feel may be appropriate to your needs.

Effectiveness of a communication

If you have downloaded the document linked to this article you will see a matrix where the methods of communication are written across the top and the type of communication is down the side.

If necessary you can then think of each of the people/groups identified in the Who to communicate section and agree the effectiveness of each means of communication.

You can use any scoring system you wish, percentages, one to ten etc. but consider each as a means of communication with the groups previously identified.

For example this may mean that you decide that one to one is 100% effective for giving instructions to a colleague but that one to one may not be the most effective as a means of entertainment - (keep it clean)

Sending a text message may be very effective for giving information, but is less effective in giving an emergency warnng: "look out for that car - LOL"

Cost of communication

The cost of communication must be taken into account as part of the effectiveness measure. It is estimated that using full cost recovery the cost of a person in the vol sec is around £35 per hour. So while you may have decided that face to face is best, can you afford it. Bearing in mind this £35 cost of a person, this would suggest that a small cost of a text message for example, would reduce the costs of missed appointments.

The time costs of maintaining a facebook page - to keep your supporters informed is negligable, to tweet updates and to engage people in conversation is smaller than letters or email.

Please remember that we still have a round a third of the population without reliable broadband connectivity and so you should not abandon more traditional methods but where possible you should drive savings to reduce your own costs and to improve communications.

For those of you who wish this can also be the start of a set of ROI (Return on Investment) calculations for your communications strategy.

Preferred methods of communication

The final stage is to identify when you would use the differing communications types. You should also start to think about who would be responsible for each communications type.

For example:

Blog - a web log or diary

This is often the chief officer or project manager who will maintain a blog it takes around 40 minutes a week but it should be allocated.

Phlogs and podcasts

Can take a little more time but you should try and avoid worrying about polishing your performance - using a product like IPadio will allow you to record a podcast from any mobile phone and publish your phone blog (phlog) to iTunes.

Remember to register your organisation on the popular social network sites - even if you don't plan on using them immediately. You may find that in a few months time that your name has been taken and you have problems finding a name that meets your needs.

Finally agree the protocols of what is acceptable - people should be trusted to engage in conversations on your behalf but remember there is nothing to stop any one from registering your name and using it.

If you would like to discuss this in more detail then please email pete@illuminateict.org.uk

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