An organisational communications framework can help bring structure to how you communicate with internal and external audiences. By starting with what your organisation already knows, reviewing the information it needs to communicate and giving each channel a clear purpose, audience, content role and rhythm, you can begin building a more considered and connected approach to communications and marketing.
If you’ve followed The Adaptive Approach so far, you’ve worked through WHY, WHAT, WHO, WHERE and WHEN.
Now it’s time to bring it all together.
Throughout the previous articles, we’ve looked at each of these individually. But in practice, they don’t operate independently. Together, they can help you build an overarching communications framework for your organisation.
And before you start thinking this means writing another 40-page strategy – it doesn’t.
A useful communications framework can provide a relatively simple view of why your organisation communicates, who it needs to communicate with, the information it needs to share, the channels available to reach people and how those channels work together.
The Adaptive Approach is the decision-making framework. Your communications framework is what you build from those decisions.
Don't start with a blank page
Chances are your organisation has already done quite a bit of the thinking you need.
Start by pulling together the information that already exists.
Your strategic or business plan should tell you where the organisation is going and what it is trying to achieve. You may already have stakeholder or customer research, staff surveys, operational plans, workforce plans, marketing strategies or previous communications plans.
You probably also have a whole collection of communication channels already operating.
The first job isn’t to create anything new. It’s to understand what you’ve already got – and what your organisation actually needs to communicate.
Look at your organisation’s objectives and priorities. Look at the audiences and stakeholders that have already been identified. Look at what you know about your customers and staff. Then take stock of how you’re currently communicating with them.
Separate your internal and external communications
I find it useful to map internal and external communications separately.
They’re part of the same organisational ecosystem, but they’re usually serving very different audiences and information needs.
Your internal communications might include:
- Email, intranet, Teams or other collaboration platforms, staff newsletters, leadership updates, meetings, toolbox talks, digital signage and noticeboards.
Your external communications and marketing might include:
- Your website, email marketing, newsletters, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, search, media, events, advertising, industry publications or other channels relevant to your audiences.
Don’t worry yet about whether you should have all of them.
And definitely don’t start adding TikTok because someone in a meeting said, “Shouldn’t we be on TikTok?”
For now, simply map what you have.
Consider the type and depth of content you need to communicate
Not all information fits neatly into a social media post, an email or a poster.
When you’re mapping your communications, look at the WHAT you’ve identified and consider the depth of information your organisation needs to communicate.
Some information may work well as short-form content e.g. quick updates, announcements, reminders, simple messages or content designed to direct people somewhere else.
Other information may need long-form content such as detailed articles, technical or professional information, complex organisational stories, research, case studies, interviews or information that needs context to be properly understood.
This matters when you’re building your channel framework.
You might discover that your organisation has plenty of ways to distribute short updates but nowhere appropriate for substantial information to live. Or the opposite may be true.
For example, an organisation communicating complex technical or scientific information may find that its existing social channels are useful for creating awareness, but aren’t necessarily the best place to explain the subject in any depth.
That doesn’t mean the social channels aren’t useful. It means they have a different job.
A short-form post might introduce the subject and direct an interested audience to a detailed article on the website. A professional audience might be reached through LinkedIn. A newsletter could regularly take longer-form content directly to an established audience. A podcast or video could provide another format for exploring a complex subject.
The communication requirement should help determine the channel – not the other way around.
Look for gaps in your content ecosystem
As you map your framework, ask:
- Do we have somewhere appropriate for our short-form content?
- Do we have somewhere appropriate for long-form or complex information?
- Where does our detailed source content live?
- How do people discover it?
- Do we have channels that can reach the professional or specialist audiences who need it?
- Can our short-form channels lead people towards deeper information when they want or need it?
You may find that an important WHAT has no suitable WHERE.
That’s a genuine gap in your communications framework and that’s when you consider whether another channel is needed.
A gap in your channel mix isn’t identified by noticing that you’re missing a platform. It’s identified when something you need to communicate, to an audience you need to reach, doesn’t have an appropriate place to go.
Give every channel a job
Now take each existing channel and put The Adaptive Approach to work.
For every channel you are using, ask, what is the:
- Purpose – WHY does this channel exist?
- Content – WHAT belongs on it?
- Audience – WHO is it for?
- Channel – WHERE are we communicating?
- Rhythm – WHEN should we use it?
You can begin mapping that in a simple table.
Internal communications
WHY | WHAT | WHO | WHERE | WHEN |
Purpose | Content | Audience | Channel | Rhythm |
Provide a central source of organisational information | Policies, procedures, organisational news and resources | Staff | Intranet | Maintained and updated as required |
Connect staff with organisational direction and activity | Leadership updates, priorities, achievements and staff stories | All staff | Staff newsletter | Monthly |
Share information and enable discussion | Operational updates, changes and issues requiring discussion | Relevant teams | Team meetings | Regular and as required |
External communications
WHY | WHAT | WHO | WHERE | WHEN |
Purpose | Content | Audience | Channel | Rhythm |
Provide authoritative information about the organisation and its services | Services, resources, news and long-form information | Customers, stakeholders and other relevant audiences | Website | Maintained with regular updates |
Reach relevant professional audiences | Expertise, organisational news, projects and recruitment | Industry, stakeholders, prospective employees or customers | Twice weekly | |
Maintain a direct relationship with an established audience | Useful information, updates and links to source content | Subscribers, customers or stakeholders | Newsletter | Monthly or quarterly |
These are examples, not recommendations.
