The November 2010 meeting of Public Policy Communicators NYC was all about how to develop effective communications plans.  We set out to examine:

- How to produce realistic, focused communications goals and objectives.

- How to gain clarity and agreement on the specific target audiences and the modes of communication best suited to reaching them.

- How to get REALLY REAL about time allocation with both staff and organizational leadership on trade-offs, opportunism and sticking to a plan.

Edith Asibey – who has been a consultant to many foundations and international nonprofits on this topic, is a board member of our partner The Communications Network and is currently doing just this kind of work on a daily basis at The Atlantic Philanthropies – led our discussion.  And, of course, the PPC members in attendance contributed lots of great thinking about how the concepts we were discussing played out in their work.

Edith began by stating her position that communications planning is a prerequisite for effectiveness.  “How do you know if your communications are effective?” she asked.  You simply can’t know if you haven’t taken the time to create a real plan against which to measure success.  Further, while large-budget organizations may have the luxury of spending in a way that throws lots of resources onto the wall to see what sticks, those with limited resources face an even greater imperative to plan in ways that directs resources only to the efforts that are most likely to have the greatest impact.

She asked the group to consider two questions: First, how would you rate the quality of your existing plan? It became clear that very few in the room considered their plans particularly good, let alone excellent, and quite a few had no plan at all. Second, she asked the group whether or not their organizations actually stick to the plans that they create. The commonalities in the responses showed that many of us are in the same boat – one that leaks.

That second question also produced a line of conversation among participants that became one of the strongest themes of the day: How do you create a plan that is targeted and strategic, but also allows for flexibility and responsiveness to opportunities within the news hole?  Some said that you can create a plan that actually allows for that kind of flexibility – one which has a limited number of deliverables but which also has more loosely defined areas where new opportunities will be pursued. Others said you simply had to live with knowing that you will never fulfill your plan in its entirety. “If you stick to a plan exactly, then you probably won’t really be that successful,” one person asserted. Edith said that planning for flexibility can actually help deal with unpredictability and challenges by defining priority areas, so that those opportunities that fall outside the priorities don’t become distractions.  But, she said, sticking to the plan and pursuing other opportunities will always be a balancing act.

Steering the conversation toward specific ways of making more productive communications plans, Edith presented an example from a media campaign she led in Paraguay several years ago. She talked about the ambitions of the campaign and showed the goal statement that the campaign organizers had developed in the planning process: “Raise awareness of the Paraguayan population about the major environmental problems facing the country: deforestation, soil degradation, water pollution, loss of biodiversity.”

To many of us in the room, it seemed like a decent goal.  Edith said that, in fact, this was an example of a “monster goal,” one so broad and ill-defined that it could not adequately focus the work or lead to any understanding of how well one had moved toward achieving the goal.  Several people in the room commiserated, saying that they had all seen communications plans that sought to “raise awareness” among a general population, among “media,” “thought leaders,” “within the community” or other hugely general audiences that provided little guidance in how to really target and reach key people within those populations.

In developing more meaningful goals that drive good plans, it is essential to gain clarity and SPECIFICITY about:

-       Goals (these are the ways in which you want the world to be different within 3, 5 or 10 years, and which your communications efforts will have contributed to making happen)

-       Objectives (while we did not cover it in detail during the meeting, I would like to include here an excerpt from Asibey’s “Are We There Yet?”: Objectives are different from goals: they are more specific and have a shorter time frame, typically one to two years. Think of objectives as a series of benchmarks on the way to your goal. Most likely, you will have a few intermediate objectives that will progressively lead to your goal. A good objective should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Result-focused and Time-specific.

-       Audiences

-       Messages

-       Messengers

-       Tactics

-       Measurements

The process of gaining clarity and specificity about these elements will lead organically to an effective and focused communications plan.  In fact, Edith said, specifying audiences is the only way to create good strategy. In the Paraguay example, she suggested, as an alternative to working with such a broad goal, to instead create a series of concrete, incremental objectives that would anchor a much better communications plan.  As an example, she suggested an objective that looks like this:  “Secure support of 30 mayors in the most affected provinces to protect water sources.” This objective not only focused on mayors—a well defined target audience – but also honed in on the environmental element that had the greatest potential impact on the whole system.

This led to a discussion of one of the other major themes of the day: the often delicate relationship of communications to “program.”  Clearly, when communications become central to the organizational discussion about how to achieve goals, some tensions arise about the right mix of communications efforts that are integrating “program objectives” and efforts aimed at heightening general awareness of the organization, improving its reputation.  Some in the group expressed some anxiety about asserting themselves too strongly into the work of “program,” and said that their charge within the organization was to stick with media relations aimed at improving general awareness of the organization.  Others embraced the idea of stepping back from the frequent task of trying to place OpEds from the President of their organization and helping the organization think through how communications could really help achieve program goals.

Asibey noted that the ability to play the role of internal consultant on how communications can produce program results may depend on how long you’ve been at the organization and how much trust has been established. She said it helps to sit down with program folks and really understand what they want to accomplish and learn more about their target audiences so that you can figure out how communications can help reach them.  Those discussions with program people will also help flesh out the messages and messengers that will resonate with target audiences.

She said that, if your plan includes audiences described simply as “policy makers,” “funders” or “the media,” it is not specific enough.  She cited an example of an organization she worked with that, instead of laying out categories of people they wanted to reach, went through an extensive process that resulted in exactly 450 named individuals that they wanted to influence.  Once they identified those exact individuals who they believed could advance their objectives, they developed messages and modes of communications tailored to how those individuals receive information.

The remainder of the discussion ranged over participants’ experiences trying to force greater specificity to how the imperative to focus on core audiences squares with the new pressures many of us are feeling to spend more of our time and resources on social media, the effects of which seem to be diffuse at best.

