How can not for profit associations establish an effective communications strategy?

The role of communications and marketing in associations should be centred on supporting the organisation to fulfill its broad ranging goals.

Whether advocating for a profession or providing educational opportunities, your communication needs to be considered, and then strategically implemented to enable the realisation of your association’s goals.

To benefit from strategic communications, you need to take the first step – plan.

To use an old adage, a communications plan is the road map of your organisation. Setting your communication goals is of course the starting point, but a communications plan is essential to map out how you will achieve those goals. Whilst you may be busy informing, educating, advocating and providing networking opportunities, you also need to ensure that your efforts and activities are communicated to members, to make them aware of the value of their membership dollar.

Ensure you have a strategic communications plan that works by following these steps:

Identify and assign key stakeholders to oversee the development of the strategic communications plan. Ensure you have all areas of the business covered, from finance through to the board and staff, so that your efforts aren’t stalled along the way by those who don’t know what is happening.
Ensure your communications plan includes your mission, values and a synopsis of your current situation. A communications plan is created from a certain perspective and point in time. Be sure to document that position so you can see how far you have come and new members to the board or association will be able to see why you made such decisions.
Include your key messages within the plan. These will help form content reflective of your association, for all your communications and marketing activities. Key messages are an essential ingredient in a communications plan and need to be agreed on at the onset so all future actions promote the same messages.
Develop a system for managing your communications plan. Set up a subcommittee, ask for reports from your staff or contractors, and formally review it every three months to tick off activities, amend strategies and, of course, add more.
Ensure the sign off of the communications plan comes with a budget. All communication and marketing activities need momentum to succeed. It often also involves making quick decisions with media, advertising and sponsorship opportunities that spring up. Having a strong plan and budget in place, allow those responsible to make quick informed decisions. Boards that sign-off a plan and then want to discuss the entire decision making process, slow down the much needed momentum.
Develop strategies for members and strategies for external stakeholders. They are not the same thing. If you need to advocate for an issue and build your membership numbers, they need different (yet inter-connected) strategies. Be clear on the purpose of all your actions.
Be generous with your information and knowledge. Whilst there is a tendency not to share all the information your association has – instead keeping it for members only; there is much credibility to be sought by being known as the ‘go-to’ organisation for information made available for the public.
Host effective networking events. Whilst you might have people coming along, we aren’t all natural socialisers. Be sure that your events have name tags, thank sponsors, welcome new members or guests and even encourage people to network and swap cards through ice-breaker activities. Your attendees will get a lot more out of their time and money.
Use social media effectively. There are so many ways your association could be benefiting from using LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to support your organisational goals. Don’t assume your members aren’t active on social media, you’ll be surprised who is. The fastest growing user group for Facebook and other social media sites are now the ‘over 50s’.
Ask why. It is always important to ask, ‘why are we doing this again?’, ‘does it link to us getting closer to achieving our goals?’ If your association has been running for a while, you may need to question some of the communication activities you are managing. Always ask, ‘do they still serve a purpose? Are they helpful in getting us new members?’