be? Who should deliver the message? Will you use offline tactics, online tactics, or a combination? How often should your audiences receive the messages via any given communications channel? Where should these messages appear?
The most common communications tactics are websites and/or blogs, email marketing, social media, storytelling, earned media or public relations, events, and direct mail.
Resources
In this section, you outline the financial and staffing resources required to implement the plan. You may wish to answer the following questions.
What financial resources are required? Where will these resources come from? Do they exist today, or do they need to be developed? What staffing resources are required? Do you have the skills and time needed on staff? Or do you need to hire new staff and consultants/freelancers? Do you need to recruit volunteers to perform certain tasks? Do you need to enlist the support of various partners to implement parts of the action plan?
What elements of the plan will be scaled back first if adequate resources are not available? What elements of the plan should be expanded or accelerated first should additional resources become available?
WHAT GOES IN A COMMUNICATIONS PLAN
While your marketing strategy focuses on big strategic questions and answers that will not change frequently, your communications plan is a much more dynamic and living set of documents that are constantly adjusted and updated.
When we talk about communications plans, we are most often referring to some combination of three different documents: The Big Picture Communications Timeline, an editorial calendar, and creative briefs.
Big Picture Communications Timeline
A Big Picture Communications Timeline maps out all of the events and milestones (both within and beyond your control) that will drive your communications in the coming year, along with your primary calls to action and the major storylines you want to share. It's completed with all parts of the organization in mind: programs, fundraising, and marketing/communications. My second book, Content Marketing for Nonprofits, contains a full chapter on Big Picture Communications Timelines and you can also find additional information at NonprofitMarketingGuide.com.
Editorial Calendar
An editorial calendar is your day-to-day working plan and what I consider to be the most important of all of the documents discussed in this chapter. At a minimum, an editorial calendar outlines what you are sharing, in what communications channels, and when. You can add much more detail, including who is responsible for what, internal deadlines and workflows, and more.
Editorial calendars can take the form of spreadsheets or calendars. Whether you have “spreadsheet brain” or “calendar brain” – which format allows you to work more productively – is up to you.
An editorial calendar, along with your Big Picture Communications Timeline, will help you keep track of what's called the story arc. Although each communications piece should be able to stand on its own, it's also helpful if you view each article or video as part of a larger story that you are trying to tell. Using an editorial calendar can help you map out that story arc, or how the story will progress or evolve over time.
Ultimately, you'll work toward creating a master editorial calendar that includes everything that's being created and published in a given time period. However, in practice, many nonprofits find it easier to begin editorial planning with just a subset of their communications.
You can ease into editorial planning by setting up your editorial calendar in several different ways.
By channel. Create a separate editorial calendar for each major communications channel that requires a significant amount of content, such as your newsletter or blog. You can also create an editorial calendar for your social networking presence as a whole.
An editorial calendar for a quarterly print newsletter could have the standing heads or placeholders for the different types of articles you typically include in your newsletter (for example, success story, donor profile), as column heads. The publication date of each issue would run as row heads in the left-hand column (see Table 3.2 for an example). You would then fill in the grid with the specific article details for each edition, such as the name of the program that the success story would come from and the name of the donor who would be profiled.
Or let's say you want to create a weekly social media calendar to ensure that you are updating your status and contributing to the conversations on a handful of sites throughout the week. You would put each of the sites (Facebook page, Twitter profile, and so on) across the top row and the days of the week down the left-hand column. Now you can fill in as many boxes as you like with the topic you want to talk about or the kind of update you want to share (say, retweet three times, post a discussion question on the Facebook page).
By audience. You can also organize editorial calendars by audience. If you have multiple, distinct audiences (such as teachers, parents, and students) and you want to ensure that you communicate with them regularly, you might create a calendar for each audience with your channels down the side and your time frames across the top. If you have several groups of people who you're trying to reach out to and you're concerned that your communications may unconsciously favor one group or other, this method will help you find the right balance.
Table 3.2. Sample Editorial Calendar for a Print Newsletter for a Local Humane Society
| Article Category | Spring Edition | Summer Edition |
|---|---|---|
| Program Success | Spay/Neuter campaign results | How we increased our cat adoption rate |
| Donor or Volunteer Profile | Bill Miller – How he brokered the deal for the free dog food | Shondra Smith – How she got teenagers to volunteer at the shelter |
| Adoption Profile | To be decided – recent dog adoption | To be decided – recent cat adoption |
| Pet Tips | Preparing pets for a new baby | Hot weather tips for outdoor pets |
| How You Can Help | Volunteer with the dog-walking program | Invite us to speak to your community group |
| In Every Issue: Pets Available for Adoption, In-Kind Donations Wish List, List of Donors Since Last Issue |
By program. You can also organize editorial calendars by program if you have several different programs and you want to make sure that you are spending an appropriate amount of time communicating about each one. Just as with the audience-oriented calendar, you can list your program across the top and dates down the side, then fill in the boxes with channels and specifics about the content you'll deliver there.
Creative Brief
The third type of document that could be considered a communication plan is a creative brief. A creative brief is a quick worksheet that you fill out before you get started on any significant piece of communications work. It's like a mini strategy for a particular campaign or project.
Using a creative brief forces you to consider important questions before you get started. It's also a wonderful collaboration tool that helps your team work out potential conflicts