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Ultimate Tool Kit: Free Communication Strategy Templates, Examples, and Expert Tips

By Joe Weller | June 29, 2017 (updated July 21, 2021)

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Developing a communication strategy and formalizing it into a written plan is challenging, but it’s worth every bit of the time and energy investment it takes. A well-executed, tailored strategy and resulting message platform will get everyone inside your organization on the same page about how to communicate your company’s mission statement, and why and how you do what you do. 

In this article, you’ll find tips and examples from two PR CEOs, a step-by-step guide to putting together your own plan, and templates galore -- including a nine-step strategic communications plan template and crisis communication planning template -- and additional resources to help you craft a communication strategy to navigate a more successful future.

What Is Communications Strategy and Planning?

A communications strategy clearly identifies the objectives and processes of your organization's outreach activities. It covers what the organization needs to share and whom to share with to meet goals. Formalized as a written plan, it’s an important part of daily operations. It frames media activities, including both external and internal communications, defines priorities, time frames, target audiences, staff assignments, and resources.

Developing a communications strategy is a complex undertaking with lots of moving parts. PR pros like John Raffetto and Dianna Booher understand best practices and exactly what goes into creating and executing an effective communications strategy.

John Raffetto is CEO and Co-founder of RH Strategic, a PR firm based in Seattle and Washington, D.C. specializing in technology, security, healthcare, and public sector markets. John got his start in PR by way of the U.S. Senate, where he served as a press secretary and communications director. In 2000, he began consulting with technology companies, and moved to Seattle in 2004 with Infotech Strategies to open a west coast office. He started RH Strategic in 2007 with David Herman.

Dianna Booher , CEO of Booher Research, is a bestselling author of 47 books, including her latest: Communicate Like a Leader: Connecting Strategically to Coach, Inspire, and Get Things Done . She works with organizations to help them communicate clearly and with leaders to expand their influence by fostering a strong executive presence. Good Morning America, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily , Bloomberg, Forbes.com, Fast Company, FOX, CNN, NPR, Success, and Entrepreneur routinely interview her for opinions on critical workplace communication issues.

We asked Raffetto how he begins his planning process. “At RH Strategic we begin all strategic planning with the question, ‘Where do you see your company in five years?’ This reveals the highest level objectives and helps us layer in a communications plan that is 100 percent aligned with where the leadership is taking the company,” says Raffetto. “We then develop three or four communications plan objectives, and then we align every tactic -- whether it is a speaker placement, an event, a media campaign or an influencer engagement initiative -- with one or more of these objectives.”

Meanwhile, Booher has an eight-step process she uses to develop a communications strategy plan for a client, company, or specific event:

Step 1: Interview all the primary stakeholders to get their perspective on the problem and the goal. Step 2: Analyze the data to see where there’s agreement. Step 3: Decide if it’s necessary to collect more data to further investigate the misalignment. Step 4: Interview other stakeholders (second-tier people) to understand how they see the problem and the goal. Step 5: Reconfirm the goal with the primary stakeholders. Step 6: Design an implementation plan, along with measurements of success. Step 7: Execute the plan. Step 8: Measure success

Types of Communications Strategy Plans

There’s no single way to create a plan since, as Raffetto notes, you must customize it to your organization, goals, environment and situation, and there are different types of communications strategy plan. 

Booher concurs, and says, “Every situation differs. So I don’t routinely use any particular template all the time. But I do have templates that I use when I identify similar problems.”

Here are three general types of plans that any non- or for-profit organization may create to meet either long-term or short-term goals:

• Overall Communication Strategy for Organization: A communication strategy is both subservient and complementary to the overall marketing strategy, which takes its direction from the organization’s overall business strategy. The business strategy is general and pinpoints the desired bottom-line financial outcome. The marketing strategy supports those goals with strategies that incite target audiences to take what you’ve determined to be the desired action, whether it’s buying a product or service, making a donation if you’re a non-profit, or signing up for an online class if you’re a web-based university. The marketing strategy assembles all the other strategies, one of which is communications. The organization’s communication strategy plan is in fact more closely tied to tactics, as we’ll see as we move through the steps to creating your plan.

If you haven’t completed a marketing communication strategy, you’ll need to do that before you begin your communication strategy plan. This free annual marketing plan template can help you get started. Simply download the template and you can adjust it to reflect the necessary components of your individual marketing plan. It includes campaign type, project goals, target audience, response rates broken down into sections for national and local efforts, content marketing, online marketing, media relations, public relations, trade shows and events, sales campaigns, and branding efforts. Objectives are clearly identified along with total costs and target markets. At the top of the template, you can define monthly sales goals and at the lower section of the template you’ll find a place to record marketing effectiveness metrics.

Download Marketing Plan Template

Excel | Smartsheet

• Event or Product/Service Launch Communications Strategy: In addition to the overarching organizational communication plan, there is often a need to create ‘sub plans’ that support time-constrained events like product or service launches or a fundraiser. Event specific communications should still tie into the overall communication, marketing, and business strategies. Plan components (targets, budgets, and messaging) are the same as your overall plan, and you can use the same templates to work on the details.

Booher adds, “If delegating responsibilities is a problem, I use this 15-item delegation checklist to help the manager handle the what, why, when, and how productively.

Download the 15-Item Delegation Checklist by Dianna Booher

• Crisis Communication Strategy: Another situation that requires a time-constrained strategy and plan is crisis communications, which deals with unexpected or disruptive events that threatens the organization, stakeholders, or sometimes even proposes harm to the general public. Usually, these events garner negative media attention that you’ll want to preempt or have a response plan for. A business must be able to respond promptly, accurately, and confidently during an emergency. While you can’t anticipate a particular crisis, you can have a structure and process in place, and then quickly ‘fill in the blanks’ in a written document when it’s necessary. Examples are theft, legal disputes, or manmade disasters blamed on your organization. Conversely, your company could also deal with the repercussions of not reacting to these types of situations in the appropriate manner. You’ll find more information on crisis communication and templates to help manage these situations later in this article.

What Problems that Communications Strategy Plans Solve

There are multiple benefits to having a formal, written communications strategy plan for any organization (government agencies, consumer brands, charities, and universities) and the teams within it. Here are some:

• Form Consensus: Getting involved in the process and integrating participants’ opinions brings a sense of ownership. A written plan means that everyone is following the same playbook and working toward a clear, common goal.
• Realistic Timelines: Planning in advance and creating work-back schedules helps organize how to execute individual tactics and the overall plan.
• Identify Needed Resources: With timelines in place, it is easier to identify if you need to add outside help to the team, if you need to reassign existing team members, and how to budget based on the strategy.
• Assign Responsibilities: A plan will help manage people understand their contributions to the company and their responsibilities
• Channel Planning: There are many different ways to spread your message. Identifying which channels to use for what type of communication will help you focus your attention so that you aren’t continuously pulled in different directions.
• Identify Risks: Having team reviews at set intervals will help you determine what’s working and what needs to change, and will strengthen your strategy and plan.
• Success Metrics: Goals should be part of your strategy and serve as guideposts for plan evaluation and to highlight areas that should be improved in both current and future efforts.

The Benefits of a Communications Strategy in Action: Three Case Studies

How do strategic communication plans work in practical reality? Raffetto provides a client case study: 

RH Strategic has a client that has developed a game-like technology to help kids learn math. It’s incredibly powerful in that it ‘learns the learner’ and personalizes lessons to each student’s learning style. As a result, it closes the gap in math achievement. Teachers and students love it, but not everyone in education is aware of it or understands the opportunities it offers.  

RH Strategic was retained to build a PR strategy to change that. We spent a full day with various executives and a whiteboard to map out the company’s future and to develop top communications objectives.The top two were to grow brand awareness among school district buyers and selection in the market, and to leverage top executive’s thought leadership to change conventional thinking in the market. Knowing this, we then built a plan that mixed intense, month-to-month media outreach and media coverage with speaker placements and social media tie-ins to drive toward both objectives.  

Most recently, the CEO was featured in the New York Times Corner Office column as a thought leader – an article that not only reached millions directly, but was also shared repeatedly on social media and spawned many other media and speaking requests. In parallel, our team was also busy promoting the brand and the product to the education trade press and local media. As part of our original communications strategy, we developed a customer award program that drove a tremendous amount of local press coverage for the brand, which tended to get neighboring school districts’ attention and motivated them to investigate whether they should be customers as well. Prior to this effort the company got very little visibility in the local press. 

Each quarter we took a snapshot of the progress and were pleased to discover that the quantity and quality of results tied to each strategic objective expanded dramatically from one quarter to the next. That is a classic case of ‘success breeds success’ and demonstrates how a strategic communications program can take a company’s visibility to the next level.

Booher provided a case study that exemplifies how to strategize a communications plan to change the perception of internal stakeholders:

An executive vice president of a large utility company called me with this problem: “I’m concerned that the organization may be considering outsourcing the work that my division of about 2,000 employees now does. They continue to cut our budget and have capped headcount. Yet we provide essential services — IT, records management, HR functions. I feel as though I’m always on the defense to justify our existence.”   Rather than justifying budget and headcount, I suggested a strategy of education. The VP and his three direct reports admitted that the typical employee in the 50,000+ organization did not even know what function the ‘Administration’ division played. So why would they possibly fight to keep these services internal rather than outsourced? Answer: They wouldn’t.   Consequently, all the senior executives agreed on a strategy to educate the entire employee population about what back-office services the division actually provided to garner support to keep these services inhouse.   The tactical plan followed. A five-page communication plan containing a bulleted list of action items to implement the strategy. For example:

• Modify the email signature blocks to add an educational tagline.
• Train department representatives to take on a customer service attitude toward internal customers they serve.
• Have system analysts send follow-up emails after providing IT services, for example, to make sure a newly installed software package is running smoothly.
• Ensure that the Records Storage department regularly sends out a reminder of the archiving schedule.  

Result: The “Administration” division became visible to the entire organization, and 2,000 people kept their jobs.

In an altogether different situation, Booher developed another plan for her client to improve internal and external communication:

The goal was to improve communication flow across department lines and to improve communication with clients. Here’s how I handled it in brief:

The strategy:  Identify the roadblocks and improve the written communication (since almost all communication was in writing).   The tactical:

• Review their templates to see what they were using.
• Review sample correspondence.
• Interview department managers to get their perspective on the problem.
• Train their group of writers whose main role it was to communicate with customers.
• Rewrite/improve all their boilerplate documents so that they are starting with appropriate models.
• Change the physical layout of the office so that they have verbal interaction on a daily basis.
• Coach their senior executive on using more up-to-date methods of approvals/signatures and eliminating antiquated phrasing in his own correspondence.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Strategic Communications Plan

Like a well-built engine, a strategic communications plan has many specifically engineered parts to accomplish your goal. While every communications plan should be thoroughly customized, there are common, time-tested components that go into a high-performance plan. 

RH Strategic  uses proprietary templates to track communications strategy. “The RH Strategic team has developed its own templates over the years,” says Raffetto. They all include research and discovery where we assess the client’s market landscape and their strategic objectives; various programs to achieve those objectives; and measurement initiatives so that all parties can assess at any time the progress of the strategy and make adjustments. It’s a pretty simple and logical template, and it’s designed to be useful not just to the communications team but the entire executive suite and even the boardroom.”

Next, you’ll find descriptions of all the component pieces and templates you can use to develop your own plan.

Begin With Your Mission Statement

The mission statement defines the reason your organization exists and serves as a framework to evaluate current and prospective activities. Include your mission statement at the very beginning of the communications plan to show that the initiative doesn’t just come from the communications department or consultant. Your mission statement should also inform your key messages, which should be brief, non-jargony benefit statements.

Here’s an example of messaging that comes directly from defining a mission. Highfive, a video conferencing company, has a brief mission statement: Our mission is to make every conversation face-to-face . Their three key value-driven messages are:

• Highfive is beautifully simple video conferencing that you can initiate or join with a single click
• Twenty conference rooms for the price of one Cisco or Polycom system 
• Built for businesses, not social networking 

The messages support the mission statement, clearly states the benefits, and the copy is easy to use in all types of formats. Before you begin creating your own messages, there are other steps to take, beginning with research.

Do Your Research

To develop an effective strategy, you need to take a deep dive into understanding your operating environment, strengths and weaknesses, competitors, audiences, and how to message based on goals. An important element to explore is what communication platforms and channels you’ll use to spread your message, and finally the metrics you’ll use to ensure the effectiveness of your efforts. Here are some types of analysis you can perform to help you identify how to move forward:

PEST Analysis: PEST (Political, Economic, Social, Technological) analysis is the first step an organization can use to begin their overall business planning. It’s a tool to help you understand your business position, and market growth or decline, and scan your environment. By understanding these factors, you can determine overall opportunities and threats to your organization. 

Once you’ve completed your PEST analysis, you can move on to look at your direct competitors in the marketplace. 

SWOT Analysis  SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) is an analysis framework that identifies and examines the internal and external environmental factors that can impact project, product, place, or person viability. Originally developed for Fortune 500 companies, organizations of all kinds have embraced SWOT as a decision-making aid. SWOT analyzes four areas:

• Strengths: Internal attributes and resources that provide advantages.
• Weaknesses: Internal attributes and resources that are a disadvantage to the organization when compared to others.
• Opportunities: External factors that a company can exploit to gain an advantage.
• Threats: External factors that could result in jeopardy.

