Your team has a social media schedule. Emails are going out. The newsletter gets published every month. Someone is updating the website. There’s a spreadsheet full of upcoming content.
So, you have a communications strategy, right? Not necessarily.
One of the most common things organizations do is mistake communications functions for communications strategy. A content calendar informs you what you're publishing and when. A comms plan should inform you why you're communicating, who you need to communicate with, what you need them to know or to do, and how you'll communicate to further the goals of the organization.
Five signs your organization may have a content calendar, but not an actual communications strategy.
1. Your planning starts with “What should we post?”
If your communications conversations regularly begin with “What should we put on social this week?” or “What can we include in the newsletter?” you may already be starting from the wrong end. Before deciding what to publish, you should know what you’re trying to accomplish.
Create a positive shift in perception for a specific audience about you? Always ask yourself what you're trying to achieve before creating content. A better question would be: What does our audience need to know or feel, or do in order for us to accomplish what we're trying to do? Then you can decide what content will help get them there.
2. Every department is asking communications to “promote” something
A common scenario. Leadership has an announcement. Advancement needs a flyer. HR needs an email. The events team needs three posts for social media. And they're all urgent. Providing support for these announcements is within the wheelhouse of the comms team, but without a strategy in place, your team can morph into a production team. A communications strategy helps you: Define priorities, identify key audiences, decide on the right channels, and ensure that communications align with priorities. Your team needs a strategy to guide decision-making. Before jumping to "How do we promote this?", ask "What are we trying to accomplish? Who needs to hear this? And how does it support our priorities?"
3. You’re producing a lot of content, but you can’t explain what’s working
Your analytics report shows you published 42 social posts, sent six emails, and garnered 75,000 impressions. Great. What happened because of it? Activity is not the same thing as effectiveness, but it's not all bad. A good communications plan ties your efforts to results. That could mean qualified leads, event signups, app applications, donations, media mentions, web conversions, audience acquisition, sentiment, engagement, etc. You don’t need a massive analytics operation, but you should be able to draw a line somewhere between what your team is doing and what the org is trying to achieve. If all you're reporting on is how much content you've published, you're tracking output, not impact.
4. Your messaging changes depending on who wrote it
Read your organization's homepage. Now read your most recent fundraising letter, social media updates, admission materials, press release, and CEO letter. Does it sound like the same entity? A strong communications strategy creates consistency without making everything sound identical.
A donor email doesn't have to read like an Instagram caption, but the broader point about who you are, what you believe, why what you do is important, and what makes you unique has to read like you in all of your communications. Without a messaging framework, communications become whatever the writer or department happens to produce. That’s how organizations end up telling five slightly different versions of the same story.
5. Communications comes in at the end
This may be the biggest warning sign. A major initiative has been planned for six months. The decisions have been made. The timeline is set. Leadership is ready to launch. Then someone says: “We should probably bring communications in.” At that point, communications is being treated as distribution rather than a strategic partner.
Strategists in charge of comms should be brought in early to help inform the targeting of audiences, positioning, likely reactions, messaging, timing, risks, requirements of stakeholders, and how the initiative fits into the narrative of the organization. Comms is not simply about packaging the decisions that have been taken, it should help shape how those decisions are understood.
So, what's in a communications strategy? It doesn't need to be a 50-page brief that languishes on a shared drive. In fact, the best comms strategies are really simple. You should be able to easily communicate what your organizational goals and priority audiences are, your comms objectives and key messages, your channels and tactics, roles and responsibilities, key milestones, and metrics to know whether or not you're moving the needle.
Then comes the content calendar. The calendar is an execution tool. It helps organize the stories, campaigns, emails, social posts, publications, and other content that bring the strategy to life, but the calendar shouldn’t be the strategy, and publishing more content isn’t necessarily the answer. Sometimes the better communications decision is to publish less, clarify the message, focus on the right audience, and become much more intentional about what you’re asking communications to accomplish. That’s the difference between keeping the channels busy and using communications to actually move an organization forward.
Is your communications making impact, or are they just busy? Is your organization communicating with purpose, or just keeping its channels active? If you want to move beyond content calendars and develop a communications strategy that connects your messaging, audiences, and activities to your organization's goals, let's connect. I can help you assess what's working, identify gaps, and build a practical, results-driven communications strategy that will help to make your efforts count.
