Have you ever worked so hard to communicate a new employee program, customer product, or service that you thought you couldn’t possibly inform your audience more, and then someone tells you that they’ve never heard about your initiative? It’s a tough pill to swallow for any communications manager, but it happens all the time. With all the emails, social media messaging, videos, podcasts, and more clogging up communications, your users just can’t keep up. For this reason, you need to develop a communications strategy to successfully engage your audience.

Here are five easy steps to develop a successful communications strategy:

1.  The Power of 3
Complicated, wordy communications are easily forgotten and in many cases ignored. Here’s a great article on the psychological power of 3 and how this theory will improve your communications.
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2. Develop initial communication
Will your first message be an email, a video, or part of a social media campaign? Determine the first communication that you believe will grab your audience’s attention and make it memorable.

3. Repurpose your communications
My mother always told me not to put all my eggs in one basket and you shouldn’t either. Just because you developed a winning email to announce your initiative doesn’t mean anybody will read it. Create follow-up emails and other communications that will reinforce your message.

4. Choose your channels
Connect with your audience through social media, video, webinars, blogs and any other means that you feel will make an impact. The more options available, the better the chance that one of them will reach your desired user.

5. Create a project calendar
Now that you’ve created your initial communication and determined additional channels to distribute future messages, create a calendar to organize when and how to distribute your communications.

Ultimately, just because you believe your message is important doesn’t necessarily mean your audience will agree. Be creative in your delivery and make your audience understand what’s in it for them. Once you’ve achieved that goal, it’s critical to consistently convey your message through a variety of channels to achieve engagement.

For more guidance on creating an effective communications plan, contact us to see how we can get you noticed and attract your ideal customer.