By Al Rickard, CAE

Integrating communications across your organization – including PR, publishing, marketing, and social media strategies – is critical. To assess how your organization stacks up, consider these tips:

• Align your communications with your organizational strategy. Do your communications efforts support major objectives?  Have you developed clear, concise, and consistent messages that carry through all your communications? Are your communications aligned with your organizational strategy?
• Utilize all available resources. Are your communications and marketing efforts integrated across your organization? Are you taking full advantage of your own communication vehicles, including social media?
• Consider your audience. Have you tailored your communications to each audience? Messages to members are often much different than messages to consumers or other constituents. Do you know how each of your audiences wants to receive information?
• Efficiency and effectiveness are key. Are members and stakeholders asking questions they should already have answers to based on past communications?
• Measure ROI. Are your communication vehicles operating as effectively and efficiently as possible as measured by the funds and staff resources required to operate them?  Are you tracking the use of each communication vehicle through metrics and surveys to see what’s working?

Your answers to these questions will reveal if your integration strategy is succeeding. If it isn’t, regroup with your senior management team to address areas that need attention.

There are several factors to consider when drafting an integrated communications plan, especially when working to streamline the message across media.

Al Rickard, CAE, is president of Association Vision, a Washington, DC-area communications company. He is a member of the ASAE Communication Section Council and Co-Chair of its Cross-Collaboration and Community Advisory Group.

Tags: communications ROI, communications strategy, integrated communications, media strategy

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