This document summarizes a workshop on crafting communications strategies. The workshop covers assessing the internal and external environment, including tracking key audiences and available research tools. Attendees will discuss past SWOT analyses and exercises. The session aims to help organizations understand strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to consider in strategy development. Data collection should involve different teams and focus on high-level, actionable insights to guide strategic decisions.

1. Mission Critical: Crafting
Your Communications
Strategy Workshop
30 May 2012
#CommsStrategy
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2. Assessing your environment
Michele Madden May 2012

3. Tracking your key audiences
Public Professionals
British public Journalists
• Charity Awareness Monitor, • Charity Media Monitor
Brand Attributes Monitor Peers and MPs
Young people aged 7-25 • Charity Parliamentary Monitor, Celtic
• Youth Engagement Monitor CPM, AAPM (public bodies)
Scotland, Wales, Northern GPs and primary healthcare
Ireland and Republic of Ireland professionals
• Celtic CAM • Healthcare Professionals Monitor
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4. Consultancy and tailored research
We can help you with... We’re experts in...
Creative development, testing, ad Focus groups
tracking Desk research
Strategy, brand, fundraising Depth interviews
development Workshops
Supporter satisfaction Surveys
Stakeholder audits and consultation
Evaluation and impact programmes
Research audits
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5. Over 50 CAM syndicate members

6. Session purpose
Breakout E: Assessing your environment
Before you start your communications strategy it’s essential
to consider your organisation’s strengths and weaknesses
plus any opportunities and threats your position and
environment present.
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7. Discussion
• Thinking about when you have done exercises like this in
the past
o What worked?
o What didn’t work?
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8. Exercise
• What can we do to mitigate these issues?
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9. What to investigate?
• External environment
o Direct competitors
o Trends
o Audiences
• Internal environment
o Evaluate past and present campaigns
o Objectives, resources
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10. The process
• Be clear about your objectives
o organisational
o the process of writing the comms strategy
• Involve people from different teams/departments, as
appropriate
o Ensures you bring knowledge from different parts of the
organisation
o Good practice for internal comms
• Be realistic – timescales, outputs, budgets
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11. Tools
• SWOT, PESTLE
• Competitor mapping (audience, theme and reach)
o Ad hoc and on-going
• Critical friends
• Existing research,
o trends, stats and generic
• Your own knowledge
o who impressed/disappointed you
• Assessment of previous performance
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12. How to use this in your strategy
• Depends on what you have to produce
o Setting the context for the decisions you make
• Detail is often the death of these types of processes and
documents
o Focus on key areas/issues – there may only be a few key facts
• Only use data that you are confident about
o Source any data that you’re using
• Think about data that might be replicable for next year
• Consider what you could use to measure progress towards
your goals
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