Communications Planning 101 - TCW Academy Course
Approximate time to complete course: 20 minutes
This course is ideal for:
- Professionals in all fields
- Communication professionals
- CEOs
Every successful initiative in your organization must be accompanied by an equally successful communications plan. Failure to develop a comprehensive and thoughtful communications plan will put even the greatest project or initiative in peril. An effective communications professional serves a critical role as the conduit from your organization to your many stakeholders. Proper communications planning could prove to be the deciding factor between organizational success and catastrophic failure.
A solid communications plan is the bedrock of your communications efforts. Don’t wing it. Don’t think you can execute an effective communications strategy without detailed planning. Follow the process and put it down on paper. When it comes to successful communications, failure to plan truly is planning to fail.
This course, and the accompanying resources, will provide a blueprint for a comprehensive and successful communications plan that you can leverage to support any project or initiative.
Communications Plan Overview
A communications plan maps out all of the messaging strategies to each of your key stakeholders. It also identifies responsibilities, key risks, and will eventually serve as an important after-action document as you evaluate the success of your initiative and accompanying communications efforts.
This course will detail each major component of a successful communications plan.
In this course, you will:
Understand each component of a comprehensive communications plan and be able to leverage it as a template for all of your communication planning needs.
Additional Resources
Who Is On My Organization’s Crisis Communications Team?
Your organization’s crisis communications team is possibly the most important collection of people who will navigate every emergency and crisis your organization experiences. These folks are not only the conduit to your critical stakeholders, often they are the gatekeepers and evaluators of risk and decisions. They serve as the organization’s central core and coordinate the decisions and actions of other staff.
A very large organization likely has a sizable communications team to fulfill the responsibilities of a crisis communications team. However, your organization may have a communications team of one or just a handful of employees.
The question you must consider is how do you create an effective crisis communications team with people who are not professional communicators?
Don’t do THIS with Reporters – 4 Don’ts for Media Relations
Some days, media relations is exhilarating, and some days it is quite a chore. Any seasoned media relations professional or senior management staff in an organization dreads the phone call or email from a reporter asking for comment on a story you would prefer they not do.
But the fact of the matter is they are likely not going away. You’re going to have to talk to them.
Here, we will share the four don’ts.
A Complaint Management System to Turn a Critic Into an Advocate
Every organization has their critics and must have a complaint management plan to prevent a critic from becoming a crisis.
Sometimes, criticism is warranted. But if we’re being honest, organizations don’t always receive complaints that are warranted, or even sane.
But whether or not we believe a complaint (or the complainer) to be reasonable and rational, we must come to an internal agreement in our organization on a complaint management system. Use these 10 keys to develop and implement an effective complaint management system to turn a critic into an advocate.
Communication is NOT My Job
Many professionals believe that communication should be left to the communicators – those hired for that role or who naturally excel in communication. You may be reading this because you have come to a similar conclusion and the headline caught your attention.
Communication is most definitely your job. It does not matter if you are a CEO, customer service representative, bus driver, budget analyst, or public relations manager – you are a communicator.
Reporters are Looking for a Sensational Story – Are You Providing One?
As outrage continues to accelerate in today’s society, media are constantly seeking the next sensational story to attract viewers and sell ads.
Though positive media stories serve to benefit your organization, sensational stories are about them – not you. They are about stirring controversy; latching on to social media trends; selling ads.
The best way to avoid being the centerpiece of a sensational story by the news media is to evaluate your organization and the ways your leadership and employees are engaging publicly.
10 Ways to Influence People
Dale Carnegie literally wrote the book on influence with, How to Win Friends and Influence People, originally published in 1936.
Rather than summarize the contents of his book, we will provide insights from lessons learned by decades of our own experiences. Of course, a quick cross-reference with Carnegie’s book finds several overlaps because much of his book aligns to our experiences.
Take the tips detailed here and find ways to integrate them into your work. Whether you are the CEO or an entry-level employee, the ability to influence people will serve you very well.