This environmental scan is a means to help decision makers ascertain if the project or goal is worthwhile and what’s needed to make it successful. The next step is to match resources to meet the identified challenges and opportunities. Below you’ll find some templates you can download to help with your research.

SWOT Analysis Strategy Template for Excel

Use this template to examine the relationships between external and internal drivers, and determine what strategies you can employ to address different threats, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. You can find more SWOT templates here in a variety of formats.

‌ Download the SWOT Analysis Strategy Template  

Competitor Analysis Template for Excel

Use this template to perform a competitive evaluation of your organization and to inform your communication strategy based on product categories. A detailed multi-layered template for each product category will help you analyze major attributes and channels, pricing, credibility, promotional offers, and relevant research findings. It also enables the identification of opportunities and potential partners. 

‌Download Competitive Analysis Template

Create S.M.A.R.T. Objective(s)

To provide structure, guidance, and to better identify what you want to accomplish for your communication strategy plan, S.M.A.R.T. goals are especially effective. They are:

• Specific: A mission statement for your goal that clarifies what you want to accomplish
• Measurable: Think about meaningful metrics that will create a tangible way to measure progress 
• Achievable: You and your team agree on what’s attainable
• Relevant: Focus on what makes sense within broader business goals and realistic resources 
• Time Bound: Target timing, along with interim schedules, for deliverables  

To learn more, read The Essential Guide to Writing Smart Goals . You can also use the following template to get started writing your S.M.A.R.T goals.

S.M.A.R.T. Goals Template

This template helps clarify the five classic S.M.A.R.T. steps for your communications strategy or any other project. Once you complete the questionnaire, the answers will help fine-tune your strategy into attainable goals. You can use it as a tool for the whole team to make sure your goals are realistic, and to form consensus before moving on to the next steps in your strategic communication planning process.

‌ Download the S.M.A.R.T. Goals Template - WORD

Identify Audiences and Influencers

Knowing who influences you and who you influence will clarify the impact of the actions you take and the messages you create. Whether you’re carrying out a full communication strategy for your organization or developing a new campaign, it’s important to identify and understand the full range of stakeholders (internal, external, more remote influencers, or societal) you’ll need to consider. Once you identify your stakeholders, learn how to manage those relationships by reading The Definitive Guide to Stakeholder Management .

Stakeholder Analysis Matrix Template

Track which stakeholders are likely to have the most or least interest and influence in your communications strategy based on your research. This is a useful template for strategizing and creating an effective plan of action for stakeholder management. Visualizing stakeholders in this way makes it easy to understand which audience needs greater focus and which need less monitoring. 

Download Stakeholder Analysis Matrix Template

Excel | Word | PDF | Smartsheet

Internal and External Stakeholder Communication Plan Template

Don’t forget your internal stakeholders. As we saw from Booher’s case study above, it’s critical to engage with internal stakeholders. You need to align employees and other internal agents to your messages and actions, and clarify who acts as important conduits of information to the outside world. This simple communications template clarifies stakeholder interest and power, type and frequency of communication for each stakeholder, and provides a space for  comments.  ‌ ‌ Download Internal and External Stakeholder Communication Plan Template - WORD

Check In with Colleagues

Take some time to learn what your colleagues know and the strengths they can bring to your communications efforts. Then use the RACI model (Responsible Accountable Consulted Informed) to help team members understand their roles and responsibilities to ensure collaboration and project success. This activity is especially important when team sizes are large, when team members are in different geographic areas, or if you need to rely on staff from multiple departments.          Roles and Responsibilities Template for Excel

      Use this template to keep tasks organized by team members, save time or eliminate the need for extended status meetings, and ensure that communication strategy plan goals are tracked and met.

‌  Create the Roles and Responsibilities Template in Smartsheet  

Define Your Key Messages

Now that you’ve identified your key stakeholders and target audiences, you need to determine what you want them to know, think, and do as a result of your communication strategy and tactics? You should be able to refine your message to three key points, and if necessary to adjust those statements slightly for specific target audiences. 

Key Messaging Tips

• Keep it Concise: Limit key messages to three and keep them brief. A good test is to see if they take 30 seconds or less to read out loud. 
• Think Strategically: Define, differentiate, and address your benefits/value proposition.
• Be Relevant: Consider what your audiences need to know as you balance what you must communicate.
• Compelling: Stimulate action with meaningful information that incites a response.
• Keep it Simple: Avoid jargon and acronyms, and use easy-to-understand language.
• Memorable: Avoid run-on sentences, and make the messages easy to remember and repeat.
• Be Active: Avoid the passive voice. Get your message across briefly, but don’t use tricky advertising style slogans.
• Be Specific: Tailor communication to different target audiences.

Theme Development

Do some team brainstorming and develop a list of topics for your website, social media, and email marketing strategy. The themes should be relevant to all your target audiences and contribute to your organization’s positioning. 

It’s a good idea to roll out themes weekly to maintain momentum and keep building interest in the next messaging installment, whether it’s email, direct mail, or social media. You also need to consider key dates for your organization like anniversaries, conferences, or seasonal activities, and build messaging around those.

All of this legwork should also inform upcoming campaigns to support product rollouts or other key events. Once you line up your themes and campaigns, you can put them into your planning documents and templates.

Tips for Selecting Strategic Communication Channels and Platforms

A major part of the channel and platform selection process relies on the target audience and stakeholder research. For internal audiences, you’ll be able to simply use text, emails, and internal newsletters for your ‘captive’ audience. When it comes to external audiences and stakeholders, if you’re number one audience is teenagers your channel selection will likely be different than if you’re trying to reach CEOs. You can use purchased data or your own research to determine the media your individual audiences use most. 

Try some testing to get to the most appropriate communication channel mix to promote and encourage the specific behavior or outcome you want. If your budget allows, hire a professional PR, advertising, or media firm to help you determine the most streamlined way to get to the right media mix. If outside resources aren’t in your budget, here are some tips on how to strategically choose your marketing channels and platforms. These ideas apply to both internal and external communications channel planning:

• Know Your Audience: Do your research on current stakeholder behaviors in multiple channels and determine what media outlets they use and which are most influential.
• Experiment: Add channels into the mix slowly, to reach specific audiences and check response rates.
• Automate: Use a tool like Hootsuite to add communications based on your schedule. Add and use different channels more frequently as they become more popular. 
• Listen: With social channels, it’s important that you continue to "listen" and respond in real-time. It’s the only way to gain and keep mindshare. 
• Evaluate: Use data and your own metrics to see what’s working and what isn’t, and adjust your plan accordingly.

Another consideration is to use marketing resource management (MRM) software. It’s software that helps users manage marketing processes so companies can be more agile in planning, management, and execution on marketing programs and campaigns, all while consistently maintaining your brand image across communication and marketing channels. MRMs usually provide planning, budgeting, and tracking capabilities, as well as the means for managing digital brand assets, workflows, and approval processes. You can find extensive coverage on this topic in this Marketing Resource Management article . 

Setting and Measuring Metrics

As mentioned earlier, you need to set clear, measurable goals to ensure that your communication strategy plan is effective -- or to determine if you need to make some changes to reach those goals. That means you need to not only set metrics, but also measure them over time, and at the conclusion of campaigns. 

As you develop your communications strategy plan, build-in quantitative measures not just for a final evaluation, but also at interim dates. That way you can assess if your communications efforts are progressing at the right pace. For example, are you amassing more Twitter followers or requests for more information, and meeting business objectives like total sales. As you write your plan, include:

• Starting Point Metrics: Identify where you are in your current efforts by the numbers.
• Midpoint Metrics: Determine how far you’ve progressed to your goal.
• Final Assessment Metrics: Iterate the ultimate objective for your company, campaign, or crisis plan.
• Platform Metrics: Set goals for each communications platform. Use web analytics and track your progress to benchmarks.
• Budget Metrics: Check results against your total budget regularly (weekly is best) to make sure you’re tracking to your allocated spend.

Raffetto is emphatic about the use of metrics in his plans. “Metrics are a must in communications. Anyone can feel that the program is winning or having an impact, and often that is the case, but at the end of the quarter or year all executives and even board members want hard evidence that the investment in PR and communications made an impact on the top strategic objectives of the company,” says Raffetto. “The only way to show that is with credible metrics. We use a heavy dose of quantitative measures – everything from media impact to video views to domain authority to UTM link tag analytics – and then we also look at more qualitative measures such as Are reporters now reaching out to us for a perspective on breaking news? or Does the CEO get invited to speak at key industry events? These are measurable as well and are built into the metrics in the planning phase.”

Social Media Considerations in a Strategic Communication Plan

The power of the social media ecosystem in reaching consumers and other audiences continues to grow, notes Raffetto. “Social media is indeed important, and is extremely powerful when it’s closely integrated with other communications programs like media campaigns or events. For this reason we do not treat it as a separate program, but rather we layer it into all other programs. So for example, if we are doing a speaker program for a top executive, we will build in a social media component to that,” explains Raffetto. “The tactics will include channel selection, content development, audience identification and engagement, and measurement. Measurement is fairly easy now with all of the analytics tools available. It is fun to see a client's social media program and engagement get supercharged by PR wins like a huge media hit or a keynote address.” 

Booher advises, “Far too many people and organizations spray paint on social media. They have no strategy. Therefore, they spend a little time here and a little time there on the various platforms, staying virtually invisible on all of them. Social media experts advise that you formulate a strategy to master one or at most two platforms. Decide where you’ll find your audience and go there. Then master that platform. Use those one or two platforms to drive traffic to your own website — the one place where you actually have control of the traffic and what they see. The tactics on social media are all the magnets you use to put buyers into your funnel on this platform and gradually lead them to your website. Finally, know what you want them to do when they get to your site: Read a blog? Buy a product? Sign up for an ezine? Register for a free webinar? Attend a paid event? The more specific the action you want them to take, the easier to measure your results. Give them a vague action, and you’ll likely have a vague notion of whether you’re succeeding.  

Social Media Audit Template

‌ Auditing your metrics monthly and comparing them to the previous month and year helps you understand if your objectives are being met and what you may want to change to accomplish goals. Edit this simple spreadsheet to include all of the social channels and metrics you want to track, and update it when you make any shifts in your social media strategy.

‌ Download Social Media Audit Template

Social Media Marketing Plan Template

This social media marketing plan template and calendar makes the complex planning involved in multiple channels easier. You can gather intelligence about how target audiences respond to content and which sites are sending you the most referrals. Use the data you gather to understand which outlets are most effective, and which days and times to post work best.

Download Social Media Marketing Plan Template

Overall Work and Activity Planning

Putting all the work and necessary activities in a calendar with key communications tasks, budget, and resources goes a long way in delivery on strategy. Highlight specific projects, events or publications that you know need to happen in a particular timeframe.

Communications Strategy Planning Calendar Template

This detailed calendar template provides a way to track annual plans or in a single month snapshot, and helps you work back from upcoming deadlines. Call out metrics at the top of the template, while there is a space to note marketing effectiveness data at the bottom of the spreadsheet. This comprehensive template offers sections for social media, online content, press releases, email, advertising, and more. Adapt the fields to make them appropriate for your organization to more effectively track your weekly and monthly progress.

‌ Download Communications Strategy Planning Calendar Template

Crisis Communication Planning

There are crisis that come out of the blue and some that you can anticipate based on past history or what you know may be coming up in your organization such as a move, a merger, or layoffs. By creating a plan in advance you can do a lot to prepare so your team is ready to handle a completely unforeseen or foreseeable crisis when it happens with a process that’s already in place. The crisis communication template can make sure you’re in control when the (inevitable) crisis occurs.

Crisis Communication Strategy Template

This Crisis Communication Strategy Template will help you identify the crisis communication team, set up responsibilities, identify and train spokespersons, determine the potential crisis, and set up a process and response plan, establish systems, and more. 

Download the Crisis Communication Strategy Template

Putting Your Strategic Communications Plan Together

All of the material reviewed so far can seem overwhelming, but like most things, if you take them one step at a time and enlist the help of the right people and technology, you’ll be successful. How do you put all these different aspects together?

The strategic communications plan provided here is a template that you can use to guide your process. There are steps along the way where you should include some of the downloadable templates in this article to lighten the load, and keep communications transparent to team members and management. It will be a living document, like the templates, that change as you learn and assess the process. 

9-Step Strategic Communications Plan Template for Word  

This template sets the stage for your full strategic communications plan in nine sections: 

• Identify your mission 
• Write an executive strategy 
• Set out your situation analysis 
• Determine stakeholder and target audience 
• Create key messages 
• Select tools and tactics
• Set budget 
• Develop project plans and schedules 

 Use the template to build your own custom plan.   Download the 9-Step Strategic Communications Plan Template

Excel  | WORD | PDF

Marketing Plan Template for Excel

This marketing plan template holds the component pieces that go into your overall strategic communications plans. It has sections for media relations, online marketing, trade shows and events, sales campaigns, and branding efforts. Overall objectives are identified along with costs, target market, and you can schedule activities by the week. Adjust the template to include whichever elements are essential to your communications strategy.

Communications and Marketing Budget Plan Template

Use this communications and marketing plan template to display itemized categories by type and channel, the estimated costs, subtotals, and grand totals for each item and a space for additional notations. It’s designed to be easy to understand, so everyone from team members to the C-suite can track where money is going. This template can be used for campaigns or for annual plans.

