With Muckle Media, Managing Director Nathalie Agnew and guest speaker, Asics Communications Director Caroline Fisher.

We are now four weeks into the #CommsCamp webinar series with our latest instalment on ‘planning’. In this session, we explored how to tactically execute your communications strategy. Asics Communication Director, Caroline Fisher joined us to provide her four principles for purpose led communications which will follow in another blog.

Realising your Bright Idea (and the small ones too!)

People tend to think that creativity is only applied in consumer-focused communications. However, Nathalie is a firm believer that you can be creative with anything and loves applying this thinking to any communications brief. So, if you work within a B2B/corporate organisations, there’s potential for you to move the dial and do something new and exciting.

A broad starting point would be exploring these four key areas;

• Become aware of upcoming opportunities and trends relevant to your industry
• Create a rolling quarterly communications plan
• Have a monthly content plan with a news pipeline
• Be response to real time communication opportunities

It’s important to remember that although a big, long-term campaign can contribute to achieving your business goals, wins can also come from tactical, small steps like launches, press releases, a really great piece of content or engaging social post. There is a lot of great social media content happening now with brands interacting with one another to fuel engagement. Collaborations are a great way to tap into other’s networks and grow your own following.

User generated content is another way of accessing rich content to share on your owned channels, this being an approach Nathalie advocates via encouraging customer feedback. Why not try our BIG (and small) idea bingo, available on our webinar, to help generate some new, fun ideas?

Time to plan

You’ve injected some creativity. Now you have to create the ‘ultimate plan’ which is crucial to successful delivery of an idea.

Consider key calendar dates. You can find inspiration from platforms like ‘awareness days’ to help get something in at global level but be aware of international events and holidays if you want to keep it within the UK.

Keep on top of current affairs. There may be an opportunity for your business/brand to share its opinion via comment or thought leadership articles, providing an opportunity to raise the profile of business leaders and credibility of the organisation.

For instance, topical themes occurring right now are US import tariffs, Brexit, e-commerce trends, property prices etc. To track these, you can use something simple like Google alerts or by simply reading and watching the news, listening to local radio stations phone in segments and podcasts.

Creating a space

What documents do you need to develop and deliver a communications strategy? Nathalie believes you need to think about what works for you and your organisation, and what fits the strategy and the timeline you’re working to.

Ideally you should have an annual plan aka the ‘big picture’ split into quarters. Each quarter might have its own focus and allocated budget, as well as KPIs to monitor return on investment. These quarterly plans might be more high level supporting this you could have a monthly detailed plan to outline more immediate prioritises. Centralised planning software like Trello, Basecamp or Asanac can be useful to keep on top of these priorities including upcoming news stories or social media activity.

For social media activity, getting some scheduling software like Hootsuite can be useful for planning out and scheduling your content. This will be covered more in our #CommsCamp content and channel sessions.

Having a planning system in place will make your work a lot easier to keep track of in the long run. Work hard now, relax later.

#CommsCamp runs every Thursday 09:30 – 10:30 via Facebook Live & live updates on Twitter.

If you missed the ‘planning’ session you can watch it back here:

If you missed the ‘planning’ session you can watch it back here: https://fb.watch/1GlHod4dfA/