Planning / Purpose

1. Define Your Purpose.

The first step in communications planning is to define your purpose. You must know what you hope to achieve before you can lay out a plan to accomplish that goal. This is the yardstick by which you will judge your project’s success.

The answers to these questions will help you define your purpose:

• What information can you share?
  The answer to this question may be obvious. Perhaps you have just hired a new staff member who can help with visitations to homes and community locations, and you’d like the people you serve to know that this service is now available.
• Why do you want to communicate it?
  Knowing why you want to impart information is important, because for the communication to be meaningful to the people who will receive it (your audience), it must be relevant to them.
• What does your audience really need to know?
  Maybe they don’t need to know that a new visitation service was a result of a new grant. They do need the information that is relevant to them—that their children can now visit with their other parent in a safe, controlled environment.
• How will your communication help them?
  Your audience will pay the most attention to communications that directly affect them in some way.

Once you’ve solidified your purpose, determine your budget.