Your framework should reflect your organisation, your objectives and your audiences.
A Facebook page doesn’t need to exist because every other organisation has one. An internal newsletter doesn’t automatically need to be monthly. LinkedIn isn’t necessarily the right place for every corporate announcement.
The point is to be able to explain why each channel is there and what job it is doing.
If you can’t, that’s worth investigating.
Look beyond the individual channels
Once you’ve mapped them, take a look at the whole thing.
This is where the exercise becomes much more useful than simply producing a list of platforms.
You may start noticing things.
Perhaps three channels are doing essentially the same job. Maybe an important audience does not appear anywhere. You might have a social media account that requires considerable effort but has no clearly defined purpose. Perhaps almost every internal communication is being sent by email even though staff have other channels available. Or you might discover that your organisation is creating the same information repeatedly because there is not a clear place for it to live.
These aren’t necessarily communication problems yet but is worth looking into to make sure you are building trust in your organisation and the information you are pushing out.
And sometimes the answer will not be to communicate more. It may be to do less, better.
Decide where your information lives
One of the most useful things you can establish within a communications framework is where your source information should live.
Not every channel needs to carry the whole story.
Externally, you might publish a detailed article or resource on your website and then use LinkedIn, a newsletter or another relevant channel to take that information to your audience and link back to the source material.
Internally, a detailed policy or organisational update might live on your intranet. A short email could alert the relevant staff and link them to the information, while a team meeting provides an opportunity to discuss what it means in practice.
Each channel should have a different job and provide value for that audience.
One might house the information. Another might distribute it. Another might prompt action. And another might provide an opportunity for conversation or feedback.
This is where your channels begin working as a system rather than a collection of separate activities or endless repetition.
One story can work across multiple channels
The same principle applies to your content. You don’t necessarily need a completely new story for every channel.
A substantial piece of source content could become a LinkedIn post, a shorter social post, a newsletter item or part of a presentation.
The underlying information hasn’t changed. You’ve adapted how it is delivered to suit the channel and the audience using it.
The important part is understanding which channel is doing what.
That’s a much more sustainable approach than staring at an empty content calendar every week trying to think of something new to say.
Establish your communication rhythm
Now look across your framework and identify your anchor communications.
Perhaps you have a monthly leadership update internally. Maybe you publish substantial external content once a month. You could have a quarterly stakeholder newsletter, regular team meetings or seasonal marketing activity.
These recurring communications start creating the rhythm we discussed in the previous article. They also give you something to plan around.
But remember: A schedule shouldn’t be a prison.
Urgent information still needs to be communicated urgently. Campaigns will come and go. Organisational priorities will change. New audiences may emerge and channels will change.
The framework provides structure. It shouldn’t remove your ability to adapt.
LISTEN before you decide you've got it right
At this point you may have a lovely-looking framework. That does not mean it is right.
Go back to what you know about your audiences.
What have staff told you about how they prefer to receive information? What questions are customers regularly asking? What are your frontline staff hearing? What feedback are stakeholders providing? Are people finding the information they need? Are they actually using the channels you have mapped?
This is why LISTEN sits at the centre of The Adaptive Approach.
Sometimes you’ll have good research and evidence available. Sometimes you’ll discover you don’t actually know.
That’s useful too. You’ve identified a gap that may need further research rather than making an assumption and building your communications around it.
Step back and interrogate what you've built
Before calling your framework finished, ask yourself:
- Does every channel have a clear purpose and audience?
- Are there audiences we are not reaching effectively?
- Are we duplicating information unnecessarily?
- Is there a clear source of truth for important information?
- Are we over-relying on one channel?
- Can content be adapted and reused rather than recreated?
- Are we maintaining channels simply because we have always had them?
- Can our organisation realistically maintain the rhythm we have planned?
- Does this framework actually support our organisational objectives?
You don’t necessarily need to fix everything immediately. The point is that you can now see it.
And once you can see your communications ecosystem as a whole, you can start making much more deliberate and informed decisions about it.
Start with a framework, then build from it
This exercise is not intended to replace a comprehensive communications and marketing strategy.
Depending on the size and complexity of your organisation, developing that strategy may involve deeper audience research, channel analysis, stakeholder engagement, governance, content planning, implementation, resourcing and evaluation.
What this gives you is a practical starting point.
You should now have a clearer picture of WHY your organisation needs to communicate, WHAT it needs to communicate, WHO needs that information, WHERE you are going to reach them and WHEN those communications should occur.
More importantly, you should be able to see how those decisions come together as an internal and external communications framework rather than a collection of disconnected emails, social posts, newsletters and campaigns.
That’s the difference between simply using communication channels and having a considered approach to how they work together.
At Shout by Design, this is the kind of thinking we use when helping organisations bring structure to complex internal and external communications. The Adaptive Approach provides the framework for asking the right questions, but the strategy comes from understanding the organisation, its objectives and its audiences.
And there’s still one part of The Adaptive Approach we haven’t explored properly.
You can build the framework, choose the channels and establish the rhythm.
But how do you know if any of it is actually working?
You MEASURE it all.
This article is part of The Adaptive Approach insight series.