We often hear how social media is “different” – how it changes everything about your communications. How you have to throw the old rules out the window when launching into social media tools. I respectfully disagree.
Too many “social media experts” treat these kinds of principles as though they separate social media from other forms of communication, [...]
February 13, 2009 – 11:35 am
In a digital world where more and more focus is (rightly) being placed on analytics and measurement, it can be all too easy to lose sight of the big picture.
Focus less on the trees – remember to think about the forest too.
Take this blog, for example. If I glance at the daily analytics for this [...]
February 9, 2009 – 8:00 am
“Increase sales” isn’t a good objective.
Neither is “increase web traffic,” or “increase awareness,” or “more customers.”
Why?
Because you have no way of measuring success. If you can’t measure success, then what use is your goal?
I have to bite back a visceral reaction whenever I see vague goals in a communications plan. They’re toothless, they’re meaningless [...]
November 5, 2008 – 6:51 pm
Social media didn’t win the election. However, a tightly-integrated communications strategy, of which social media was an important part, went a long way towards it.
September 24, 2008 – 8:00 am
It’s all too easy, especially in the world of public relations and social media where there’s a shiny new tool every week, to lose sight of the big picture and focus in on tactics.
When someone asks you for ideas about something, where do you start? Do you instantly get the creative juices flowing and start [...]
The Strategic Communications Planning eBook is an introduction to effective strategic corporate communications planning. It features all of the posts from the original communications planning series of posts, edited to reflect feedback I’ve received and with some additional content added throughout.
Your goal in your evaluation section is to lay out how you will measure your communications success. In a high-profile initiative this may be through the various stages of your announcement; in others, it may have a smaller scope.
When someone asks you to help communicate an initiative, what do you do? Do you immediately find yourself coming up with cool ideas about how to gain attention and generate coverage? If you do that, you’re doing your clients a disservice. You’re guilty of failing to plan – of putting tactics before strategy.
