Communications Plan
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== Introduction ==
'''Communications Plan''' is
one of the intrinsic politics to any activity done by an institution, because every entity needs to relate, to transmit, internally and externally, its opinions, requirements and goals.
A very good sentence to form a good impression AbOUT the importance of the Communication Plan is "Whatever is not communicated, it does not exist".
This important necessity of communication must to be done methodically and systematically, through a correct planification and before a previous analysis of those mutters of the environment that could influence in the process.
The finality of having a company Communication Plan is to improve the positioning and image of the organization before its different public targets, internals as well as externals. The goal is to reach all of them fast and easily and at the right moment.
==Advantages==
Some advantages to having a good Communication Plan are to:</br>
-give your day-to-day work a focus,</br>
-help you set priorities,</br>
-provide you with a sense of order and control,</br>
-help get the chief staff executive and staff to support your program,</br>
-protect you against last-minute, seat-of-the-pants demands from staff and members, and</br>
-PReVENT you from feeling overwhelmed, offering instead peace of mind.</br>
A Communication Plan should shows what you want to accomplish with your association communications (your objectives), ways in which those objectives can be accomplished (your goals or program of work), to whom your association communications will be addressed (your audiences), how you will accomplish your objectives (the tools and timetable), and how you will measure the results of your program (evaluation).</br>
The Communication Plan embraces objectives, goals and tools for all kind of communications, and within it we can incude online communications, annual reports, meetings, conferences, printed publications, etc.
== Phases ==
An approach to the Communication Plan phases would be:</br>
1. Establish what we want to get, which are our goals.</br>
2. Decide who we are going to conduct our communication.</br>
3. Think about the idea we want to transmit.</br>
4. Fix our budget amounts.</br>
5. Select appropriates media and frequence of use.</br>
6. Run the media plan and measure its impact.</br>
==When should we develop a Communication Plan?==
The best time is when creating the annual budgeting or organizational planning process.
==Where do we have to get all the information?==
1. Your association mission statement.</br>
2. A Communication audit.</br>
3. Membership surveys and focus groups.</br>
4. Committee and leadership input.</br>
5. Discussions with other staff and departments.</br>
==Elements of a Communications Plan==
'''''1. Viewing Stakeholders as Audience</br>'''''
Listening the stakeholders we could improve efficiency meanwhile we avoid conflicts.
Communicating the status of ACTIVE projects make the audience consciousness drive in the same way. It is not advisable to send too many details to stakeholders because could cause delays in ventures and milestones, in the same manner, a lack of information and clarity in regular project communications can increase the amount og meeting request and sessions of information.
So, for this task, firstly, it is neccesary to answer a set of questions in order to identify how to reach the stakeholders in the best way:</br>
Who are the stakeholders involved?</br>
What details must be communicated to each group?</br>
When must a project team communicate to each group of stakeholders?</br>
Where will stakeholders receive their communication?</br>
How will project team members communicate with stakeholders?</br>
With the answers to those questions CREATES a basement to start building workflows, schedules, plans and monitoring for effective communication.</br>
'''''2. Building Communications Workflows for Informal communication</br>'''''
Identifying correctly the audience groups is a very good start to establish the workflows for a productive collaboration and documentation.</br>
Guidelines:</br>
''Matching Formality to Importance:'' setting the ground rules for interpersonal communication in early states in the project avoid miscommunications that can delay projects.</br>
''CASUAL Conversations:'' Having brief conversations can help the team members to clarify positions and points of view, to share knowledge about the project ProgresS, resources, Differents opinions. If these casual small-talks are keeped in a journal, those journals can help team leaders and managers to trace success or failure back to a specific small-talk.</br>
''E-Mail:'' using emails speeds up decision making, casual conversations via email, knowledge shared between many resources.</br>
''Chat and SMS:'' project managers encourage team member to journal important decisions and learnings in the same way as a casual conversation.</br>
'''''3. Building Communications Workflows for Formal Communication</br>'''''
Project's formal communication often requires more time and resources.</br>
''Importance of Formal Communication:'' formal communication is usually reserved to inform stakeholders an participants.</br>
''Formal Meetings:'' setting formal meetings in two different methods:</br>
-inviting someone as impartial non-participant who write down decisions ans insights achieved along the meetings.</br>
-recording on video or audio and writting down importants minutes for later distribution.</br>
''Newsletters and Reports:'' those tools increase the interactions with the stakeholders, so they can be updated on the major decisions and progress announcements from a project team. Creating newsletter and report templates help stakeholders to access the information in an easier way.</br>