Download Communications and Marketing Budget Plan Template

Additional Communication Strategy Planning Tools & Resources

Find more templates, books, and professional organizations to start or improve your planning process here.

More Helpful Templates You can always make tasks easier for yourself and your team with easy-to-use templates like these:

To Do List & Progress Monitor Template

Get your team on the same page with a consolidated view of responsibilities across multiple projects and priorities with this comprehensive action tool. Use the template to create transparency as it tracks task progress with Harvey ball symbols, and also flags high-priority items.

‌ Create a To Do List & Progress Monitor Template in Smartsheet

Check out more templates in this 15 Free Task List Templates article.

Project Budget Template

Creating and tracking an accurate budget is the make-or-break factor of managing successful communication plans. Stay on top of budgets with this template, that helps you track labor, material, and fixed costs. You can also monitor the difference between your actual and budgeted amounts for each task.

Download Project Budget Template

Find more useful budget templates for download at Top Excel Budget Templates .

Tactical Marketing Management and Project Team Template for Excel

As you implement your marketing strategy, track tactics that you need to complete to keep your plan and team on schedule and assess progress. This template lets you list your project team, monitor who’s responsible for which tasks, dates, expenses, action, and status every step of the way.

Download Tactical Marketing Plan Template

Find more templates to download in this Free Marketing Plan Templates for Excel article .

Risk Assessment Template

     Particularly helpful for crisis communication planning, this template gauges and captures essential information your organization needs to assess potential risk. List and categorize each risk, rate its relative likelihood and severity, and chart all the risks in an aggregated view. Risk can be color-coded to denote risk rankings for a prioritized, at-a-glance view to enable readiness.

Download Risk Assessment Matrix Template Below Excel  | Word  | PDF  | Smartsheet

Find more risk assessment templates here: All The Risk Assessment Matrix Templates You Need .

Glossary of Marketing, PR, and Communication Terms

For those who are new to communications strategy and planning, terminology may be hard to understand. Here are some free, easy to use guides to marketing, PR, and communication terms for you to download and refer to as you develop your communications strategy and plans. 

• Dictionary of Media and Communications by Marcel Danesi: A comprehensive, 349-page reference to terminology that covers every aspect of media and communications terms.
• IUCN Commission on Education and Communication Glossary edited by Frits Hesselink: A handy international guide to terms used in effective communication. 
• The Oxford Dictionary of Media and Communication by Daniel Chandler and Rod Munday for Oxford University Press: Over 2,200 entries on terms used in communications arranged with A to Z tabs for easy access.

Professional Marketing Organizations

Keep up to date with the latest best practices in communications strategy with information from these professional organizations that cater to communications and marketing professionals:

• American Marketing Association (AMA): The AMA provides thought-leadership, research, webinars, technology, and other resources for marketers and academics. 
• Public Relations Society of America (PRSA): The PRSA provides articles, publications, research, and other resources to communications professionals and students in every industry sector. 
• Sales and Marketing Executives International (SMEI): The SMEI is a global association that provides online forums, webinars, courses, and certification for sales and marketing professionals.
• International Association of Business Communicators (IABC): The IABC is an international network of communication professionals whose goal is to improve organizational effectiveness through strategic communication and provides articles, podcasts, videos, and more to its members. 
• The Data and Marketing Association (DMA): Formerly known as the Direct Marketing Association, this organization champions deeper consumer engagement and business value through the innovative and responsible use of data-driven marketing. They provide coursework, information about regulatory impacts, and other resources to members.
• Business Marketing Association (BMA): The BMA is geared to B-to-B marketers. They offer training, career development, online resources, research, and more to its membership.

Strategic Communication Planning Books

Some current, in-depth books that detail every aspect of strategy and strategic communications planning: 

• Brand Media Strategy: Integrated Communications Planning in the Digital Era , by Antony Young. A guide to planning in today’s more sophisticated media landscape. 
• Crisis Communications: The Definitive Guide to Managing the Message by Steven Fink.  A complete toolkit to create communications and business success in the face of crisis.
• Crisis Communication: Practical PR Strategies for Reputation Management and Company Survival , edited by Peter Anthonissen. Proactive crisis communication and proper planning guidance.
• Simply Communicate: A Business Guide to Strategic Communication by Kristel Keys Running. Steps businesses and managers through the details of communication strategy. After reading the book and following the steps, readers will have a customized and solid organizational communications strategy.
• Strategy Builder: How to Create and Communicate More Effective Strategies by Stephen Cummings and Duncan Angwin. An interactive, visual guide that uses practical tips and real world examples to build your optimal communication plan. 
• Strategy-In-Action: Marrying Planning, People and Performance (The Global Leader Series Book 4) by Thomas D. Zweifel. A holistic approach to the design and execution of strategic process for organizational leaders.
• Strategic Public Relations Management: Planning and Managing Effective Communication Campaigns (Routledge Communication Series) . An evidence-based, applied approach to strategic public relations management -- this is an instructional textbook.

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More From Forbes

Five components of a successful strategic communications plan.

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Director of Marketing at  haseebtariq.com.  I help fix large revenue retention & growth issues.

Communication is a critical part of any organization's success. Once, I was working closely with the senior leadership to create an email that addressed late deliveries. I remember that when we first started, there were so many ideas swirling in our heads about how to approach this project and what tone of voice would be best for our company. I wished I had someone with a communications strategy plan who could tell me the "best" way to approach this project in order to be successful.

I started reading and researching, looking for what I felt was a good strategy to communicate with our target audience. Luckily, after some research and conversations with others who had more experience than myself on the topic at hand, what finally developed was a communications strategy plan that we used over and over again for all of our marketing and communication efforts.

What Is A Communications Strategy Plan?

A communications strategy is a plan for communicating with your target audience. It includes who you are talking to, why you are talking to them, how and when you will talk to them, what form of communication the content should take and what channels you should use to share it.

1. What Is The Purpose Of Your Communications Plan?

A clear purpose helps keep everyone on board. Make sure the right people hear your message when they are ready and in a way that you want them to hear it. Your communication objectives should be to answer these questions: Who do I need to reach? Why do I need to reach them? What will my communications say? How will I deliver this message at the time that will have the best impact on my audience (and for me)? And what channels am I using or can I use for delivery?

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2. Who Are You Communicating With (Or Who Is Your Target Audience) And What Message Do They Need To Hear?

Target audiences can vary from one time to another and may include your customers, employees or the media. Define who needs to hear what is happening in your organization. Every communications plan is different, but they should never be one-size-fits-all. It's a good idea to create an audience map that identifies key audiences and the messages they need to hear about your organization or cause in order for them to take action.

3. How Will This Message Be Communicated?

Your communications strategy provides the framework for the company's outreach activities, including what needs to get out there through communication channels like social media, email marketing, blog posts, video content on YouTube or Vimeo and so on. In my experience, the more specific you are with your messaging (and visuals) — even if it seems repetitive — the better your chances of getting people engaged and taking action are.

4. When Should This Communication Happen — Right Now Or Later On?

Organizations have to use their communications wisely and strategically in order to be successful with them. But the importance of timing is also important for communicating effectively. Your communications strategy should specify when the message should be communicated, including whether that's right now or later on. Your communications team should take these considerations into account as they develop your messaging and timing plan. In addition, I recommend developing two equally effective strategies: one for "now" and another that can be deployed in anticipation of events that might happen later down the road. A crisis communication plan helps cushion against unexpected turns of events, no matter what happens.

5. Who Will Be Responsible For The Communication?

Communications professionals should be the ones responsible for communicating with external audiences, and they should do so often during a crisis. However, human resources departments may also need to communicate internally about any changes that may affect employees. Define key messages, and then decide who will deliver them. Define the audience and focus on what they need to know about this change. Be sure to provide information in a timely way, but also keep the message concise so that employees can digest it easily.

Bottom Line

A strategic communications plan can help you communicate your message to the right people at the most opportune time. By considering these five components, you can put together a solid strategy that could drive more success for your business and bring about your desired results in less time. 

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How to Communicate Your Company’s Strategy Effectively

• David Lancefield

Ditch the lofty purpose statements and lengthy slide decks.

For too long, communicating strategy has been an afterthought. Executives have shared long, bombastic documents or withheld critical information and expected people to just “get it.” And it hasn’t worked. Greater external uncertainty, collaboration, employee anxiety, and organizational openness demands a change of approach. The author presents five actions that will improve the clarity and quality of communication, enabling stakeholders to make a more substantive and meaningful contribution to the strategy.

Most people can’t recall the strategy of the organization they work for. Even the executives and managers responsible for strategy struggle, with one study reporting that only 28% of them could list three strategic priorities.

• David Lancefield is a  catalyst, strategist, and coach  for leaders. He’s advised more than 40 CEOs and hundreds of executives, was a senior partner at Strategy&, and is a guest lecturer at the London Business School. Find him on LinkedIn (@davidclancefield) or at  davidlancefield.com , where you can sign up for his free “Mastering Big Moments”  workbook .

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How to Write an Effective Communications Plan [+ Template]

Published: January 05, 2023

Remember the " Tide Pod Challenge ?" That horrendous time at the beginning of 2018 when adolescents filmed themselves ingesting laundry detergent?

While it was a funny (albeit dangerous) start to the new year, this small boost of infamy was a PR mess for the detergent brand in question, Tide , whose crisis communication team had to figure out how to respond to America's teens swallowing their toxic product. Tide's parent company, Procter & Gamble, was swift in their response, thanks in large part to their communication plan .

In this post, you'll learn how to create an effective communication plan that prepares you and your company for any situation.

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What is a communications plan.

A communications plan enables you to effectively deliver information to appropriate stakeholders. The plan will identify the messages you need to promote, to whom you're targeting those messages, and on which channel(s). Communications plans can be used in times of crises, but they are also used when pitching new initiatives or launching new products.

Communication plans can help you clarify the purpose of a product launch or new initiative and officially determine the messages you want to deliver to your intended audience(s).

Additionally, a communication plan can help your business during a time of crisis if a previous marketing message or business decision damages your reputation with internal stakeholders or customers.

If companies don't have a communication plan , they'll be unprepared when disaster strikes. It may be unlikely that your company will find teenagers eating your product for internet fame, but not so unlikely that you'll never find yourself needing a procedure to effectively handle difficult situations.

Need a free, easy-to-use communication plan template? HubSpot has 12. Check out this toolkit for everything you need to build your own.

This is part of a template offered in the toolkit. For this particular template, the organization is separated into phases, a description of that phase, and who needs to complete that action.

Download These Templates for Free

Now that we've gone over how a communication plan can be helpful, let's learn how to write one that will be effective.

How to Write a Communications Plan

• Conduct an audit of your current communications materials.
• Set SMART goals for your communications plan based on the results from your audit.
• Identify the audience to whom you plan to deliver your communications plan.
• Outline and write your plan, keeping your audiences in-mind.
• Determine the channel(s) on which you need to deliver your messages.
• Decide which team members are responsible for delivering the message.
• Estimate a timeline for how long each step should take.
• Measure the results of your plan after presenting to stakeholders, and determine successes and areas for improvement.

1. Conduct an audit of your current communications materials.

Before sitting down to get rollin' on your plan, you need to first decide where it'll fit into your business. So it's important you complete a "state of the union," or an audit of the current climate of communications within your company. This can help you identify any problem areas.

For instance, let's say you need to create a communications plan for a new product launch. To create your plan, you'll first need to perform an audit to identify gaps in your current marketing approach.

After performing the audit, you might find there is a major gap in your marketing materials in which you rarely discuss a topic that aligns well with your new product. You'll want to ensure this topic makes it into your communications plan.

Crisis Communication and Management Kit

Manage, plan for, and communicate during your corporate crises with these crisis management plan templates.

• Free Crisis Management Plan Template
• 12 Crisis Communication Templates
• Post-Crisis Performance Grading Template
• Additional Crisis Best Management Practices

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Free Communication Plan Template

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To conduct an audit, you'll need to carefully gather and interpret data on your current marketing plan performance and build a path forward based on those results. Additionally, you might consider hosting focus groups or sending surveys to your audience to find gaps in your current communications materials.

Of course, you'll want to have the goal of your communications plan in-mind when conducting an audit. In the example above, noticing you're lacking material on a certain subject only matters if your goal is to drive leads and conversions to a product that aligns with that subject.

For instance, if you're launching a new email marketing tool and you notice you're lacking content on Google Ads, this might not be relevant information for your communications plan. However, if you're missing content on email marketing best practices, that's important information you can use to tailor your communications plan appropriately.

2. Set SMART goals for your communications plan based on the results from your audit.

After your audit, you'll want to lay out a few goals based on the data from the results. What do you want to achieve with this plan?

When in doubt, remember that your goals should be SMART : Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based.

For instance, if a small agency is writing a communications plan for its client, they might write a goal along these lines: "We plan to increase employment applications for our client by 25% over the course of one quarter."

Alternatively, perhaps your HR team needs to write a communications plan to pitch designing a new growth matrix for individual contributors who don't want to become managers.

If that's the case, your HR team will need to identify specific goals they hope to achieve as a result of their plan, even if the results are less quantifiable — for instance, their goal might be to "increase employee retention rates by 10% over the next year" or even "increase employee satisfaction, as indicated by their next NPS scores." They'll need to pitch these goals to stakeholders to get leadership on-board.

