Your Fail-Proof Guide to Nonprofit Communication Planning Part Three: Choose effective tactics and track your progress
Congratulations, you’ve made it to tactics!
You’ve made it to the third and final installment of our series, giving you everything you need for successful nonprofit communication planning. In our first two posts, we dove right in with goal setting, identifying audiences and creating powerful core messages. Now, you’re ready for steps four and five: plotting out how you’ll deliver on your nonprofit PR goals and thinking through some key metrics to track your progress.
This means you’ve finally reached the main stage of your communication planning: identifying the right tactics to engage your audiences and empowering them to take the action you want them to take to achieve your goals.
In today’s post, we will:
Explore what you’ll want to consider when brainstorming and choosing tactics
Take a brief look at what kinds of metrics you can set and measure to see if your tactics are working or if there are opportunities for improvement
But, wait, how did we get to tactics?
If you’re wondering how we’ve arrived at this exciting step in the planning process, we suggest that you take just a few minutes to check out the first and second parts of our series. These posts help you lay the groundwork for successfully executing any and all tactics.
STEP FOUR: Identify the best tactics to achieve your goals
Tactics are the channels, platforms and content you use to achieve the goals you’ve already identified. These are the tools and activities that you select based on considerations like the following:
your team’s capacity - being realistic about how much staff time and resources you can dedicate to this effort;
target audiences - knowing where, when and how you can best reach your most important audiences;
and, of course, ensuring that all of your activities directly support your goals.
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There is no one-size-fits-all mix of tactics. The fabulous news is that you’ve already done the planning and have all the information needed to choose which tactics move your audiences to act, think or feel differently. When brainstorming tactics, make sure you focus on meeting all of your most important audiences where they are using the right levers, channels and cadence of activities.
There are many, many thoughtful and creative tactics that you can use to accomplish your goals. Below we’ve included just a few examples of the tactics you might consider.
Email Outreach
Newsletters to maintain and build relationships with specific audiences (e.g., sharing your quarterly newsletter highlighting programmatic impact to funders or sharing people and community-focused stories representative of the challenges and solutions your organization is supporting)
Staff outreach
Board and partner outreach
Web Collateral
Blog series (like this one!) to build thought leadership on a particular timely topic on which your organization has specific, valuable expertise
Updated web content that incorporates core messages
Microsite for easy, direct access to an advocacy call to action (e.g., “click here to learn about the impact of this issue in your community and to contact your councilwoman today!”)
Digital
Social media calendar with planned cadence and content that incorporates core messages and uplifts compelling stories
Live, in-the-moment social engagement (reposts, replies, e.g.)
Social promotion of any earned or placed media; newsletters or new web content
Social media toolkit with sample content and strategies to share with partners who can support your advocacy efforts
Media
Op-eds that leverage specific thought leadership and get your author in front of the right audiences at the right time
Targeted pitching to reach your most important audiences with timely, relevant hooks
Press release sharing the most newsworthy announcements with segmented media lists at target publications
Aligning tactics and SMARTIE goals
Planning out which tactics are best for your campaign or strategy helps you carefully allocate your communications time and efforts so they align with your SMARTIE goals, which are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely, Inclusive and Equitable goals. In other words, don’t throw spaghetti at the wall; pick tactics that you know contribute to the success of your work.
Let’s consider the following example
The Best Nonprofit plans to announce a new executive director. Early on in its planning, The Best Nonprofit determined that success hinges on buy-in and excitement from staff, among other indicators. To ensure transparency and build excitement and buy-in among existing staff, The Best Nonprofit established plans to communicate with staff first -- before any external audiences -- and regularly -- to make them feel a part of the process.
SMARTIE Goal: Ensure that staff receive the first direct communication about the process and are receiving at least two messages per month that include updates about decisionmaking, the transition process, the organization’s future and when the announcement will be made public.
Tactics for consideration might include:
Creating an editorial calendar to guide and plan communications and content
Direct email outreach to staff from a designated point of contact responsible for managing internal communications on the announcement
Weekly Slack, Teams or other internal message board communications including reminders about whom staff can contact with questions, updates on the process, etc.