Edith conceded that even good planning won’t solve all of these challenges, still “Specificity is very satisfying!”

Many in the group expressed a desire to talk more about this subject and delve more deeply into the planning process, which lead to a discussion of planning resources. One attendee said that PPC-NYC member Nancy Schwartz, who runs the Getting Attention! blog, is a great resource and an effective consultant helping communicators develop good communications plans.

Other PPC-NYC members who do consulting in this area include:

Douglas Gould, Douglas Gould & Co.
Rochelle Lefkowitz, Pro-Media Communications
Amy Sutnick Plotch, Amy Sutnick Plotch Consulting
Michael Remaley, HAMILL REMALEY breakthrough communications
Farra Trompeter, Big Duck Communications
Lisa Witter, Fenton Communications

Asibey’s communications evaluation report “Are We There Yet?” also provides great insights into communications planning and how to go about it.  Those seeking communications planning literature should also check out the Knowledge section of The Communications Network’s website at: http://comnetwork.org/knowledge_research

If you want to get a very quick overview of what people were getting out of the webinar, you can also check out what was being said about the session on Twitter by checking out the #comnet tag on Twitter or clicking here.

A few points that I came away from the discussion:

- While most seem to agree that communications professionals need to get into social media to advance our causes, there is still very little hard evidence about the impact.  It is such a new area of communications with little research.  A Kauffman Foundation initiative cited by the webinar leaders showed that its social media efforts — as part of a larger communications effort — produced only 8% of the overall increase in traffic to the initiative’s site.  Given that we all agree social media work is very time consuming, that didn’t seem like a lot to me.

- One communications executive said that his organization was spending 2.5 hours a day Twittering. That seemed like a lot of time to many on the call, but he clarified that there were 5 staff members each maybe Twittering for half an hour a day.  I guess that sounds more reasonable.

- It was noted that to build a following on Twitter, you need to do a lot of Re-Tweeting, at like a ratio of 3 Re-Tweets to every Tweet about your own organization.  I’m not sure I agree with that, but it was an interesting point.

- “Buzz is based on Trust.” This was a core concept I can get behind. Don’t do or say anything in social media that would decrease the trust that your audience has in your organization (i.e. deluging with crap, or repeating yourself a zillion times with self-serving crap).  Seems basic, but does get violated all the time.

Overall, the main idea that I took away from the session was that even those who are the most advanced in social media still have big questions about the best ways to go about it, how much time to invest, most effective strategies, etc.  I was about to write that we’re all stumbling around in the dark, but given the media under discussion I think a better metaphor is that we’re all equally blinded by the light and struggling to gain focus.  I think we’ll figure it out eventually, but we need to keep experimenting and asking questions.

Nancy Schwartz has written a very good piece on this topic recently on her Getting Attention blog. While it is a short post and I am sure she would have a lot more to say in person, she gives a very nice overview of the basic information communications professionals should be tracking to get a handle on the success of their efforts.  She says:

Track these outputs: Articles placed, links added, online mentions of your organization, number of requests for public appearances, incoming press calls, etc. For example, two articles or one letter to the editor a month, three incoming press calls or 10% increase in daily unique visitors to your website generated by links on other sites. As always, look for trending (steady increases) rather than absolute numbers…I suggest you create a media log to record media relations activities and results. It will assist you in evaluating the contacts/relationships you have with specific media outlets and reporters, and help you identify concerns with particular outlets/reporters so that you can address them (e.g. always misquoted, description of organization incorrect, inappropriate language to explain issue, etc.)

Nancy has written extensively over the years on this topic and I hope she will join us at the next PPC meeting.

]]> http://www.ppcnyc.org/2010/02/starting-to-think-about-measuring-results/feed/ 0 http://www.ppcnyc.org/2010/01/free-webinar-on-making-the-most-of-social-media/ http://www.ppcnyc.org/2010/01/free-webinar-on-making-the-most-of-social-media/#comments Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:21:49 +0000 Michael Hamill Remaley http://www.ppcnyc.org/?p=89 If you are a member of The Communications Network, there is a free webinar coming up that you might want to check out.  Comnet is teaming up with the Nonprofit Communications Network to present “How to Use Social Media to Build Buzz” Wednesday, Feb. 10, from 2-3 pm ET/11 am-Noon PT.

Here is what they have to say about the webinar:

Has this happened to your organization: after experimenting with social media you found that nothing happened at all?

If so, you’re not alone. One of the most frequent complaints from organizations grappling with social media tools is that after taking the plunge — whether Tweeting,  blogging, or starting new Facebook pages — nothing happens.

In this special webinar, being produced for the Communications Network by the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN), you’ll learn how to create networks that work.  The webinar will be held Wednesday, Feb. 10, from 2-3 pm ET/11 am-Noon PT.

Session leaders are Holly Ross, Executive Director of NTEN, and Nancy Schwartz, NTEN board member and blogger (www.gettingattention.org), and Communications Network member.  Over the course of the webinar, the two will share examples of how other organizations are successfully harnessing the power of social media to build buzz that contributes to their foundations’ reach and impact.

You’ll leave with a strong understanding of the nuts and bolts of social media success and the readiness to put them to work for your foundation.

To sign up for this webinar, being offered free-of-charge to all Communications Network members, please email info@comnetwork.org.  Please put “Building Buzz Webinar” in the subject line.

First, one should never assume that just because you said something once that everyone (or anyone) heard it.  Especially these days when people are overwhelmed with information, much of it flies by without registering.  Doing a year-end repeat of key ideas can be a great way to get points across that may have  been lost.

Second, it’s a great way of repackaging ideas information and making it fresh.  Everyone loves a “Top 10″ list!

I am making a note to myself to do a recap of PPC-NYC’s top blog posts and top lunch topics at the end of next year.