''Conferences:'' a conference May Be the most efficient way to bring many kinds of project participants to consensus but may be expensive.</br>
'''''4. Creating a Communications Plan</br>'''''
''Matching Workflow to Work Style:'' there is no just one way to communicate effectively. Different methods we use have to collaborate with each others to accomplish the communication task succesfully. So, if our communications plan is succeded will offer us multiple several ways to communicate our different kinds of information.</br>
''Creating Momentum instead of Feedback Loops:'' it is always better to create a searchable central archive that allow participants to create threads and conversations in the areas they are interested to query questions and doubts.</br>
''IDeaS becomes Information:'' filtering relevant information and decisions, and just leaving important ideas leads to a higher direct reporting to the relevant involved people.</br>
''Legal and Regulatory concerns:'' the communications plan must accomodates all concerning laws and regulations to our company, industry and location.</br>
'''''5. Monitoring Effectiveness</br>'''''
''Editorial Review:'' making informal reviews of project communication regularly emphisize the importance of formal communication and also animate team members to remain focused.</br>
''Stakeholder Feedback:'' surveying stakeholders is good way to know how they would prefer to receive the information, even it could comes out new ways to inform interesting people.</br>
''Routine Audits:'' audits can help to fill holes found out in the process of reporting information, as uncover potential holes in our communications plan, like lack of information in casual conversation journals.</br>
''Communications Plan Adjustments:'' being flexible is a good way to be focused with the project goals, so each person can access information they are interested in a desired way that each one choose. Being rigid can make a rising frustration in people that don't like specific tools or they are not accostumed to use, existing another tool used for the same task.</br>
==How do we develop the Communication Plan?==
'''''1. Starting Situation Analysis'''''
The first step, it will be definiting the strategy plan, how to vinculate it to our objective, vision and valuable items of our organization. Knowing the environment and its evolution.</br>
'''''2. Objectives Plan Definition'''''
Objectives must be clearly defined by the Direction. Usually a general objective is established that normally coincide with that we want to comunicate, with the corporative image to transmit. And then a set of specific objectives sorted by priority or relative importance.</br>
'''''3. Hypothesis Establishment'''''
Establishement of suppositions or hipothesis allowing to define an scenario or main frame in which we will develope our communication plan.</br>
'''''4. Communication Core Selection'''''
Selecting several different ways of communication is feasible. For this task, we can use different technics, market research, laboral clime, and the own experience of the communication team, marketing, human resources and social responsaility. In this step are defined the basic messages which they will be transmitted to each audience segment. Also stakeholders will be identified in this step.</br></br>
'''''5. Communication Plan Architecture Elaboration'''''
This step is the very first stimation of our communication project width, of our wishable goals, resources to apply, and forecast times to use. This will be an internal document handled to make easier plan develope.</br>
'''''6. Programs Design'''''
We can divide our base plan into differents communications program, which each one will constitute a market segment or a specific stakeholders group, with a specific objectives and tactics.</br>
'''''7. Times and Resources Plan'''''
Now, we are able to make a time planification of our Communications Plan. Usually, it is created a full and general plan for intermediate and Long term, and a detailed short term plan.</br>
'''''8. Plan Execution'''''
The Only Reason of existence for a Communications Plan is to reach its predicted objectives. So now it is the moment to run the plan.</br>
'''''9. Supervision and Control'''''
The Communications Plan has to be provided with indicators able to detect deviations produced by environment or audiences modifications no yet predicted. Also, it should has an error system able to guide our way back through our goals and allow us to beat obstacles and crisis situations.</br>
It is important to control the corporative image at all moment and the satisfaction level with our communication strategy.
'''''10. Communications Plan Marketing'''''
Once defined, it is very important to has clear how to let executives, stakeholders, public people, externals and internals know our Communications Plan, whether by meetings, press conferences, journalist interviews or specific demonstrations.
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== External links ==
* [http://davefleet.com/2008/05/how-to-write-a-good-communications-plan-part-1-an-overview/ How to write a good Communication Plan]
* [http://www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/tcp.html http://www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/tcp.html]
* [http://www.hieran.com/comet/howto.html http://www.hieran.com/comet/howto.html]
* [http://www.brighthub.com/office/project-management/articles/15148.aspx http://www.brighthub.com/office/project-management/articles/15148.aspx]
*[http://davefleet.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/comm-plan-ebook.pdf http://davefleet.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/comm-plan-ebook.pdf]
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