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I recently had the pleasure of working with a small non-profit in Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN. We sat down and had coffee and discussed what I do and how I could possibly help them. We touched on communications and dabbled in current communications methods. Suddenly, someone had pulled out a document that had been created by a recent volunteer***.

*** Disclaimer: Now, I’m all for volunteer activity.  However, they are not always the best resources for creating a business or non-profit communication plan when they are currently freshmen in college seeking a degree in speech.

Social Media proposal

From there, it seemed the conversation turned completely to social media and where they wanted to be. I listened attentively for a few minutes, writing notes and nodding. When they were done with the overview and process that was created, and speculated to take 8-14 months, they looked at me and asked ‘what do you think? Can you do this for us?’

I’m not the type of consultant or volunteer that likes to ‘do something for a company or NPO’. I like to create sustainability. I would despise myself if I created something, moved on with the project and saw it crash and burn. That’s just not productive.

My response

I picked my pen back up, turned over my paper and asked them:

What is your organization’s mission? You have talked about what you want, but you haven’t told me why your organization is here.

They looked perplexed. What I explained was that in order to evaluate if this plan was 1) feasible, 2) sustainable, and 3) an efficient use of resources, we needed to make sure that it addressed the organization’s core values, goals and possible addressed any issues they were currently facing.

When creating a plan, start from the VERY beginning

This goes for any size organization, you need to figure out what platforms work where, and the only way you will be able to do is by starting from the beginning. You can do this by answering some basic strategic questions that always link back to your organization’s mission.

Below is a small sample of the questions I typically use.

Answer the following:

State your organization’s mission:

List Goals: Think about the purpose of your organization/business/department and state some basic goals here. What do you want to accomplish? This can be broad.

Issues: List issues (broad and/or specific) on what is standing in your way in order to meet goals. Ex: funds, lack of volunteers, turnover, etc. The purpose of this section is to list all the issues that will be addressed in the plan. With each issue we need facts about the issue or what affect the issue has on your org/dept/company’s mission. How are you addressing the issues above through communications? Is it possible to even address them?

Current Communications: Ex: Word of mouth, Newsletters to donors, website?

Key Messages: What do you want to convey in your communications? The goal here is to be simple and clear.

Audience: Who are you trying to reach? This could be employees, volunteers, donors, consumers, new customers, and more. List them all out. Go!

From here, it’s a great time to take the available platforms and see if there are any areas that can address issues, how to best reach your audience(s) and more. These steps can be critical to maintaining branding, mission and the overall consistency in the organizational goals.

What does your group do to maintain brand and message consistency?

Kristina is based in the Twin Cities and eats and breathes social media. Her love for technology’s influence on culture can be found here.

Tags: community, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, the right way