Why You Need a Communications Plan
“If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” —Yogi Berra
The very first thing that I do for all of my clients is create a communications plan. You can write a communications plan for a particular project but it is also a good idea to have an overall communications plan for your museum. The plan that I create is an actionable working document.
A communications plan always answers these five questions:
1. What is the goal?
It is really important that you have discussed the primary goal with your team and that you’ve written it out in the communications plan. It helps keep everyone on the same page (pun intended).
2. What are your key messages? These messages should be clear and you should use them consistently in all areas of your marketing, advertising and media relations. Just like the consistent visual elements of your museum’s brand are important to creating lasting brand identity, so are the words that you use. Putting those messages into writing and having a central place that your team can reference them helps to keep things consistent.
3. Who are your audiences? A communications plan not only lays out what these messages are but who they are for and how they will be communicated. Imagine trying to tell someone something underwater. Or shouting in the middle of an empty stadium. Those consistent messages aren’t going to do you any good if there isn’t a person to receive the message and if there isn’t a space that has been identified for the message hand off. A communications plan identifies the key messages but also the audiences and how you’ll communicate with them.
4. Whose job is it? My communications plans go one step farther and assign the action items in the plan to an actual person and as a team we decide on the due dates for each item. Remember that this plan is also a living document, schedule time to go over the communications plan with your team often and update and refine it as needed.
5. How do we know if we succeeded? Each plan that I write ends with a section called “Measurements for Success.” As a team, we decide what success looks like. Don’t forget this part!
