Head of Digital & Marketing at Sustrans, Kate Strange - how to make your comms planning truly effective

1. Effective comms planning
Kate Strange, Head of Digital & Marketing
Feb 2018

2. What I’ll be covering
• Proactive comms planning
– Fundamentals of a good plan
– How to make a good plan…great
• Responsive communications
– What you need at your finger tips to be able to
work fast
• Planning for a crisis
– How to be prepared for the unknown

3. Marketing and Communications at
Sustrans – the Comms Network team
SUSTRANS
Belfast Policy
& comms
officer
Cardiff
External affairs
officer
Edinburgh
Policy ad
Comms team
London
Senior comms
officer
Digital and
Marketing
Team UK-wide
England North,
Midlands and
South
Comms &
Mktg officers
19 people across the UK,
in 8 offices

4. Fundamentals of a good plan
Audience and objectives
The essentials
1. Agree the objectives
2. Define your audience

5. Sustrans case study: Bike Life
1. Objectives?
2. Audience?
3. Define team roles

6. Consult
• Digital team - press team – channel owners
• Subject experts - project manager
Result = team work, buy-in,
consensus and confidence

7. Coordinate
• Shared project plans
• External affairs and marketing calendars
• Daily tasks board for launch

8. Communicate
• Weekly project update
• Team tracker
• Monthly project meeting
• Monthly team meeting
• Feedback to all people
involved - summary,
measurement – success
• Storify is great tool we
used for day 1 and end of
month

9. Responsive comms – you’ll need…
• Clear org strategy & priorities
• Audience understanding
• Experts and spokespeople
• Clear sign off procedure
• A central GRID

10. Sustrans’ GRID
And if you can only do one thing…

11. Prioritise your website

12. Planning for the
unknown
• Crisis protocol & out of
hours cover
– FAQs, position statements
– Access to channels
– Access to senior Exec
– Wifi access
– Refer to your own website
• Internal communication
you’ve got it covered!

13. The End
The fabulous Bike Life images are copyright
Sustrans / Brian Morrison, Colin Hattersley,
Jonathan Bewley, Tony Marsh

14. Visit the CharityComms website
to view slides from past events,
see what events we have
coming up and to check out
what else we do:
www.charitycomms.org.uk

15. Effective comms
planning
South West Networking Group
2 February 2018
Bristol
#ccsouthwest