Crafting a communication plan is an invaluable exercise that will help you strategize how you want to communicate with clients and ensure that you hold yourself to it, says Sara Gilbert, founder of Strategist, in Montreal.
“It all comes back to what gets written gets done,” says Gilbert. “Too often, advisors don’t have a plan. [As a result,] they have a LinkedIn account that hasn’t been active for months, a blog dated from weeks ago and a newsletter that was sent out twice and then it stopped.”
Having a communication plan in place is akin to signing a contract between your audience and yourself that promises when and how they will hear from you, Gilbert says. But if you don’t already have a communications plan in place, she offers some tips on how you should start building a strategy:
> Define your goals
With many industry pundits extolling the virtues of social media nowadays, it’s no wonder that many advisors jump onto the latest social network with no plan in place on how to use it properly.
The problem with this is that advisors do not take the time at first to spell out properly what they hope to achieve by investing time and money in using these tools, Gilbert says.
So, before immersing yourself in the world of Twitter or Facebook, for example, define your goals. Are you trying to build your presence on these platforms to get new clients? Are you looking to create more visibility with existing clients? Or will you be using these online communications tools as a way to build a network of center of influence?
Being able to make sure these questions are answered clearly in your plan will make accomplishing what you want to succeed much more feasible.
> Make careful choices
Once you are familiar with your objectives, you should then consider which communication tools will be best in order to accomplish these goals.
For example, if you decide that you want to get more clients, then putting all your eggs in Twitter’s basket is unlikely to yield many positive results.
That’s why Gilbert says that email newsletters are the most popular medium of business-development communications for advisors.
Email newsletters are more timeless and can help your portray in greater detail how the products and services you provide will be helpful to clients.
Once you have evaluated your different options, write them down.
> Work with your team
In all likelihood, you won’t be the person writing the first draft of your newsletter or managing the day-to-day operations of your LinkedIn account.
That’s why when you’re developing your communications plan, it should be created in consultation with the members of your team.
In fact, you might choose to appoint a “point-person” on your team whose job it will be to manage your client communications. Alternatively, if you share an assistant or group of assistants, you might find it better to outsource some of the writing or management functions to an external ghostwriter.
Regardless, make sure everyone is aware of what needs to be done so they can take ownership of the work and be accountable to hit their deadlines.
This is the first instalment in a four-part series on Communicating: with a plan.
On Friday: tips on how to keep your communication plan simple.