Identify the information how to fulfil the information needs of each stakeholder

Identify the information for fulfilling the information needs of each stakeholder

Mandatory: The types of communication are required by your organization, your sector of activity or by law. This information is pushed to recipients.

· Project Status Reports

· Regular voicemail updates (of status)

· Status meetings

· Meetings with steering committee

· Regular conference calls and videoconferences with remote stakeholders

· Government required reports and other information

· Financial reporting such as budget or any other required financial information

Informational: This is information people want to know, or that they may need for their jobs. This information is made available for people to read, but requires them to take the initiative, or pull the communication.

· Awareness building sessions that people are invited to attend. (These are not meant as training, just to build awareness.)

· Project paper-based deliverables placed in a common repository, directory or library that people can access

· Project information on a website

Marketing: These are designed to build buy-in and enthusiasm for the project and its deliverables. This type of communication is also pushed to the readers.

· Project newsletters, with positive marketing spin

· Meeting one-on-one with key stakeholders on an ongoing basis

· Contests with simple prizes to build excitement

· Project acronyms and slogans to portray positive images of the project

· Project countdown till live date

· Informal (but purposeful) walking around to talk up the project to team members, users and stakeholder.

· Celebrations to bring visibility to the completion of major milestones

· Project memorabilia with project name or image portrayed, such as pins, pencils, Frisbees, cups, T-shirts, etc.

· Publicising accomplishments

See also

How Important is It? How important is the message you want to send, or the problem you are working on? Is there a crisis that has to be dealt with? How much effort, time, and money are you willing to invest in it? In order to do this, you have to be able to determine what the actual cost is. In terms of communication projects, first you have to determine how many people will be involved in the process. Then you have to determine how many hours have been—or will have to be—spent on creating, preparing, and distributing the actual message, and then multiply them by the appropriate hourly rates.

How Dangerous is It? Every time you send a message you are leaving yourself open to scrutiny, misinterpretation, and misrepresentation. You have to learn how to remove or at least reduce the danger that a message leaves you open to. What we sometimes lose sight of, usually until it is too late, is how dangerous information can be. Danger exists whether the information is true, or even close to the truth.

Tailor the Message to Each Audience Different audiences require different message styles. You must learn how to tailor your message to the specific audience or audiences it is aimed at. Even when the message is the same for people of different ages, incomes, interests, races, occupations, and such, you still often have to say it in different ways to get noticed by all the sub-groups within the larger population. You will then have to develop a communication plan in order to make sure that your message reaches the audience or audiences it is aimed at.

See more in [[Communication production]]

Production

Here is where you actually put it all together. If it’s a speech, it must be well prepared. If it is a news release, it has to be written. TV commercials need actors, announcers, videographers, directors, and production crews so they can be shot, edited, and duplicated. No matter what message or messages you want to send, or how you want to send them, time and talent go into producing the finished product.

This is also when you might need to make changes—sometimes, major changes. A line of dialogue that looked good on paper might not sound that good coming from the actor’s mouth. The logical argument that the team fought over and finally agreed on may not be that logical when you read it. The photograph that was supposed to capture the beauty and uniqueness of your new widget looks exactly like every other picture of a widget that you have ever seen.

When you finally have it written, edited, and produced, then it is time to test market it. You and your team may look at it and be impressed. The real test comes when you show it to others.

Collect groups of people like those you are aiming at, bring them together, show it to them, and then ask for their feedback or comments. Remember, however, that you are not there to explain why you are doing this, what the message is, or what they should think of it. You just show it to them, and ask them what they think.

In fact, it is usually better to turn this phase of the operation over to someone who has not spent as much time and effort on it; someone who is not emotionally involved in or committed to it; someone who can be objective and dispassionate about the results.

The questions for the test groups or focus groups have to be phrased as carefully as the ones you asked initially to find out what people thought or believed. Once again, you are after honest answers, not opinions that agree with yours. If they match the demographics of your target audiences, and they should, these are the same types of people who will be seeing the finished product. The public will probably react the way your focus groups will.