Download Your Free SMART Goal Template

3. Identify the audience to whom you plan to deliver your communications plan.

Good communication starts with knowing and understanding your listener. In this case, if a crisis communication plan is for stakeholders, which one(s) are you writing for? Stakeholder examples include employees, investors, customers, local government officials, or media outlets.

If you're writing for media outlets, a press release detailing your goals is a good idea for that audience. There should be a process for who will speak to the media outlets, an outline of what they will say, and an action plan put in place moving forward.

Alternatively, if your audience is your employees, you might want to create an up-to-date internal document for employees to refer to, as well as the contact information for the internal DRI if they have follow-up questions.

4. Outline and write your plan, keeping your audiences in-mind.

When you're ready to outline and write your plan, it's likely easiest if you start with a table or chart to identify the messages you need to promote, to whom you're targeting those messages, and on which channel(s).

Once you've created a general outline, here's how you'll want to structure your communications plan (feel free to copy these sections into a Table of Contents for your own plan):

• Purpose (what is this communications plan for)
• Escalation Framework (including 'first line of defense' and 'greater response team')
• Roles and responsibilities of each employee
• Do's and Don'ts
• How to maintain an effective response plan

(If you need help writing a communications plan, download our free, ready-to-use communications plan templates .)

When writing your communication plan, work with groups or representatives from your stakeholders to improve accuracy. Strategies should solve for goals or potential risks.

For instance, if you work for an agency aiming to promote a client's product, a risk might be spending money on paid ads without a guaranteed ROI. To solve for that risk, the agency should detail different steps to ensure the ads are effective before going public.

5. Determine the channel(s) on which you need to deliver your messages.

The channels you choose to communicate with your audience depends on your message, and to whom you want to deliver that message. For instance, if you're creating a communications plan for internal employees, you might send out your communications plan in a company-wide email, use a team communication app , or in-person team meetings to deliver your message.

Alternatively, if you're communicating with customers, you might determine it's best to communicate via an email newsletter, or via a press release.

Of course, the channel(s) you choose will depend on your goals, but it's important as you're writing your communication plan that you keep your distribution methods in-mind.

6. Decide which team members are responsible for delivering the message.

Once you determine your audience and channel(s) on which you'll deliver your communications plan, figure out the DRI for delivering the message.

For instance, if your HR team is pitching a new growth matrix to leadership, you might ask your Director of HR to deliver the initial pitch in the first meeting. Once leadership is on-board, you might ask each HR representative to deliver one training session for each internal team to ensure every employee understands what's changing internally, and why.

7. Estimate a timeline for how long each step should take.

You should have a ballpark estimate of how much time each step in executing your strategy will take. For instance, if your plan needs to go from the higher-ups down to the employees, it's good to take into account how long going through the chain of command will take. It's also smart to infer how long a media cycle will last.

For instance, for a minor slip-up on an ad campaign, the advertising agency might estimate the cycle for controlling the issue will take a month — including meeting with the client, stakeholders, and employees to discuss steps moving forward.

8. Measure the results of your plan after presenting to stakeholders, and determine successes and areas for improvement.

There's always room for improvement. Measure the results of the plan after presenting it to stakeholders, and determine aspects that went well, and areas for improvement next time.

For instance, the ad agency might not have met its goal of increasing prospective applications by 25% within a quarter. They might rework their goals to give themselves more time or pivot their quarterly focus to fit those goals.

Alternatively, if you notice certain language in your communications plan evokes a level of stress or fear with internal stakeholders, consider how you can re-word next time to ensure your communications plan feels helpful, beneficial, and positive.

Some aspects of building a communication plan can be a "choose your own adventure" journey. The key is choosing aspects that best reflect what your business needs in times when effective communication is key. What do your stakeholders need to know, and how are you going to best communicate that?

Communication Plan Examples

• Strategic Communication Plan
• Project Communication Plan
• Marketing Communication Plan
• Corporate Communication Plan
• Crisis Communication Plan

Communication plans can get tricky, but writing an effective one will prove itself with its longevity. The following communication plans include analysis for stakeholders you'd respond to and the procedures for what to include in those communications.

1. Strategic Communication Plan

Bright Hub Project Management's communication plan explains how, when, and why communication happens within its organization.

This example is great because it details how communication managers write crisis plans and acknowledges that sometimes the busy marketer or project manager takes on this responsibility.

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2. Project Communication Plan

Here's an example of a Billing Upgrade Project from Simplicable . This communication plan maps out all the important meetings and documents needed for the project. As you can see, it also includes necessary sections including audience, goals, format, and DRI.

3. Marketing Communication Plan

A marketing communication plan is essential for communicating to your target market, especially when launching new products or initiatives. This example from Smartsheet allows you to plan marketing communications strategies for customers, sales prospects, media partners, internal stakeholders, and events.

4. Corporate Communication Plan

Corporate communication plans outline how organizations communicate internally and externally. This example from Smartsheet is a nine-step roadmap that includes space for a mission statement, executive summary, situation analysis, key messages, and more.

5. Crisis Communication Plan

This communication checklist below, by Prezly , gives a great overview of the details of a crisis plan from beginning to end. It can be used as an effective guide when drafting a crisis management strategy.

Communication Planning Tips

Communication planning can be tricky, so here are some extra tips to keep in mind to help your plan shine: when describing procedures for handling crises, include who the situation involves. This lets stakeholders envision decision-making processes.

Additionally, if you're part of a larger company with a broad stakeholder list, it's okay to split up target audiences for your plan.

For instance, maybe your audience is more than just "consumers." Split stakeholder groups for easier comprehension and more distinct solutions.

Ultimately, your communications plan needs to clearly and succinctly provide necessary information to everyone involved in the business decision, product launch, or PR crises. Use the strategy mentioned above, as well as our communication plan templates , to ensure yours is as effective as possible.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in September, 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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The Communication Strategy Framework

Planning how to communicate clearly.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Nowadays, we communicate with others in many different ways.

For example, we can get our message across face to face, over the phone, by email or IM, or by video call or VoIP. We can also communicate with written reports, workshops, webinars, advertisements, presentations, and speeches.

However, to get the best results from our communications, we need to plan them effectively. Without careful thought and consideration, we can easily confuse our audience or fail to get our message across. This can undermine our credibility and effectiveness.

In this article, we'll look at the Communication Strategy Framework, a simple tool that you can use to organize your messages, remove possible communication barriers, and get the results that you want.

About the Model

Michael and Sandra Rouse developed the Communication Strategy Framework, and published it in their 2001 book, " Business Communications: A Cultural and Strategic Approach ." [1]

The framework guides you through the process of planning and organizing your messages, so that you can avoid communication barriers, increase understanding, and get the response that you want from your audience.

The Communication Strategy Framework consists of four elements that you should consider carefully as you organize and craft your message:

• Communicator strategy.
• Audience strategy.
• Channel strategy.
• Message strategy.

From "Business Communications: A Cultural and Strategic Approach" (pages 76-77) by Michael J. Rouse and Sandra Rouse. © 2001. Used with permission of Cengage Learning EMEA Ltd.

You can use the framework to plan many different types of communications, such as phone calls, reports, emails, and presentations.

Using the Framework

To use the Communication Strategy Framework, think carefully about each of the elements below. You can also download our worksheet to help with your planning.

1. Communicator Strategy

First, you need to think about yourself as the "communicator," or the sender of the message. Consider these questions:

• Why are you communicating this message?
• What results do you want to achieve?
• What is your reputation with your audience members, and how much credibility do you have? How should you adjust your message to take account of this?
• Does your audience trust you? If not, how could you build trust in your message?
• Do you share the same culture and background as your audience? (If not, brush up on your cross-cultural communication skills , and think about how you can ensure that others understand you easily.)

Consider the objective of your communication carefully, as this will determine the best approach to take with the next three elements of the framework. Write a simple but straightforward statement that defines the objective or purpose of your communication. (If you are delivering a training session, see our article on the ABCD Learning Objectives Model – this will help you to refine your objectives statement even further.)

2. Audience Strategy

Next, think about your audience. When you consider the wants, needs, education, and skill levels of your audience members, you can craft a message that matches their interests, expectations, and understanding.

Consider these questions:

• Who is your audience?
• Are there identifiable sub-groups within it, with differing needs?
• What do you know about this person or group?
• What do they know about you?
• What do they know about this subject?
• How will you motivate them?

In some cases, you'll be very familiar with your audience: for example, when you write an email to your boss or colleagues. In other cases, you might not know your audience, such as when you give a presentation to a large group of prospective clients. Write down what you do know about them, and then think about how you can find out more.

Next, think about the different groups within your audience. Use our article on market segmentation to think about how you can address their differing needs.

Consider what your audience members need from you, and how they will benefit from your communication.

3. Message Strategy

Here, you need to think about the style, tone, and structure of your message. Consider these questions:

• Is your purpose to persuade, entertain, consult, or inform? What style and tone will best fit your purpose?
• Does your message need to be formal or informal, or a subtle mix of both? Consider your audience carefully to answer this question.

When you think about your message, you also need to consider your audience's likely reaction. Do you think your audience will agree with what you say? And are your audience members busy? If so, you might want to take a direct approach. To do this, communicate your main idea upfront, and back it up with supporting arguments or evidence.

Are your audience members likely to disagree with what you have to say? And do they have time to listen to, or read, a longer communication? If so, you might want to take a less direct approach with your message. Include your supporting arguments first, followed by your main point or purpose.

As you craft your message, think about how you can let your audience members know why they should keep listening, and make sure that you finish with a clear, motivating call to action.

If you need to influence your audience in some way, use Yukl and Tracey's positive influencers to choose the best approach to use. Monroe's motivated sequence can also help you to craft an effective message. If you want to draft a written communication, brush up on your writing skills . And, when you need to give a presentation, consider using business storytelling to inspire and motivate your audience.

4. Channel Strategy

In the final element of the framework, you focus on choosing the most effective communication channel to get your message across.

• What channel is most appropriate to use for your audience and message?
• Do you need to have a record of this communication? (If so, an email can be a better choice than a phone call.)
• Is cost or time a consideration?
• Is culture a factor in this situation? Remember that people in some cultures prefer face-to-face communication, while others will favor using email.

Keep in mind that the channel you choose can directly affect how well your audience understands your message. If your message is complex, or if others might misunderstand it, choose a channel that allows you to see whether people have grasped the message, and, if necessary, take corrective action.

Our articles on writing effective emails , delivering great presentations , and holding effective meetings have specific strategies that you can follow to make best use of these communication channels.

Use the 7 Cs of Communication to ensure that your message is clear, concise, well-constructed, and error-free.

Michael and Sandra Rouse developed the Communication Strategy Framework and published it in their 2001 book, "Business Communications: A Cultural and Strategic Approach." The framework guides you through the process of planning and organizing your communications, so that you can prepare clear and effective letters, emails, presentations, and speeches.

The framework consists of four elements:

To use the framework, consider each element carefully as you plan your message.

Download Worksheet

[1] Rouse, M. and Rouse, S. (2001). ' Business Communications .' United States: South-Western.

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6-Step Guide to Crafting the Perfect Communication Plan

A communication plan is a key to developing an effective and consistent messaging strategy.

It helps guide the process of setting measurable goals for your strategy, profiling your target audience and creating and successfully delivering your message.

What is a Communication Plan

Components of a Communication Plan

Steps to communication planning, step 1 – perform a situation analysis, swot analysis, pest analysis, perceptual map, step 2 – identify and define objectives / goals, step 3 – understand and profile your key audience, step 4 – decide the media channels and create a strategy, step 5 – create a timetable for publishing, step 6 – monitor and evaluate the results, common mistakes to avoid when creating communications plans, faqs about communication plans, what’s your approach to writing a communication plan, what is a communication plan.

A communication plan outlines how teams can communicate important information to key stakeholders. It highlights what information should be shared, when, to which audience and via which channels.

Having a solid communication plan in place will help ensure that the communication objectives of your organization are met and that all assets that you send out are aligned with the core communications strategy of the company.

In marketing and public relations, communication plans are used to plan how important information about products and services will be communicated to target audiences, including customers, clients, media and the general public. Companies also use communication plans to maintain consistent and effective internal communications within the organization. These may include internal newsletters, intranet updates and team Wikis. In project management, communication plans are used to highlight how information will be communicated within teams and relevant stakeholders, throughout the lifecycle of the project. Overall, communications plans offer a structured approach to plan, implement and evaluate communication efforts to optimize the effectiveness of communications.

Use this communication plan template to develop your strategy and deploy it.

Why is a Communication Plan Essential?

Clear communication is the backbone of any successful initiative. A communication plan ensures that everyone is on the same page, reducing the risk of confusion, missed deadlines, and unmet expectations. It fosters trust, ensures transparency, and can be the difference between project success and failure.

Who Should Use a Communication Plan?

A communication plan isn’t just for large corporations or project managers. It’s for anyone aiming to streamline interactions, whether you’re a small business owner, a team leader, or an individual looking to improve personal projects. Understanding your audience and tailoring your communication strategy to them is the first step.

When Should You Implement a Communication Plan?

The best time to implement a communication plan is at the onset of a project or initiative. However, it’s never too late. Whether you’re starting a new project, revamping an old one, or looking to improve ongoing communications, a well-structured plan can make a difference.

