Taking a look at how Marketing/Communications Plans can support an organization's Strategic Vision.

At the Ohio Arts Council, we are currently in the process of creating and implementing a communications plan that reflects our strategic vision.

Analytics are a great place to start. If you have existing platforms, like Facebook or Twitter, take a look at what the data can tell you.

In our case, it provided insight into when and how we share stories and news, which leads us to...

Identifying our audiences.

Look at strategic vision and see who your goals serve. In a perfect world, those audiences will line up with your online audiences but that isn't always the case.

In our instance, we discovered a geographic disparity that does not follow our organization's mission to fund every county and reach across the state. We'll address that by incorporating outreach and coverage into our communications schedules.

Since we're talking about "reach" here. It is also a good time to bring up the idea of "engage." Engage is one of the OAC's four pillars in the strategic plan. In the first phase of our communications plan, we will focus on deepening the relationship with our existing audience before broadening and diversifying our reach to new demographics.

Sometime meeting your audience where they are is the best thing the data can tell you.

Communications drive your vision forward. So it is important to determine what those key vehicles are.

For the OAC, our staple communication is our monthly newsletter. It is the communications piece we have the most control over--content is curated, and often created, by us, and it is delivered routinely to a targeted audience.

Other vehicles include social media channels, like Facebook and Twitter, press releases, and print materials.

It's important to look at how you share as a component of what you share. The same message does not translate to every platform.

Everyone in your organization/company/group has the power to share your story.

At the OAC, in the Public Information Office I am a team of 1.5 (me + a dedicated contractor). We have a lot of ground to cover so I need to ask for help in order to best reach and engage our audiences.

We're reviewing the plan with a small group, then sharing broadly with our organization to align values, voice, and mission.

The handout I'm passing out now is a quick guide created in-house to lead our team members when they're in the field.

This guide was created before our communications plan but it is an important component that links it with our goals.

Let's look at it briefly together.

The best advice I received was to "just start." Map out what is most important to your organization, and put what that is down. Start living the plan and schedule checkpoints along the way.

For us, we will implement a one-year communications plan with a designated status update after 6 months, our initial ENGAGE phase, to evaluate the data, and listen to feedback. If all goes well, the second phase will be focused on REACH.

Lastly, try something. I added this slide in here because it has been in the back of my mind throughout the creation process.

Data can tell us a lot, and plans keep us on track, but there is always risk. The best thing to do is create a plan your organization believes in, and then try it. With checkpoints along the way you will always have the opportunity to evaluate your course and adjust.