The document provides guidance on creating communications and marketing plans, including social media marketing plans and press releases. It outlines six steps to develop a communications plan: conducting an analysis, defining objectives and audiences, establishing goals and tools to reach goals, creating a timetable, testing and evaluating the plan. It also details five steps for a social media marketing plan, including setting goals and objectives, analyzing current accounts, creating or improving accounts, using inspiration from other accounts, and creating a content calendar. Additionally, it covers what a press release is and the key elements to include when writing one.

1. Communications and Marketing Plan

2. Communications Plan
What IS a communications plan?
• what you want to accomplish with your organizations
communications (your objectives)
• ways in which those objectives can be accomplished (your
goals or program of work)
• to whom your organization communications will be addressed
(your audiences)
• how you will accomplish your objectives (the tools and
timetable)
• how you will measure the results of your program (evaluation)

3. Step 1: Communications Analysis
Some questions to ask yourself OR your team:
• What are we doing in terms of communication currently?
• Do we have any designated communications activities in our
community?
• If so, are they effective?
• If not, what kind of communications activities can we add?

4. Step 2: Define Objectives
What do we want to achieve?
• Better service?
• Volunteer loyalty?
• Donor/sponsor loyalty?
• More attendance at events?
• Increased visibility in community?

5. Step 3: Define Audiences
Who can we contact that might assist and/or influence/serve our
organization?
• related community organizations
• volunteers
• potential volunteers
• important community spokespeople/influencers
• local media

6. Step 4: Define Goals/How to Reach Goal
Ex: Our goal is to have a successful Winterfest event. How can we
reach potential attendees? Or media coverage? Decide what tools will
be used to accomplish stated goals.
Potential tools:
• Social Media
• Flyers and posters
• Local networking/community events

7. Step 5: Establish a timetable
Let’s put everything together and create an active timetable for
community events, social media posts, postering etc…
To do this we can use:
• Calendar
• Spreadsheet
• Google docs (if relevant)

8. Social Media Marketing Plan
What IS a social media marketing plan?
A social media marketing plan is the summary of everything you plan to
do and hope to achieve for your business or organization using social
networks. This plan should comprise an analysis of where your
accounts are today, goals for where you want them to be in the near
future, and all the tools you want to use to get there.

9. Step 1: Create social media goals and
objectives
What do we want from using social media?
• CREATE A LIST!
• What will the goal look like when completed?
• How will we track it?
• Use SMART

10. SMART
S – SPECIFIC
M – MEASURABLE
A – ATTAINABLE
R – RELEVANT
T – TIME BOUND
• SMART ex: “For Instagram we will share photos that communicate our
company culture. We will do this by posting three photos a week. The
target for each is at least 30 likes and 5 comments.”

11. Step 2: Conduct a social media analysis
Assess social media platforms and if they are successful, do some
accounts need to be deleted? Are they relevant to our goals?
• Do we use Facebook? Should we use it? Would it be useful for us?
• Instagram?
• Twitter?
• Pinterest?

12. Step 3: Create or improve your accounts
What platforms could you use that you might not already?

13. Step 4: Social Media Inspiration
Look at accounts to follow for inspiration:
• National Wildlife
• https://twitter.com/nwf
• American Sexual Health Assoc.
• https://twitter.com/infoASHA
• National Centre for Families Learning
• https://twitter.com/NCFL
• SACHA (Hamilton organization)
• https://twitter.com/SACHA_tweets

14. Step 5: Create Content Calendar
Your social media marketing plan should include a content marketing
plan, comprised of strategies for content creation and content
curation, as well as an editorial calendar.
• What types of content you intend to post and promote on social media
• How often you will post content
• Target audience for each type of content
• Who will create the content
• How you will promote the content

15. Content Calendar example:
PLATFORM TIME/DATE TOPIC POST LINK
FACEBOOK Monday January
9th @10:00 am
2017 Winterfest
announcement
Discover that
Hamilton is a city
that doesn't
hibernate in the
wintertime!
Celebrate with 10
fun-filled days
from February 4
to 20, 2017 (add
photo)
*(link to post here)
TWITTER
INSTAGRAM
BLOG

16. Step 6: Test, evaluate and adjust your plan
To find out what adjustments need to be made to your social media
marketing strategy, you should constantly be testing.
• Tracking clicks on posts, comments, and likes
• Do posts result in more volunteers or event attendees?
• Use online tools to track your posts such as:
• https://hootsuite.com (online analysis tool)
• Some platforms come with analytic tools. Ex: Facebook and
Instagram…

17. Press and Media Releases
What IS a press release? Why are they so important?
• Press releases publicize important or useful information about an
upcoming event or one that has occurred
• Press releases outline the event location and time, why it is
important, relevant contacts or people taking part in event, why the
media should choose to promote or feature your event

18. Writing a press release:
Anyone can write and submit a press release, free-of-charge to
multiple media outlets.
Press releases usually include:
• An eye catching headline
• Date time location of event
• Clear wording
• Fact based
• (Occasionally) a quote from employees or volunteers regarding event

19. Press release format:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: These words should appear at the top left of the page, in upper
case. If you don't want the story to be made public yet, write "HOLD
FOR RELEASE UNTIL ...." instead.
Headline Just like a headline in an newspaper. Make sure this describes the
content of the story.
City, State/Country - Month Day, Year These details precede the story and orient the reader.
Body This is where the actual story goes. There should be more than one
paragraph, each paragraph no more than a few sentences. If there is
more than one page, write "-more-" at the bottom of the page.
Company/organization info Include any background information about the company or
organization featuring in this press release.
Contact Information Include contact person, company name, phone/fax, email,
physical/postal address.
ENDS or ### This indicates the end of the press release.
(xxx words) If you like you could include the total number of words contained in
the press release.

20. LET’S WRITE A PRESS RELEASE!