Where Does a Communication Plan Apply?

While often associated with business projects, communication plans apply everywhere: from community events, educational programs, to personal projects. Any scenario that requires organized communication can benefit.

Your communications plan should include the following key elements.

1. Target Audience

Who is Your Target Audience? All strategic communications should be directed at a specific audience. Accordingly, the message you send out should be tailored to their level of knowledge, understanding and trust in your brand or organization.

What is the Context of Your Message? The next step is to define the context of your message. Identify key events that may be significant to the audience that you are aiming to reach. The context defines what should be included in the message and how your audience will relate and respond to it.

3. Outcomes

What Do You Aim to Achieve with Your Message? The outcome of your message is the ‘call to action’. Define what people need to know, believe and do after receiving the message. Create a ‘message pyramid’ with an attention grabbing headline, followed by ‘reasons why’ and proof points. This helps the audience understand your core message and then consider the proof points which are relevant to their context, and there by act based on your call-to-action.

Which Media Channels Will You Use? Media are the channels through which your message is communicated. These may vary depending on the content, context and audience of the message. For instance, if you want to reach a younger tech-savvy audience, you may choose a social media platform that may be popular among them.

5. Messengers

How Will You Choose Your Messengers? The primary messenger may not always be the most ‘effective’ messenger. The messenger’s ethos should resonate credibility, status and power, expertise and relationship.

Why do most companies get their CEOs or members of the senior management to conduct new product launches or convey important product information? It is because audiences tend to have confidence in people with big titles who have an influence in the organization. They are also experts in their subject area and have a strong relationship with the company.

6. Measurement

How Will You Measure Success? It is important to cultivate strategies to measure the effectiveness of your communications. Include KPIs for your communication activities and document the results. This also helps build a repository of information which will be useful when planning future communications activities.

Whether you are creating a marketing communication plan or a strategic communication plan, the following steps will help guide you.

Situation analysis helps assess the capabilities of and health of things in an organization. It’s the ideal way to understand the current status of your organization’s communication.

You can gather as much information as needed from conducting an audit .

To gather relevant information from situation analysis, you can consult departmental heads, process owners and other internal staff members.

In a situation analysis, you need to examine both the internal and external environments. To do so, you can use the following tools

You can use a SWOT analysis to examine the strengths and weaknesses within your organization, and opportunities and threats that you can find in your external environment.

With a PEST analysis , you can examine political, environmental, social and technological factors, all of which exist in the external environment of your organization, but can have a significant impact on the way things run in your business.

One good competitor analysis technique is the perceptual map. It helps you make sense of how your customers perceive the brands of your competitors in the market compared to yours.

Once you know where you stand, you can find your direction. The next step is to define your goals.

Think of what outcomes/results you want to achieve from your communication plan. These will become your goal/s as you develop your communication plan.

Make sure that the goals you select are SMART :

Who are you creating this communication plan for? Understanding your audience and their requirements, characteristics etc. is key to creating an effective message and delivering it successfully.

Your key audience could be within your organization or your customers. Either way, you should gather information on them and create simple audience personas.

These personas could include a variety of data that ranges from their age and gender to the challenges they face.

As you conduct research on your target audience you would get to know that their requirements and preferences are diverse.

It’s clear that you won’t be able to reach all of them through one media channel or retain their attention with one type of content.

Consider the most effective channels you can think of when creating your media channel strategy. Make sure to select the ideal channel when you are targeting different audience segments.

When do you want your audience to hear your message and how often? Have a content calendar or create a Gantt chart outlining a timeframe for your publishing strategy.

You may also need to take the resources available to you into consideration. If you have one content writer, publishing quality blog posts on a daily basis would be ineffective.

Constantly monitor and track your results in order to understand whether you are any closer to achieving your goals. If you have failed, proceed to mark it down so you can make necessary improvements next time.

Creating a communication plan for your non profit organization? Check out this resource for some great tips.

Overcomplicating the Plan

Trying to include too many channels or too much information may complicate the plan. This can lead to confusion and dilute the effectiveness of your messaging. Stick only to key messaging and channels that are most effective in reaching and engaging the target audience.

Not Considering the Timing

Timing is crucial in communication planning. It is important to consider the timing of the messaging and ensure that they are aligned with key events or milestones. Don’t send out important communications during periods of high volume or noise, such as during holidays or major news events.

Not Adapting to Changes

Communication plans should be adaptable and flexible to changes in environment or audience. It is important to regularly review and update plans to keep up with emerging trends (to make sure that your plan stays relevant and effective). Failing to adapt to changes may cause missed opportunities and ineffective messaging.

How often should a communications plan be updated?

A communications plan should be updated regularly to reflect changes in the organization’s goals, priorities, audiences, or external environment. The frequency of updates will depend on the pace of change in the organization and the industry. A good rule of thumb is to review the communications plan annually and update it as needed. However, if there are major changes in the organization, such as a merger, acquisition, or crisis, the communications plan should be updated immediately to ensure that communication is timely, accurate, and effective.

How can an organization measure the effectiveness of its communications plan?

An organization can measure the effectiveness of its communications plan by tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) related to its communication goals and objectives. These KPIs may include website traffic, social media engagement, email open rates, media coverage, customer satisfaction surveys, or sales figures. By tracking these KPIs over time, the organization can assess whether its communication activities are achieving the desired results and make adjustments as needed. It’s important to set realistic goals and benchmarks for each KPI and to ensure that the data is collected consistently and accurately. Additionally, feedback from stakeholders, such as customers, employees, and investors, can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of the organization’s communication activities.

A successful communication plan will get your message delivered across to your audience effectively while ensuring that you are on track to accomplishing your business objectives.

Follow the simple steps above to create a winning communication plan. If you have any other tips, do share them with us in the comment section below.

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Amanda Athuraliya is the communication specialist/content writer at Creately, online diagramming and collaboration tool. She is an avid reader, a budding writer and a passionate researcher who loves to write about all kinds of topics.

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Kickstart your internal communications strategy with these best practices

Written by by Ronnie Gomez

Published on  October 21, 2021

Reading time  15 minutes

Picture this. You’ve been running point on a major process change at your company. After sending out email updates and meeting with key stakeholders, you’re finally ready to roll out your plan. The day after the switch is made, you begin to receive messages from disgruntled colleagues, all featuring the same three words:

“Nobody told me…”

This is a frustrating yet all too common experience at companies of all sizes. Without a well-executed internal communications strategy, necessary information can get lost, missed or ignored.

Internal communications requires the same level of care and planning as customer, partner and recruiting communications. Still, designing or revamping your internal communications program can be daunting. That’s why we’re here to show you how to create a successful program while avoiding the typical roadblocks to enhancing your employee communication strategy .

Why you need to rethink your internal communications plans

Effective communication in the workplace is more important than ever. As more companies opt into long-term remote work , it’s increasingly clear that corporate work environments will not be returning to pre-pandemic norms.

April 2020: working from home sucks April 2021: if we have to go back to the office full-time I will quit — Sophie Vershbow (@svershbow) April 27, 2021

While remote work has its benefits, it’s also left some employees feeling disconnected from their work and their employers. One study found that 55% of people in the US workforce intend to look for a new job in the next 12 months . This “Great Resignation” is putting a renewed emphasis on employee engagement and, in turn, internal communications.

In this new landscape, your internal communications strategy can’t rely on a set-it-and-forget-it approach. It needs to be proactive, comprehensive and creative to foster the connection that was lost when in-person touchpoints went away.

The good news is, most internal communication leads are embracing this change in their roles and responsibilities. According to the Gallagher State of the Sector report, just 5% of organizations will maintain the practices they had in place in 2020 . The rest are planning major culture, process and system changes.

An intentional internal communications plan can help organizations manage the ever-growing impacts of a changing work environment. This is a tremendous opportunity for businesses to rethink how they communicate to an often forgotten audience—their own employees.

7 steps to form your internal communications strategy

Creating an internal communications program is an ongoing exercise in collaboration. It requires prioritization and buy-in from leadership, as well as frequent check-ins with managers across your business.

So, how does one kick off an internal communications strategy?

Here’s our seven-step guide to launching a successful internal communications program:

1. Assess your current internal communications strategy

You likely have some internal communication processes already in place, so it’s always best to start with research. It’s time to assess what’s working and what isn’t.

Internal communication is the heartbeat of an organization. How’s your company’s health? #internalcomms — David Grossman (@ThoughtPartner) October 18, 2021

Some of the things you should immediately address when revamping your internal communication strategy include:

• Your current performance : How effective is your current strategy? What are your biggest strengths and weaknesses? Who is currently involved in shaping and executing your plan and who can you add to improve it?
• Where you’ll eventually be : What are your goals for your internal communications program? Who is your audience? the entire organization or a select business unit? The answers to these questions will be your north star as you design your strategy.
• How you plan to get there : What is it going to take to achieve your objectives (in terms of resources, budget or tools)? What type of content will resonate the most with your staff?
• How long it should take : What’s the difference between how long it should take vs. a realistic timeline for your team?
• Who’s involved : Is your current team too small? Are there too many cooks in the kitchen? Assessing your current strategy should indicate where you can add to or streamline your internal comms team.

Answering or at least planning to resolve these prompts is important to reevaluating your strategy. Your answers will illuminate your big picture vision before diving into tactical details.

2. Set realistic goals and timelines

Your new internal communications strategy won’t magically transform employee experiences overnight. These things take time, so it’s important to keep your goals realistic.

One way to set smarter goals is by looking to internal benchmarks and noting where you think you can make an immediate impact. You may also want to send out a survey to get a better understanding of what employees want from your program.

Some initial questions you might ask to get this conversation started include:

• What do you want your internal communications strategy to do for your company?
• Which areas are working well, why are those areas working well, and what needs improvement?
• How quickly do you want to reach your goals?
• What communication tools or platforms are available given your company size, priorities and expectations of what employees should be doing with information shared?

Answering these questions will paint a clearer picture of what you want your internal communications strategy to actually accomplish. These goals will serve as your blueprint for establishing your strategy, and then growing and maintaining it over time.

When creating your goals, try to ensure they follow S.M.A.R.T. logic —in other words, are your goals:

• Specific : Define what you want to accomplish in clear, simple terms that your entire team can understand.
• Measurable : Create milestones and targets that can help you see your progress toward each aspect of your goal.
• Attainable : It’s good to have lofty ambitions, but you need to know that your goals are manageable and realistic.
• Relevant : In this case, you’ll need to create goals that are linked to developing your team, and connected seamlessly with your business model.
• Time-based : Create a specific timeframe for reaching your goals to maintain accountability and create an opportunity to reflect on your performance.

3. Identify your key metrics to track for success

Just like most other facets of your business, your internal communication strategy can and should be measurable. To do this, you need to choose the core metrics that will show you if your strategy is working.

These stats will help you determine if your colleagues use the resources that are being provided. This means you can dissect your strategy and learn about what areas need more attention and what can be skipped. For example, you may find that your team overwhelmingly prefers one channel over another, or that certain departments pay more attention to communications from executive leadership rather than peers or team managers.

Some things, like anecdotal feedback, can’t be measured. Still, it’s important to build on your understanding of employees’ experiences with data. Here are some potential metrics to consider:

Social shares

One metric many organizations overlook is the amount of social shares your content receives. Studies show that employees have an average of 10 times as many connections on social media as a standard brand . Empowering your employees to share business updates can do more than make them feel connected—it can help achieve your business goals.

With an internal comms tool like Sprout’s , you can analyze total shares by network, content or user to better understand overall reach.

Employee engagement metrics

How often do employees read your internal content? Do they comment, like, share or start a discussion with your content? Measuring your overall content engagement metrics can provide insight into what your staff uses the most.

Your human resources and people team might also have additional insights on employee engagement, depending on how they’re collecting information for their own programs. If you aren’t collaborating with them regularly, reach out. They may be able to complement your internal communications reporting with their own data.

Project management issues

The transition to remote and hybrid work sparked massive changes in team planning norms. Project management has gone digital, which streamlines communication in some areas, but can cause obstacles in others.

Tech adoption at an organizational level has always been a challenge . If remote workers aren’t kept in the loop on how a project is progressing, it can lead to disconnection and frustration. In some cases, it can even drive them to look for new jobs .

To keep employees engaged, talk to teams about project management bottlenecks proactively. There may be a benefit to establishing standards of communication by tool or platform.

4. Segment and map out your audience

Once you have an idea of what could bolster your internal comms strategy, it’s time to determine who to target. Your content should always target a specific audience, even when it’s internal. It’s important to figure out what messages and formats will resonate with different employees in your business.

Another major misconception is that to have a successful internal comms strategy, you have to include everyone in all messages for transparency—that’s just not true. While your employees want to be in the loop on news and company information, overwhelming them with too much detail could cause them to ignore updates as they come through.

Strategically mapping out your approach to communications can minimize information overload. Partner with leaders and internal subject matter experts to discuss what type of content would be necessary or helpful for their teams. Rather than sending the same information to everyone (regardless of role, location or department), your internal communications strategy should focus on delivering relevant information to the right people, at the right time.

5. Build an approval process

A key part of planning out your internal communication strategy is creating an approval process for your content. This will prevent any unnecessary errors, confidential comments or news from accidentally being published to the wrong segments of your team.