If the test audiences get it, or are moved by it, your message has good chances of reaching your target constituency—the people just like the ones in your test groups.

If they do not like it, if they do not get it, if they do not believe it, if they find it confusing, awkward, condescending, dishonest, insulting, unconvincing, or, even worse, boring, then you need to go back and change either the message itself, or the way you deliver it. This can be awkward, embarrassing, time-consuming, and expensive.

The point to remember is that only a small group of people saw your first effort. You have another chance to come up with something your target audience will like before you commit your time and money to sending it out to the different media you have identified as the best way to reach your various constituencies.

You might have to go through this entire process more than once.

It is only after your message or messages have been received and accepted by your focus groups that you are ready to send them out to all of the people you are trying to reach.

Timing There is a limited amount of space on page one of any newspaper, and only so many minutes available for any radio or TV newscast. Reporters and editors have to rank every story against every other story going on that day. As a result, there are days that one story will be on page one. That same story on another date would be lucky to get into the paper at all because other, more important news was happening. It’s all a matter of timing. Getting the timing right requires you to understand what else is happening in your organization, your field, the stock market, the government, the news, and the economy in general, and how your release and other events could react together.

Keep Repeating Your Message If you are sending a message, you usually have to keep repeating yourself in order to be heard above all the other competing messages, and to make sure the message registers with its target audience and that they can remember it. We live in a media-intense world in which messages are constantly being sent. We are bombarded with them. Messages, especially the important ones, have to be repeated. You have to keep the message fresh and interesting, however, if you expect people to keep listening.

Effective Writing Effective writing requires some of the same skills as public speaking, which we will look at later in the course. The main difference is in the final form in which you present the words—written or spoken. Remember this. You cannot write something and make it clear and easy for your readers, or listeners, to follow unless you understand it yourself and have worked out what you want to say—and how you want to say it. As Albert Einstein put it: “You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.”

Effective Public Speaking A speech is an essay, just like those you wrote in school, but it is an essay designed to be spoken, not read. If you’re the one giving the speech, then you are really an actor performing it—the star of the show. This section will not only show you how to plan, organize, and deliver a speech, but will also include some tips to help you deal with any stage fright or nervousness you might have.

General vs. Specific Information Some information, or knowledge, has a price tag; it is a product. This is the basis for all movies, television, music, books, magazines, and newspapers. This is why we have “media empires.” It follows logically, then, that some information is proprietary; someone owns it. Some is private; nobody else’s project/programme purpose. Some is available to certain people at certain times under certain conditions. Finally, some is available to anyone and all who might be interested, at any time, and for any reason.

What Do You Want to Say? Whatever message you send out should be clear, and easy to understand. Your message has to be both clear to you and to the person receiving it. That means it has to be well written.

What Does It Really Mean? One of the goals of any communication strategy is to make sure that all the messages that are released are structured in such a way as to reduce, the possibility of misinterpretation. The key to avoiding misinterpretation is to make sure that the meaning is obvious.

How Will You Say It? In this section we will focus on how to get the message out once you have created it. There are many ways to reach the general news media and, through them, the public. They range from news releases and news conferences to full-scale media campaigns that can include advertising, marketing, direct mail, public relations, speaking tours, videos, DVDs, and CD-ROMs.

Who Will Do the Talking? Who speaks for your organization? Some use their CEOs. Some hire actors or other celebrities to be their spokespeople. Some, like Michelin, even use an animated character. Another way to give a organization a consistent voice is to make sure that everyone who speaks for the organization keeps actions and comments in line with the approved communication strategy.

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Involving Stakeholders

Introduction

Building Trust

Involving Directly Affected Stakeholders

Seeking Feedback

Involving the Voiceless

Involving the Opposition

Participatory Planning and Decisionmaking

What Do Participatory Techniques Achieve?

Creating a Learning Mood

Building Community Capacity

Understanding Community Organizations

Building the Capacity of Community Organizations

Partecipation Methods and Tools

Introduction Methods and Tools

Appreciation-Influence-Control (AIC)

Objectives-Oriented Project Planning (ZOPP)

TeamUP

Beneficiary Assessment

Glossary of tool