Working with the incoming executive director to facilitate and announce 1:1 meetings with existing staff
Best practices
Create a timeline and checklist for planned internal and external outreach and planned content.
Designate clear roles for each tactic. Who will own which activity? Who is in charge of approvals, and what is the most efficient way to move pieces through the review process?
Remember that every tactic is an opportunity to drive your core messages.
When considering media tactics, remember that you’ll be using these opportunities to speak through the media to reach your target audiences.
Remember to be empathetic to the needs, values and barriers of your audiences. This means being considerate (and smart!) about frequency, length and types of content and outreach you use. For example, if you’re communicating with parents, a simple text nudge with the most important information might serve you and them better than a lengthy email.
If you’re planning to engage partners, be a thoughtful and proactive collaborator. This might mean early outreach or it might mean providing them with reporter background information and useful talking points grounded in your core messages.
Consider accessibility and inclusiveness with all content and all outreach.
STEP FIVE: Gauge your success and identify how you might improve
If you’ve started your nonprofit communication planning by asking the question of how you’ll know if you’ve succeeded, then figuring out how to track progress and measure success should be straightforward and clean. Your metrics should draw a clear, direct line to your vision for success and your SMARTIE goals. Metrics can take many forms and should assess what you see as most important.
Some examples of metrics include:
Frequency of email outreach with each specific audience, including tracking of open rates and clickthrough rates
Number of new followers across each social handle
How often and how many partners amplified content or messages that you shared with them
Earned media mentions in target publications
Pickup or mention of your issue by local policy makers, decisionmakers or influencers
Number of conversations facilitated with prospective partners
Growth of individual donor base
Web traffic
Number of people who have added their name to an advocacy campaign (e.g., contact form submission)
Use what works
You can create a process for tracking metrics and set milestones for when you’ll check in on progress. These check-ins give you key insights that you can use to improve or redirect time or resources, as needed, to reach your measurable goals.
For example, if you notice that certain types of outreach or content in your newsletter leads to better click-through rates for your call to action, you can shift your content strategy to focus on what you know works.
Onward and upward
As you can see, there are many kinds of measurements you can use to track your success and to see the payoff of all of the hard work you’ve put into your nonprofit communication planning.
Metrics give you an opportunity to continue to build community. You can use campaign or project metrics as an opportunity to show appreciation with staff, share outcomes with funders, continue to cultivate relationships with partners or demonstrate to audiences that your work (and their support) makes a demonstrable difference.
And, last but certainly not least, now that you’ve tracked your metrics, you have actionable data that you can use to inform your future planning and ensure successful future campaigns! Data-backed plans for the win.
Congratulations on finishing all five steps of your nonprofit communications planning. You’re officially five steps closer to achieving your nonprofit PR goals!
If you’re left wondering, “Zoë come on, don’t you know priorities and capacity can change quickly? Do you have a plan for when our plans get derailed?” That’s a great (and well-worded) question, with an easier-than-you-might-think answer, because your efforts set you up to be nimble:
Revisit your goals and then scan your tactics to come up with the right next steps for your team and your project. For example, if your goal is legislative change, and you’ve planned a series of blog posts on your website that you’ve not had time to produce or amplify, maybe it’s time to repurpose that content as an op-ed and prioritize outreach to a like-minded partner who might consider signing on. This might help you land that op-ed and directly reach policymakers. In sum, your goals can reorient you, helping you figure out how to reallocate your time by prioritizing key tactics that you can realistically execute.
We hope we’ve helped you realize that you don’t need wizardry, a behemoth budget or a team of 20. The thoughtful, smart and creative thinking that goes into nonprofit communication planning is an investment in your organization’s success. The planning is where the magic happens (or at least where it starts!).
And, lastly, if you’re looking for more resources, check out our nonprofit resources page for some handy tools. Or, reach out to us, and we’d be happy to chat!
