Creating a Corporate Communications Strategy

Every company needs well thought-out corporate communications strategies in order to focus their efforts towards specific goals. These have a significant impact on the reputation and visibility of an organization.

Four Elements of a Communication Plan

While there are tons of techniques and methods that you can up to when plotting out your communication plan, the most important thing to remember is to always have guidelines in place and consequently, keeping in mind the following questions when creating your strategy:

1. “What is the purpose of your strategy?” – that is, why do you want to communicate the messages you want to relay, and what do you expect to get out of it after you do so?

2. “Who do you want to communicate with?” – that is, who is the target audience that will benefit from your message?

3. “What is your message?” – that is, what is it that you want to talk about, and what content, language, tone and mood do you want to attach to it?

4. “What platform do you intend to use?” – that is, what is the tool or channel you intend to utilize that will be most effective in reaching your target audience?

Steps to Making a Communication Plan

Corporate communication strategies have the above mentioned elements as their basis for getting messages across. However, aside from these four elements, there are other steps that you need to take and consider when creating your plan so as to avoid making mistakes, creating a negative impact on your reputation, and avoiding losses. The following are the said steps you need to have in mind:

1. Look through your resources. Determine whether you have the right people to communicate your campaign and enough budget to actually pull off your communication campaign.

2. Create a crisis plan just in case issues and obstacles arise along the way. This will help you figure out your way around challenges, and it will also make certain that the people who are assigned to specific tasks are made accountable.

3. Identify who will help you spread your message – will it be media, your own employees, clients, suppliers or other stakeholders?

4. Concoct an action plan.

5. Review and evaluate your corporate communication strategies. This helps you figure out what went right and what went wrong, what you overlooked and what were effective. This is to help you improve on your strategies and plans in the future.

Drawing Up Your Message

What exactly will your message contain, and how will you draw up your message so that it is effective, impactful and easy to understand? When creating your messages for your corporate communication strategies, here are a few vital tips to keep in mind:

1. Write down your messages in bullet form, making sure that you only have a sentence or two per important message. This step will make it easier for you to keep your messaging as brief and concise as possible so that you may also have an easier time relaying them to others.

2. In order to reveal the rationale behind your communication intentions, ask yourself why and how. Why do you want to relay your particular message, and how do you intend on delivering it? This will help your audience better understand your intentions, leading to more precise interpretations.

3. You can utilize a power point or video presentation in order to define your key messages. Make sure these are bulleted, concise, easy to understand and brief.

The fortunate thing about power point and video presentations is that they are dynamic. These tools allow for a step-by-step presentation of your messaging and intentions.