What's the Purpose of a Communication Plan?
Communication includes both the spoken and written messages that a company conveys to its consumers, employees, stockholders, and the general public. A communication plan is an organized outline of the types of communication that will take place and who is responsible for conducting or ensuring the accuracy of the messages that are delivered. A communication plan should include objectives, strategies that will be undertaken to achieve those objectives, who will deliver the messages and by what means, the anticipated outcome of the efforts, and how the results will be measured. A communication plan can be very specific, meant for a specific audience or for a specific project. It can be geared to help employees communicate with each other throughout the course of a project, or it can be very general, meant to organize an organization's overall marketing communications.
Creating the Plan
Creating a communication plan is often half the effort required to complete the goals of a project. It forces all parties involved in a project or involved with the marketing efforts of an organization to sit down and collectively create the plan. This step in itself brings everyone together on the same page and ensures that all parties are working towards the same objectives. This written plan helps a company's communication efforts to be more focused and polished, because the messages were crafted carefully with a specific end result in mind.
Implementing the Plan
The communication plan provides a framework for the individuals involved in a project to keep each party informed of the progress and next steps. This means that the implementation of the plan should run smoothly. Each party involved in the process will know what their duties are and be able to complete their tasks in the appropriate time. This helps companies run more efficiently, because when a project is handed over from one department to the next, there is no downtime waiting for one person to finish his tasks.
Measuring the Results
After the plan has been implemented, one member or department involved in the planning process measures the success of the project and reports the findings to the group or company. The same group who created the plan usually may reconvene to determine the effectiveness of the communication. This meeting may also involve making recommendations to improve results if a similar project will be undertaken in the future.
