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Communications can often be seen as an optional extra, something nice to do if there is time. However, communications need to be at the heart of LIOs work.

LIOs are about supporting groups and communities and helping local people connect. We cannot do this without communications. And if we are communicating with groups, communities, individuals and funders we should plan this work to make it as effective as possible.

Writing a communications strategy should not be about spending more money promoting yourself. It is about understanding what you already do and having a plan to get the maximum benefit from the resources you spend.

If you are interested in developing a communications strategy, NAVCA can help.

We have recently developed our own communications strategy and are happy to discuss with you how we wrote our strategy and what kind of things we included.

To find out more, please contact Barney Mynott.

Key questions we asked ourselves

1. Who are the people and organisations we want to get messages to?
2. What information do we want to get to each organisation? Why does this organisation want to work with us? (What's in it for them?)
3. What methods do we currently use to communicate? (website, leaflets, face to face communications etc)
4. How successful are these methods? How can we measure their success? How can we improve what we currently do?
5. Are there other methods we do not use but could consider?
6. What is the total amount spent on communications, is it being spent in the best way?

Key things we considered

When we wrote our communication strategy, we considered the following.

• People relate to people. A lot of the best communications work is through people from the organisation (ie staff, volunteers and trustees) meeting and talking with other people. How is this work included in a communications strategy?

• People get a lot of information every day and as a result we have all become expert at filtering what we read and what we ignore. This means you should never be afraid to repeat a message to get it noticed. Also, think about how you can get messages over simply and provide layers of information if people want to find out more.
• Different people are interested in different things. If your message is not relevant it will be ignored at best and could even annoy. Your strategy should segment your audiences so you can target messages to the right people.
• We communicate differently depending how we are doing it. Conversations on the phone are different to face to face conversations. Newspapers, websites and reports are all read in different ways. Your strategy should reflect the need to communicate differently for different situations.
• We make important judgements about messages depending on who says them. Who do you most trust to be honest about a company - a company spokesperson or a consumer? Your strategy should think about the who as well as the what.

If you would like to discuss writing a communication strategy contact Barney Mynott.