First, you need to determine who or what team owns your internal comms strategy. If you don’t have a dedicated internal communications resource, who will read, write or approve the messages you send?

Next, you need to know what stakeholders from each department can contribute to the content approval process. In most cases, this responsibility falls on marketing teams—and for good reason. These are the team members who are most confident in their ability to convey company voice, brand and overall image.

Your marketing team has a hand in almost every company update and campaign, meaning they can easily curate the most current content and point coworkers to industry-specific resources that speak to relevant trends. All of these capabilities are critical to have when leading employee advocacy efforts. Another important ability—and one that often comes naturally for marketers—is crafting social messaging that’s concise yet impactful, and relevant to the platform it’s being shared on.

6. Identify your internal communications tools

Certain messages are best suited for specific channels. Internal process changes might be better suited to an email update, whereas a quick announcement might get more traction on an internal messaging platform.

Slack is a great internal messaging and chat service that can integrate with tools you already use for a more streamlined work experience. Whether you’re sharing internal documents or looking to plan specific events without starting an endless email chain, Slack may be your go-to.

That being said, internal communications is more than updates and announcements. It’s how information flows through a company, whether that information be from the C-suite, a department manager or a project manager.

If you don’t have technology infrastructure in place to support your internal communications initiatives, now’s the time to act. A recent study found that 77% of remote workers believe they are treated fairly at companies with best-in-class technology solutions. On the contrary, only 32% of remote workers believe they are treated fairly at companies with unsatisfactory technology solutions.

The technology you use may hold the key to creating more equitable experiences for remote and in-office employees. If you want to help maintain employee satisfaction, you’ll need to make the investment.

7. Evaluate your progress and optimize

Your key performance indicators shouldn’t be used just for tracking progress. Learn from them and continually optimize what you are doing for the best results possible. Conduct quarterly or even monthly evaluations of your communications strategy and build these into your workflow.

Sending out routine pulse surveys can help you track how employees are feeling about your communication content and cadence. Be sure to leave a few questions for open feedback, so they have an opportunity to candidly share their thoughts. Some questions you could ask include:

• How well do you think we are communicating internally?
• Are we doing everything we can to keep our company vision transparent?
• What setbacks limit you from working with others on projects?
• Do you believe we could increase our communication across departments?
• What barriers prevent you from communicating internally each day?
• Where can we improve the most on company communication?

As you continually reevaluate your internal communications strategy, let people know you’re listening. Share what you’ve learned and how you’re planning on adjusting your strategy to promote transparency and trust.

Best practices for communication in the workplace

Today, more companies are beginning to recognize that one-way communication is a thing of the past. Employees who feel as though they’re being listened to are more likely to stay with their employers and contribute meaningfully to the team.

An engagement strategy that’s rooted in communication should leave every employee feeling educated, informed and motivated.

These best practices will help you continually improve your strategy and make sure you’re using your internal communication channels effectively.

1. Keep up with your audience

In the old days, you might have heard about interesting company initiatives in a shared lunch space or while connecting with coworkers in other departments. Now, these casual touchpoints are hard to come by. To stay informed on what’s going on across your organization, you’ll need to get creative.

Here a few hybrid-friendly ideas to get you inspired:

• Join Slack or Teams channels . Whether they’re for work talk or casual chit-chat, they can be valuable tools for seeing what employees are interested in and what projects they’re talking about.
• Start an internal communications committee . Members can be tasked with providing updates on major initiatives and upcoming celebrations (like birthdays and work anniversaries) so they can be properly celebrated at companywide meetings.
• Create a virtual suggestion box . Ideas for internal communications initiatives can and should come from all over. Creating a virtual suggestion box can empower anyone to step up and propose new ideas to keep your company connected.

2. Make communication a conversation

Workplace communication, whether it’s internal or external, should never be one-way. To create a more inclusive workplace, it’s important to promote productive and meaningful conversations among your employees.

This can be done by leaving space for question and answer sessions at the end of company meetings, letting employees know who they can reach out to with additional questions and regularly requesting feedback on internal communications initiatives.

Using an efficient employee engagement platform with structured workplace communications are two of the most important factors to focus on when growing a business. If you want to encourage evolution, you need to encourage your colleagues to join the conversation.

3. Give managers a heads up

If you have a question about a company decision or initiative, who do you ask?

Chances are your manager is your go-to. Managers are the first in line to field questions from direct reports, making them key players in distributed workforces.

When making a companywide announcement or rolling out a new program, always be sure to provide managers with talking points ahead of time. This will help them prepare for any potential questions their direct reports may have, which in turn cuts down additional work for you and your leadership team. This also helps ensure that your sharing a single, unified message at every level of the company,

4. Try a new approach to building company culture

Attitudes toward company culture have shifted. The allure of ping pong tables and free drinks has lost its shine. Now, what people want is a work culture that values respect, balance and accountability .

While these new culture requirements may seem like table stakes, they’re all much easier said than done. Luckily, strong internal communications practices can foster a culture of accountability. By sending clear, consistent updates that clarify internal processes like performance reviews and promotions, you create the top-down transparency needed to ensure everyone is respected and informed.

Communication goals need to be shared and embodied throughout a business, and new trends should be embraced by everyone from executives and managers to lower-level employees. The more natural your internal communication and employee advocacy strategies feel to your workforce, the more likely they’ll end up identifying themselves as part of the team.

5. Empower employees to become brand advocates

When it comes to effective communication strategies, it’s important to consider how you’re empowering your employees to amplify your message. Millennials and Gen Z-ers both in and out of the workforce are demanding a higher level of authenticity from brands, making employer branding more important than ever.

Employees will continue to emerge as the most important voice of a company, ensuring authenticity when connecting with new hires, prospects, customers, peers and everyone in between.

By transforming your employees into content marketers, you introduce a peer-to-peer dynamic into your internal communications strategy. This strengthens your employer brand and increases your chances of better leads, more qualified hires and stronger business results.

To embed advocacy into your current communication goals, it’s important to consider how you can help employees spread content that directly interests and affects them, while making the process simple with access to the right tools.

Developing your internal communications content strategy

Internal communication programs run on content. To keep your employees up-to-date and engaged with their workplace, you need to create and share content that piques their interest and entices them to read.

If you’re not sure what that looks like, here are some tips on deciding what to share with your employees and when.

Pick high-value content

Before you share an article, video or infographic, ask yourself if you’re curating content that’s truly meaningful to your audience—or if you’re just filling a gap.

Nearly two-thirds of employees ignore emails at work , and about a third say they have ignored emails from human resources. To make sure your messages get noticed, you need to find content that resonates with your colleagues. If you’re not sure what that might look like, try asking the following questions:

• What would it take for an employee to proactively devote time out of their day to reading and sharing content in your employee advocacy platform?
• What would it take for an employee to enjoy a personal return on their investment in the program? (Some examples may include incentives, career development opportunities, recognition, social engagement and influence.)

Switch up what you share

Your internal communications content strategy should seek to motivate employees to read, engage and share. To maintain their interest, curate a diverse selection of content that speaks to people at various experience levels. For example, a new hire might tear through brand content to get to know their new employer, but a manager might be more interested in industry articles or leadership tips.

Here are few ideas you can use to shake up your internal communications content:

• Brand content from your website, blog and other owned media keeps employees stay abreast of business developments and news. They’ll feel more connected to your company and more confident to talk about it with their networks.
• Job listings demonstrate that there is opportunity for growth and empower employees to take advantage of any referral incentives your company offers.
• Events show your company’s commitment to its community, education and market position (in the cases where team members are speaking at trade shows).
• Recognition of new hires, promotions, earned media, guest blogging and team profiles reinforces your company’s commitment to the growth of its employees, and instills a sense of pride in each other’s accomplishments.
• Industry articles provide opportunities for personal development (without the hassle of searching the web) and brand building, positioning your employees as a trusted resource for sharing quality information.

Create a company newsletter

If you have a lot of information to share, you may benefit from publishing an internal company newsletter. Employee newsletters can help bring distributed teams together with an all-in-one hub of useful information. Plus, they take what could have been multiple emails and condense it into a simple, easy-to-read format.

If you’re interested in creating a company newsletter, here’s how to do it in six steps:

• Gather employee feedback.   To make sure your team gets as much out of the newsletter as possible, send out a content preferences survey. For instance, you can give your teams a choice on how they’d prefer to access the content available, which reduces the risk of disengaged or under-informed employees.
• Provide the right news and information . Overload your team with too much too fast, and you increase the chance that they’ll simply ignore your newsletters. Carefully consider the kind of information your employees need access to at the end of each week or month. Remember, the information you share should be concise and relevant to the team receiving it.
• Remember your calls to action . A CTA isn’t just about driving your customers to make purchases. Employee newsletters can also use CTAs to encourage employees to take a next step, such as sharing information on social media, filling out a company survey or signing up for training or new initiatives.
• Strengthen your subject lines . Just as you wouldn’t send out a customer email with a bland subject, make sure your internal corporate newsletter is worth the click in employees’ busy schedules.
• Keep your newsletter clear and jargon-free . Make sure that your employee newsletter content is scannable and easy to consume. That means adding bullet points, blurbs, pictures and plenty of white space.
• Get your team involved . Think of your employees as customers. Give them the same immersive and in-depth newsletter experiences as you would if you were trying to convince them to buy or refer another customer. This could include curated social content to share, departmental spotlights and requests for feedback.

What’s next for your internal communication strategy?

It’s time to renew your focus on an often overlooked audience. A powerful internal communications strategy drives higher employee engagement, which in turn leads to stronger productivity, profitability and reduced turnover—all things that can help your business thrive as you navigate remote and hybrid work.

As you rethink your internal communications program, be sure to brush up on the basics of employee advocacy and employer branding . These resources will help you build a strategy that informs and delights your colleagues, from new hires all the way to your leadership team.

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22 Developing a Presentation Strategy

Learning Objectives

Upon completing this chapter, you should be able to

• describe key communication format factors to consider when developing a presentation,
• describe the main functional elements of an effective introduction,
• match the main elements of the rhetorical model to where they are best applied in the development of a presentation,
• describe the functional organization in the body of an effective presentation,
• describe the main functional elements of an effective conclusion, and
• develop a presentation outline using the concepts discussed in the chapter.

Introduction

In beginning to think about a strategy for your presentation, you must move from thinking only about your “self” to how you will engage with the world outside of you, which, of course, includes your audience and environment.

This chapter focuses on helping you prepare a presentation strategy by first revisiting the acronym FAST, which will help you select an appropriate Format, prepare an Audience analysis, ensure your Style reflects your authentic personality and strengths, and that the Tone is appropriate for the occasion.

Then, after you’ve selected the appropriate channel, you will begin drafting your presentation first by considering the general and specific purposes of your presentation and using an outline to map your ideas and strategy.

You’ll also learn to consider whether to incorporate backchannels or other technology into your presentation, and, finally, you will begin to think about how to develop presentation aids that will support your topic and approach.

At the end of this chapter you should be armed with a solid strategy for approaching your presentation in a way that is authentically you, balanced with knowing what’s in it for your audience while making the most of the environment.

Preparing a Presentation Strategy

Incorporating fast.

In the Writing module, you learned the acronym FAST, which you can use to develop your message according to the elements of Format, Audience, Style, and Tone. When you are working on a presentation, much like in your writing, you will rely on FAST to help you make choices.

First, you’ll need to think about the Format of your presentation. This is a choice between presentation types. In your professional life you’ll encounter the verbal communication channels in the following table. The purpose column labels each channel with a purpose (I=Inform, P=Persuade, or E=Entertain) depending on that channel’s most likely purpose.

Table 3.2.1 Presentation Communication Channels

There are some other considerations to make when you are selecting a format. For example, the number of speakers may influence the format you choose. Panels and Presentations may have more than one speaker. In meetings and teleconferences, multiple people will converse. In a Workshop setting, one person will usually lead the event, but there is often a high-level of collaboration between participants.

The location of participants will also influence your decision. For example, if participants cannot all be in the same room, you might choose a teleconference or webinar. If asynchronous delivery is important, you might record a podcast. When choosing a technology-reliant channel, such as a teleconference or webinar, be sure to test your equipment and make sure each participant has access to any materials they need before you begin.

Once you have chosen a Format, make sure your message is right for your Audience, just as you did in the Foundations module, when you conducted your Audience Analysis. You’ll need to think about issues such as the following:

• What expectations will the audience have?
• What is the context of your communication?
• What does the audience already know about the topic?
• How is the audience likely to react to you and your message?

The AUDIENCE tool you used in the Foundations module will be helpful tool here.

Next, you’ll consider the style of your presentation. Some of the things you discovered about yourself as a speaker in the self-awareness exercises earlier will influence your presentation style. Perhaps you prefer to present formally, limiting your interaction with the audience, or perhaps you prefer a more conversational, informal style, where discussion is a key element. You may prefer to cover serious subjects, or perhaps you enjoy delivering humorous speeches. Style is all about your personality!

Finally, you’ll select a tone for your presentation. Your voice, body language, level of self-confidence, dress, and use of space all contribute to the mood that your message takes on. Consider how you want your audience to feel when they leave your presentation, and approach it with that mood in mind.

