Organizational Communications

What is organizational communications?

Organizational communications is the production and distribution of communications on behalf of an organization. There are two areas of work:

  • Operational: Communications that are necessary for normal operations (e.g. website content, emails to donors, investors or supporters, media relations for press queries).

  • Strategic: Communications that are a tactic in a strategic plan (e.g. publicity, op eds, social media campaign, pitching press stories).

Communications channels include:

  • Your digital home (website)

  • Press

  • Social media

  • Email lists

  • Self-published content (articles or videos)

  • Public speaking events

Communications products used to be informational (operational communications) or persuasive (strategic communications), but that changed when digital media and Web 2.0 made it easy to publish and share stories online.

Today, stories are expected from many organizations, particularly nonprofits and social change organizations, as part of operational communications (such as impact stories in an annual report) or strategic communications (such as strategic storytelling in support of a narrative change strategy).

How to make a communications plan

The law of diminishing returns is very real in communications: there is no upper limit to what you can do. However, you have two budgets to manage with communications: an org financial budget for costs, and an attention budget with your audience. If you are spending — make sure that you need to.

  1. List the communications that need to be sent as part of normal operations. This is your operational communications, and an overhead cost.

  2. List any communications that are in support of a strategic plan. This is your strategic communications, and needs to be factored into your plan’s budget.

  3. Any activities that don’t show up on those two lists provide no strategic benefit: don’t do them.

FAQs

  • Remember: communications is in service to your business activity.

    Only do what is necessary to achieve your goal — whether it’s supporting operations or an org strategy — no more. Communications hits a point of diminishing returns very quickly: attention is an expensive resource, spend it wisely.

    Operations: A good rule is to start with the barest minimum, then add what is missing when a cost is idntified.

    Strategic: Start with a broad range with minimal investment, identify quickly which is medium and format are most effective, then invest once you have feedback.

  • If you stopped one of your communications, would people think the organization had stopped operating? If yes — it’s operational.

    All other communications should be contributing to a strategic plan with a measurable goal — and should be discontinued when the goal is reached.

  • No.

    It’s important to have a digital presence, but it’s not important to have a social media presence.

    If you have a website, you have what you need. If you choose to have a social media presence, manage it well or shut it down; the risk to reward ratio is not in the favor of organizations who only use it to maintain a digital presence.

  • No.

    Before the media landscape changed, press coverage was important for a launch or announcement. But now that it’s possible to broadcast your own news (social media, email lists) the value of engaging with traditional media has changed.

    Have a clear objective, and limit your engagement to what you need to achieve your objective.