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7 Ways to Strengthen Your Communications in 2016 (And Why They’ll Work!)

For anyone in the position of examining their organization’s communications and business strategies, a new year means shoring up plans and budgets in support of ambitious organizational goals. Every new year presents us with the opportunity to build on successes from the year prior, and to also take a critical eye to the effectiveness of our efforts, pivot, or press restart altogether.

Depending on the state of your nonprofit’s brand, you may be looking to embark on a large-scale initiative like a rebranding or website redesign. Or you may be targeting ways to optimize, strengthen, and extend the materials you already have in place. Whatever the case, to help you increase the impact of your nonprofit’s communications in the year ahead (and beyond), here are seven of the most common, high-value areas the organizations I meet with are interested in exploring.

Brand Strategy

If your organization has never committed itself to a brand strategy engagement, it’s hard for me to understate the value of a branding process for surfacing insights, sharpening your communications focus, and strengthening your case for support (whatever form that takes). Similarly, if you have a brand strategy that is a few years old, here are some things you can do to make sure it still conveys who you are, what you do, and why what you do matters.

Listen to your audience. If your organization works on complex issues that are hard to unpack or lend themselves to jargon-laden language, reaching out and listening to members of your audience provides invaluable feedback and a much-needed perspective. An effective research interview process designed to explore core strategic questions is an incredibly effective way to evaluate how well-aligned your organization and its goals are with the expectations of your audience. It’s also a great way to gain insights into how your target audience uses language to frame the issues you all care about — ensuring that your communications strategy is focused on your audience, speaks to it, and rings true.

Strengthen your sense of identity. If your nonprofit has a clear mission but the ways you go about making change have evolved over the years, clearly communicating that evolution is essential. Because a nonprofit’s brand is as much about internal cohesion and capacity as it is about words and images, spending some time and money on developing an internal-facing brand handbook for your nonprofit that distills your mission, vision, and values can create an asset that, when shared with staff and partners, will strengthen the organization’s culture and sense of purpose while providing an actionable blueprint for the kind of compelling messaging and experiences folks in your organization are asked (and expected) to deliver.

Design

Deliver a consistent point of view. If your nonprofit’s communications lack consistency and cohesion, it’s a good bet you’re sending out mixed messages that undermine its mission. Creating well-defined brand guidelines is one way to ensure your organization presents a unified image that speaks well of its effectiveness. And if you already have brand guidelines but they feel a bit dated and/or do not support new types of collateral such as data visualizations and infographics, a quick refresh of the guidelines is a great way to maintain brand continuity while making sure your communications keep pace with innovation both in and beyond your organization.

Increase your communications efficiency. Speaking of consistency and cohesion, if your organization has a variety of presentation decks, event materials, and program collateral that has been developed over the years by different people, it’s likely it has less of what I’d call a communications design system and more of what can only be called a communications hodge-podge. Spending some time and money on developing a suite of tools and templates that are easy to use and which work together not only will provide the kind of brand consistency every organization needs, it will increase productivity and help you respond more effectively to opportunities by speeding up production of the kind of high-quality communications your organization deserves.

Website

Understand your users. If your organization is about to embark on a website design/redesign, starting with an effective UX research process is a great way to make sure the site’s content, features, and user experience align with what your audiences want and expect. And if you launched a new site recently and think it’s great but haven’t asked your target audiences for feedback, focused UX research is a great way to uncover and target high-value improvements that can boost your presence and strengthen your overall communications strategy.

SEO and analytics. Assuming search engine optimization matters to your nonprofit, developing an SEO strategy that starts with an analysis of your site’s build to see how well it is optimized for SEO, along with an evaluation of things like backlinks and social media strategy, is an excellent way to identify and fix areas that are negatively affecting your site’s organic search performance. Similarly, if you’ve implemented Google Analytics or another web analytics package, you already have volumes of valuable information that can be used to figure out where to target your usability and design dollars. It just requires a team to identify what you want to understand, then digging in.

Learn from what your peers are doing. If you’re planning to evaluate your site to determine whether a complete overhaul is called for or not, market research on peer organization websites is an excellent complement to user interviews and analytics analysis. For example, best practices for designing content-heavy websites call for a certain approach. If your organization is looking to disseminate knowledge to a wider audience, evaluation aimed at understanding what’s effective (and what isn’t!) will make it a lot easier to see where your site is performing well and where there is room for improvement.

Looking Ahead

With 2016 upon us, every organization needs to make choices – and the sooner the better – about how best to allocate resources in ways that advance its strategy. Communications is just one piece (albeit a very important one) of the pie. Hopefully the above suggestions have provided some good ideas and food for thought about how to increase the effectiveness of your communications—as well as arguments that support your case for being given the resources to do so!

In the meantime, a happy and healthy 2016 to everyone!

About the Author

Matthew Schwartz

Matthew Schwartz

Matt partners with Constructive’s clients and teams to make sure that we stay focused on what matters, and that both our partnerships and the work we produce meets our shared expectations and the highest standards. With 27 years of experience as a designer, brand strategist, and writer for the social impact sector, Matt helps Constructive’s teams create processes and practices that create brand value for nonprofits and social impact businesses—elevating how mission and purpose are translated into brand-aligned strategy, messaging, and designed experiences.

 

Matt contributes to the field of nonprofit design, serving on the Leadership Team for the NY chapter of The Communications Network, writing, speaking, mentoring, and conducting workshops. His work has been recognized for excellence by numerous organizations such as The Webbys, Communication Arts, Print Magazine, The Case Awards, Graphic Design USA, The W3 Awards, The Communicator Awards, and others. Matt earned his BA from Sarah Lawrence College in Writing & Visual Studies, and then conducted post-graduate design studies at the School of Visual Arts, Rhode Island School of Design, and Parsons.

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