Presentation Purpose

Your presentation will have a general and specific purpose. Your general purpose may be to inform, persuade, or entertain—the same goals you had in previous modules. It’s likely that any speech you develop will have a combination these goals. Most presentations have a little bit of entertainment value, even if they are primarily attempting to inform or persuade. For example, the speaker might begin with a joke or dramatic opening, even though their speech is primarily informational.

Your specific purpose addresses what you are going to inform, persuade, or entertain your audience with—the main topic of your speech. Each example below includes two pieces of information: first, the general purpose; second, the specific purpose.

To inform the audience about my favourite car, the Ford Mustang

To persuade the audience that global warming is a threat to the environment

Aim to speak for 90 percent of your allotted time so that you have time to answer audience questions at the end (assuming you have allowed for this). If audience questions are not expected, aim for 95 percent. Do not go overtime—audience members may need to be somewhere else immediately following your presentation, and you will feel uncomfortable if they begin to pack up and leave while you are still speaking. Conversely, you don’t want to finish too early, as they may feel as if they didn’t get their “money’s worth.”

To assess the timing of your speech as you prepare, you can

• set a timer while you do a few practice runs, and take an average
• run your speech text through an online speech timer
• estimate based on the number of words (the average person speaks at about 120 words per minute)

You can improve your chances of hitting your time target when you deliver your speech, by marking your notes with an estimated time at certain points. For example, if your speech starts at 2 p.m., you might mark 2:05 at the start of your notes for the body section, so that you can quickly glance at the clock and make sure you are on target. If you get there more quickly, consciously try to pause more often or speak more slowly, or speed up a little if you are pressed for time. If you have to adjust your timing as you are delivering the speech, do so gradually. It will be jarring to the audience if you start out speaking at a moderate pace, then suddenly realize you are going to run out of time and switch to rapid-fire delivery!

Incorporating Backchannels

Have you ever been to a conference where speakers asked for audience questions via social media? Perhaps one of your teachers at school has used Twitter for student comments and questions, or has asked you to vote on an issue through an online poll. Technology has given speakers new ways to engage with an audience in real time, and these can be particularly useful when it isn’t practical for the audience to share their thoughts verbally—for example, when the audience is very large, or when they are not all in the same location.

These secondary or additional means of interacting with your audience are called backchannels, and you might decide to incorporate one into your presentation, depending on your aims. They can be helpful for engaging more introverted members of the audience who may not be comfortable speaking out verbally in a large group. Using publicly accessible social networks, such as a Facebook Page or Twitter feed, can also help to spread your message to a wider audience, as audience members share posts related to your speech with their networks. Because of this, backchannels are often incorporated into conferences; they are helpful in marketing the conference and its speakers both during and after the event.

There are some caveats involved in using these backchannels, though. If, for example, you ask your audience to submit their questions via Twitter, you’ll need to choose a hashtag for them to append to the messages so that you can easily find them. You’ll also need to have an assistant who will sort and choose the audience questions for you to answer. It is much too distracting for the speaker to do this on their own during the presentation. You could, however, respond to audience questions and comments after the presentation via social media, gaining the benefits of both written and verbal channels to spread your message.

Developing the Content

Creating an outline.

As with any type of messaging, it helps if you create an outline of your speech or presentation before you create it fully. This ensures that each element is in the right place and gives you a place to start to avoid the dreaded blank page. Here is an outline template that you can adapt for your purpose. Replace the placeholders in the Content column with your ideas or points, then make some notes in the Verbal and Visual Delivery column about how you will support or emphasize these points using the techniques we’ve discussed.

Table 3.2.2 Presentation Outline

The beginning of your speech needs an attention-grabber to get your audience interested right away. Choose your attention-grabbing device based on what works best for you topic. Your entire introduction should only be around 10 to 15 percent of your total speech, so be sure to keep this section short. Here are some devices that you could try:

Subject Statement – to the point, but not the most interesting choice.

We are surrounded by statistical information in today’s world, so understanding statistics is becoming paramount to citizenship in the twenty-first century.

Audience Reference – highlights something common to the audience that will make them interested in the topic.

As human resource professionals, you and I know the importance of talent management. In today’s competitive world, we need to invest in getting and keeping the best talent for our organizations to succeed.

Quotation – wise words of another person. You can find quotations online that cover just about any topic.

Oliver Goldsmith, a sixteenth-century writer, poet, and physician, once noted that “the true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them.”

Current Event – refer to a current event in the news that demonstrates the relevance of your topic to the audience.

On January 10, 2007, Scott Anthony Gomez Jr. and a fellow inmate escaped from a Pueblo, Colorado, jail. During their escape the duo attempted to rappel from the roof of the jail using a makeshift ladder of bed sheets. During Gomez’s attempt to scale the building, he slipped, fell 40 feet, and injured his back. After being quickly apprehended, Gomez filed a lawsuit against the jail for making it too easy for him to escape.

Historical Event – Compare or contrast your topic with an occasion in history.

During the 1960s and ’70s, the United States intervened in the civil strife between North and South Vietnam. The result was a long-running war of attrition in which many American lives were lost and the country of Vietnam suffered tremendous damage and destruction. We saw a similar war waged in Iraq. American lives were lost, and stability has not yet returned to the region.

Anecdote, Parable, or Fable – An anecdote is a brief account or story of an interesting or humorous event, while a parable or fable is a symbolic tale designed to teach a life lesson.

In July 2009, a high school girl named Alexa Longueira was walking along a main boulevard near her home on Staten Island, New York, typing in a message on her cell phone. Not paying attention to the world around her, she took a step and fell right into an open manhole (Witney, 2009).

The ancient Greek writer Aesop told a fable about a boy who put his hand into a pitcher of filberts. The boy grabbed as many of the delicious nuts as he possibly could. But when he tried to pull them out, his hand wouldn’t fit through the neck of the pitcher because he was grasping so many filberts. Instead of dropping some of them so that his hand would fit, he burst into tears and cried about his predicament. The moral of the story? “Don’t try to do too much at once” (Aesop, 1881).

Surprising Statement – A strange fact or statistic related to your topic that startles your audience.

• A Boeing 747 airliner holds 57,285 gallons of fuel.
• The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year.
• There are no clocks in any casinos in Las Vegas.
• In 2000, Pope John Paul II became the most famous honorary member of the Harlem Globetrotters.

Question – You could ask either a question that asks for a response from your audience, or a rhetorical question, which does not need a response but is designed to get them thinking about the topic.

• Raise your hand if you have ever thought about backpacking in Europe.
• If you prick us, do we not bleed? (Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice)

Humour – A joke or humorous quotation can work well, but to use humour you need to be sure that your audience will find the comment funny. You run the risk of insulting members of the audience, or leaving them puzzled if they don’t get the joke, so test it out on someone else first!

“The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless.” —Nicolas Chamfort, sixteenth-century French author

Personal Reference – Refer to a story about yourself that is relevant to the topic.

In the fall of 2008, I decided that it was time that I took my life into my own hands. After suffering for years with the disease of obesity, I decided to take a leap of faith and get a gastric bypass in an attempt to finally beat the disease.

Occasion Reference – This device is only relevant if your speech is occasion-specific, for example, a toast at a wedding, a ceremonial speech, or a graduation commencement.

Today we are here to celebrate the wedding of two wonderful people.

fter the attention-getter comes the rest of your introduction. It needs to do the following:

• Capture the audience’s interest
• State the purpose of your speech
• Establish credibility
• Give the audience a reason to listen
• Signpost the main ideas

Rhetoric and Argument

Your audience will think to themselves, Why should I listen to this speech? What’s in it for me? One of the best things you can do as a speaker is to answer these questions early in your body, if you haven’t already done so in your introduction. This will serve to gain their support early and will fill in the blanks of who, what, when, where, why, and how in their minds.

You may remember the three rhetorical proofs, namely, ethos, pathos, and logos, from the Writing Module. The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384‒322 B.C) considered these the three most important elements in a speaker’s arsenal.

Ethos refers to the speaker’s character and expertise. When you use ethos correctly, you are showing the audience that you are credible and that they can believe what you say. To cover this element in your speech, tell the audience why they should listen to you. You can do this by demonstrating your authority on your topic. For example, you could begin a persuasive speech on the dangers of drinking and driving with a short story about how you helped implement a “designated driver” program. This way the audience will understand your relationship to the message and form a positive perception of you. If you are trying to persuade the audience to donate blood, your credibility on the subject may come from your studies in the medical field or from having volunteered at a blood drive.

The term pathos refers to the use of emotion as a persuasive element. You have probably seen commercials on television for charities trying to raise funds for sick children or mistreated animals, complete with sad images and music; this is pathos at work. We don’t always make decisions based on clear thinking. We are easily moved by words, by a video clip, or by a piece of music, so this can be an effective way of convincing the audience to take a particular action. But it can be overdone, and the audience will tire of it if you push too hard. If pathos is central to your strategy, be subtle about it so that you don’t turn off your audience.

The term logos refers to logic. Aristotle believed that any argument should be based on logic, not pathos (emotion), but you might not agree! To win your audience over using logic, your speech must be carefully organized and present facts and evidence. Depending on the general purpose of your speech, particularly if its goal is to persuade, you may need to present an argument. To do this, logos is key. Think about what prosecutors do during a trial—particularly during closing arguments. This is the place for facts and reason. Prosecutors will argue that the scenario they have presented is the only logical interpretation of the evidence. To use logos effectively, incorporate expert testimony, statistics, and other reliable data.

Organization

An organized body helps your audience to follow your speech and recall your points later. When developing the body of your speech, recall the specific purpose you decided on, then choose main points to support it. Just two or three main points are usually sufficient, depending on the length of your speech. Anticipate one main point per two to three minutes of speaking.

To narrow down your main points, start by brainstorming. Don’t worry about judging the value or importance of the points at this stage; just write down as many possible points as you can that support your topic. What information does your audience need to know to understand your topic? What information does your speech need to convey to accomplish its specific purpose? Here is an example of a list that you might begin with.

Table 3.2.3 Organizing the Points in a Presentation

Once you have a list of points, you’ll need to narrow them down. Begin by looking for closely related minor points that can be grouped into one. This process is called chunking. Before reading our chunking of the preceding list, can you determine three large chunks out of the list above?

Table 3.2.4 Organizing the Main Points in a Presentation

The preceding list is a little disjointed, and not all of the topics work together clearly. These are just general ideas at this point. There is often more than one way to organize a speech. Some of these points could be left out, and others developed more fully, depending on the purpose and audience. You will refine this information until you have the number of main points you need. Ensure that they are distinct, and balance the content of your speech so that you spend roughly the same amount of time addressing each. You’ll also need to remember what you learned about parallel structure in the Writing Module, to make sure each of your main points is phrased in the same way. The last thing to do when working on your body is to make sure your points are in a logical order, so that your ideas flow naturally from one to the next.

Concluding on a High Note

You’ll need to keep your energy up until the very end of your speech. In your conclusion, your job is to let the audience know you are finished, help them remember what you’ve told them, and leave them with a final thought or call-to-action, depending on the general purpose of your message.

In this chapter you revisited the importance of FAST and AUDIENCE tools in helping to lay out a strategy that incorporates your own understanding with the needs of the audience. You learned about how to use an outline to stay organized and keep track of your ideas, as well as general and specific purposes. You learned the importance of sustaining your audience’s attention throughout the presentation with key approaches you can take as you write your introduction, body, and conclusion. You should now be prepared to take your strategy to the next level by ensuring you next consider whether and how to incorporate high-quality presentation aids.

Aesop (1881). Aesop’s fables. New York, NY: Wm. L. Allison. Retrieved from http://www.litscape.com/author/Aesop/The_Boy_and_the_Filberts.html

Ebbinghaus, H. (1885). Memory: A contribution to experimental psychology [Online version]. Retrieved from http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Ebbinghaus/index.htm

Whitney, L. (2009, July 13). Don’t text while walking? Girl learns the hard way. CNET News Wireless. Retrieved from http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10285466-94.html

Attribution Statement (Developing a Presentation Strategy)

This chapter is a remix containing content from a variety of sources published under a variety of open licenses, including the following:

Chapter Content

• Original content contributed by the Olds College OER Development Team, of Olds College to Professional Communications Open Curriculum under a CC-BY 4.0 license
• Content created by Anonymous for Organization and Outlines; in Communication for Business Success, previously shared at http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/communication-for-business-success-canadian-edition/s16-organization-and-outlines.html under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license

Check Your Understandings

• Original assessment items contributed by the Olds College OER Development Team, of Olds College to Professional Communications Open Curriculum under a CC-BY 4.0 license
• Assessment items created by Boundless, for Boundless Communications, Rehearsing the Speech Chapter Quiz, previously shared at https://www.boundless.com/quizzes/rehearsing-the-speech-quiz-93085/ under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license
• Assessment items in Stand Up, Speak Out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking, Chapter 6 Exercises shared previously at http://www.saylor.org/books  under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license
• Assessment items created by Boundless, for Boundless Communications, The Role of the Introduction Chapter Quiz, previously shared at https://www.boundless.com/quizzes/introduction-quiz-80298/ under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license
• Assessment items created by Boundless, for Boundless Communications, The The Role of the Conclusion Chapter Quiz, previously shared at https://www.boundless.com/quizzes/conclusion-quiz-93492/ under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license
• Assessment items created by Boundless, for Boundless Communications, The Establishing Credibility Chapter Quiz, previously shared at https://www.boundless.com/quizzes/introduction-quiz-80298/ under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license
• Assessment items created by The Saylor Foundation for the saylor.org course Comm 101: Public Speaking, previously shared at https://learn.saylor.org/course/comm101 under a CC BY 3.0 US license

Professional Communications Copyright © by Olds College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Internal Communication Strategy

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An internal communications strategy defines business goals in communicating with staff and plans the activities to achieve these goals. It’s the blueprint guiding you to internal communications success. Creating this strategy involves some work but there are clearly defined steps to follow along the way.

There are a four-step process for creating your own custom internal communications strategy – whatever your organization’s size or sector. Collect information on the composition of your organization. This should include number of staff, locations, departments, demographics, devices used and any other factors related to your organizational structure. 

Understand how your current internal communications have been performing and what level of employee engagement has been achieved. Identify which current communication channels are the most effective. 

Internal communication is most effective – and most valuable – when it aligns with overall business goals. Consult your organization’s business plan for detail on KPIs and core projects at both company and departmental level. This will provide you useful information on where to expend your internal communications efforts.

The scope of work and timeframes involved are the main differences between an internal communication plan vs strategy. A strategy will define the longer-term vision and how this aligns to overall business objectives. A plan details the range of tactical activities which support the strategy. 

An internal communications campaign is a time-bound series of activities designed to support an organization’s strategy. It typically involves communicating messages through multiple channels to increase employee awareness and lift engagement.

Use channel tracking and analytics tools to identify which channels have been more successful. Build a quarterly evaluation of your communications strategy, but keep in mind the bigger picture – wider company results which demonstrate the value of your internal communications activities.

The slides in this template allow you to represent your strategy in the form of cyclically repeated processes – Communication Work Plan, Context, Approach for Target Audience, Audience & Relationships. For each of these processes, you can describe the main steps in detail. This slide will be useful for company leaders when building business processes in a company. You can also use this template when preparing for a strategy session and presenting your new company strategy.

Also, this template can be used by university teachers and business coaches when preparing their courses on business processes in a company or internal communications. Startup executives can use the slides from this template in preparation for their investor meeting. HR professionals can use this template when preparing activities to improve communication between employees within departments.

Internal Communication Strategy Template is a stylish and professional template that contains 4 slides. If necessary, you can independently change the size and color of the text, the position of the blocks on the slide, the color and size of the infographics in accordance with your corporate requirements. Internal Communication Strategy The template will be useful for company executives, department heads and HR specialists. The slides of this template will organically complement your old presentations and will take their rightful place in your collection of professional presentation templates.

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Communication Strategies: Presenting with Impact

Gain skills and techniques to engage, inform and inspire others, improving your ability to communicate as a leader.

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Communication strategies: presenting with impact, a public speaking course.

Public speaking—whether delivering a presentation, making a pitch, or leading a group discussion—can cause even the most confident leader to break a sweat. Yet communicating your message with poise, confidence, and conviction is an essential leadership skill. Mastering your public speaking and presentation skills will enable you to inspire your audience as well as build trust and credibility.

Through oral presentations and small group activities, you will put proven public speaking techniques and tools into practice, test out new approaches, and learn to communicate clearly and confidently. Discover the powerful impact of storytelling and practical persuasion skills to authentically illustrate your message. Learn how to effectively organize materials to blend analytical and emotional content into a compelling story, and incorporate dynamic introductions and memorable endings into your presentations.

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Benefits of Communication Strategies: Presenting With Impact

This communication strategies program is designed to offer new techniques to improve your public speaking skills. Key takeaways from the program will help you improve your ability to persuade and influence your audience in large- and small-group settings.

During this public speaking training course, you will:

• Learn guiding principles of making effective presentations
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The curriculum for this communication strategies program is designed to be interactive and hands-on. You will practice the skills and techniques you are learning in real-time through small group activities and oral presentations during the program.

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Here’s the way to organize internal comms when you’re flying by the seat of your pants

Suddenly responsible for keeping everyone on the same page in a crisis? Use this guide to calm the fire drills (and your stress level).

You probably never thought it would come to this. Here you are – a director of HR or marketing or operations, perhaps? – with no formal training in internal communications, thrust into the position of keeping everyone in the company informed so they can stay focused on their work. Assuming responsibility for internal communications on short notice, particularly in a time of crisis, puts you at the center of a whirlwind of activity. Events are outside your control, timelines are unpredictable, and everything feels urgent. You’re not just refueling in mid-air, you’re building the plane while flying it.

So what’s the best way to transition from reactive mode to proactive mode? Create an internal communications plan.

In many ways, it’s similar to crafting a structured approach to stakeholder communications for high-stakes or long-running projects. According to L’Teisha Ryan , Head of Internal Communications at Atlassian, the goal is to be disciplined and deliberate, but not rigid.

“We’re constantly looking at how we can improve, evolve, and adjust,” she says. “When the COVID-19 crisis emerged, we started with emails from the company founders, open Q&A sessions on Zoom, and a central space in Confluence to share updates and FAQs, then added video updates after we closed our offices to help maintain a sense of connection. I’m looking at more adjustments in the coming weeks as we continue working from home through the end of the year.”

If you’re ready to get organized and step up your internal communications game, read on to learn all the ways having a plan will benefit you and how to put one together step-by-step.

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What is an internal communications plan?

An internal comms plan can’t just live inside your head. An effective plan is a living document that describes who your various audiences are, what information you’ll communicate to each audience, which channels you’ll use, and how often you’ll communicate. Include success metrics, as well – e.g., 80 percent open rate on emails from the CEO.

Although the plan itself doesn’t need to be shared with the entire company, it should be open to anyone who’ll be helping you execute on it. (Don’t forget to involve your HR business partners and folks in similar people-flavored roles! They can help you scale by partnering with managers and making sure team members fully understand important changes.)

Why bother putting a plan together?

Can’t stop, won’t stop

For more on navigating turbulent times with empathy and strength, check out our guide to resilient leadership.

Chances are, you hardly have a moment to catch your breath these days and might be tempted to continue making it up as you go along. But investing the time to put a proper internal communications plan together will pay off in a few ways. You’ll be more consistent in your communications, which gives your fellow employees a sense of stability and helps reduce any anxiety they might be feeling. It also gives you greater peace of mind. You’ve got a map to guide your way forward, as well as a historical record to refer back to.

On the flip side, flying by the seat of your pants feels expedient in the moment, but can be disastrous in the long run. If people aren’t getting information through official channels, or if it comes sporadically, they’ll invent their own information. The resulting confusion will not only distract people from their work, it may result in project plans and budgets that are rooted in misinformation.

Without a plan, you also risk leaving important information out or overloading some of your audiences with information they don’t need. Not a good look.

Guiding principles for an internal communications plan

Before you dive into the tactical planning exercise, take a moment to set some guidelines for yourself. For L’Teisha and her team, defining their core principles came down to aligning with company values like “Open company, no B.S.” and “Build with heart and balance.” Here’s what we recommend as a starting point.

Transparency

Share information promptly, and err on the side of straightforwardness. This is especially true if you have to communicate bad news such as layoffs, furloughs, or pay cuts. Research shows that leaders wait too long to deliver this type of news, with negative impacts on both parties: the bearer of bad news carries the dread of delivering it, while the people affected have less time to adjust and may resent being kept in the dark. Either way, trust suffers across the entire organization.

Speaking of maintaining trust, be as open about the decision-making process as you are about what the decision is and how it affects your audience.

An emotionally intelligent approach is always the right idea, and doubly so during times of uncertainty. Think about how your audience is feeling right now, and how you want to feel after they receive each communication. Remember that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by too much information, so part of your job here is to keep your comms small enough to digest, yet robust enough to satisfy.

What empathy-centered leadership looks like

Beware of straying into ruinous compassion, however. Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor , reminds us that well-intentioned attempts to spare someone’s feelings can backfire. (Like not telling your friend she has spinach in her teeth to save her from the embarrassment of being told… then she attends a whole afternoon of meetings with the spinach still stuck in her teeth.) Communicating with empathy in this context is a balancing act. Be patient with yourself if you miss the mark and try to learn from it.

Discoverability

L’Teisha realized quickly that with all the different communication channels her team uses, information will become scattered and hard for employees to find later. So they set up a hub page in Confluence that makes it easy to refer back to past updates. It’s a win for her team, too: they don’t get pings every five minutes asking where the updated travel policy can be found.

Adaptability

Expect to evolve your plan as the situation changes and based on feedback you get from employees. (Bonus points if you proactively ask for feedback.) Review your plan every few weeks and adjust as necessary.

Customize your internal communications plan

Your internal comms plan will spell out how you’ll provide employees with the right information at the right time and via the right channels so everyone stays on the same page. Plan on spending an hour or two drafting it, with additional time for a round of feedback from your team.

Start by laying out a 4 x 7 table with the columns labeled “Content, Audience, Channels, Purpose/Goals” Label the rows, “Daily, Weekly, Fortnightly, Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly, Ad Hoc.”

Check out our template here .

Now think through who your various audiences are. For example, when L’Teisha and her team thought about how to approach internal comms when the coronavirus crisis hit, they identified six groups: the Atlassian board, our executive leadership group, the site leads at each of our office locations, the People/HR team, all other managers, and general employees.

Determine the most effective way to communicate with each audience. Think about what content you’ll be sharing as well as the tool you’ll use to share it. At Atlassian, we’re using a combination of virtual town hall events with prepared updates and live Q&A, all-company announcements on Slack, written updates from the company founders using Confluence’s blogging feature , video updates from the founders, and email.

Ok. This is the fun part. Ready? Deep breath, and…

Start filling in your table. You might find it easiest to go row by row, noting what you’ll be communicating on a daily basis, weekly, etc. Or, it might make more sense to go by audience, thinking through what each of them needs to hear about, through which channels, and how often. Don’t gloss over the goal of each communication. Build trust? Help people feel connected with their leaders? Announce new information? Other? Defining the purpose now will make it easier to compose your comms later.

Consider whether you should time communications differently for each group. For example, L’Teisha and her team communicate updates to execs or the leads for each office location before sharing them with all staff. “We’ve been very deliberate about providing leaders with information in advance”, she says. “This gives them a chance to think about how it will affect their teams, anticipate questions, and have thoughtful responses ready.”

As you work through, you might discover you’ll need to bring in new forms of communication to meet your audiences’ needs, or evolve existing ones. When Atlassian first transitioned everyone to working from home, our executive team heard from loads of managers that they felt like a fish out of water trying to lead their teams remotely. So our People team pulled together a series of webinars to train them on best practices, which were very well received.

People need to feel like they’re being heard. Set up a virtual suggestion/Q&A box using Jira Service Desk or Google Forms, and address the questions you receive in future communications.

Be sure to share the plan with your team and relevant stakeholders for review. They’ll help make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

Be authentic to be successful

Don’t stress if some things aren’t perfectly polished. We’re all “ BBC dad ” now, so we might as well embrace the messiness. What really matters is delivering timely, thorough information to the people who need it.

“One of the reasons we switched to video updates from the founders is that we wanted to bring a human touch into it,” L’Teisha tells me. “Those quirky moments like when Mike’s daughter popped into the room remind us that they’re having the same experience as the rest of us.”

Remember too that people may have wildly different feelings about whatever changes are taking place. For L’Teisha and her team, this means empathizing with the fact that not everybody is thrilled about the switch to remote work, and weaving that in so people feel validated and acknowledged.

Showing some personality and being candid about the fact that things are a bit upside-down right now are not only signs that you’re on top of it, but a breath of fresh air for the people receiving your updates. The more you keep it real, the more effective your communications will be.

Advice, stories, and expertise about work life today.

Home PowerPoint Templates Strategy Internal Communication Strategy PowerPoint Template

Internal Communication Strategy PowerPoint Template

The Internal Communication Strategy PowerPoint Template is a modern layout to present the dimensions of internal communication and the ICC diagram. Internal communication is the information flow and connectivity between various components of an organization. It might include employee-to-employee or employee-management communications to discuss the progress of tasks regarding shared goals. Examples of internal communication are email, corporate messages, live meetings and sharing files, etc. The greatest benefit of a well-designed internal communication strategy is employee alignment and building trust for the consumers and other stakeholders.

Internal communication has four major dimensions that are represented through a 2×2 matrix diagram, including:

• Internal Line Management Communication (between line managers and employees)
• Internal Corporate Communication – ICC (strategic managers to all employees)
• Internal Team Peer Communication (among employees of the same team)
• Internal Project Peer Communication (between project team colleagues)

The other part of this Internal Communication Strategy PowerPoint Template slide shows a circular ICC diagram. It features the four goals of internal corporate communication strategy at the four edges of the central four-arrow diagram. The core circular shape mentions the strategic manager title indicating its connection with employees. This diagram has four arrows, each pointing to the titles of these goals, i.e., understanding, commitment, awareness, and belonging. This model indicates how strategy managers should coordinate with employees to achieve the goals that line up the whole process. The circular boundaries of this diagram represent the internal microenvironment and external microenvironments.

So, this internal communication strategy PowerPoint template is a wholesome approach to design and showcase the ICC strategy that collaborates the teams, vendors, and leadership to achieve company objectives. This strategy template is also available in a white background color variant. Users can conveniently download this layout and discuss this strategy with executives and team members. This internal communication strategy PPT template is compatible with Google Slides and Keynote.

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