Communications for Life, How to

 STRATEGIES HOW YOU’ LL CONNECT WITH THE MEDIA AND OTHERS TO                     

             SPREAD YOUR MESSAGE.

Establishing relationships with individual media representatives and media outlets is an important part of a communication plan, as is doing the same with influential individuals and institutions in the community and/or the population you’re trying to reach. 
You have to make personal contacts, give the media and others reasons to want to help you, and follow through over time to sustain those relationships in order to keep communication channels open.

The individuals that can help you spread your message can vary from formal community leaders elected officials, CEO of important local, businesses, clergy, etc. – to community activists and ordinary citizens.  Institutions and organisations, such as colleges, hospitals, service clubs, faith communities, and other health and community organisations all have access to groups of community members who might need to hear your message.

1.CREATE AN ACTION PLAN

Now the task is to put it all together into a plan that you can act on. By the time you reach this point, your plan will already be essentially done. You know what your purpose is and whom you need to reach to accomplish it, what your message should contain and look like, what you can afford, what problems you might face, what channels can best be used to reach your intended audience, and how to gain access to those channels. 

Now it’s just a matter of putting the details together – actually composing and designing your message (perhaps more than one, in order to use lots of channels), making contact with the people who can help you get your message out, and getting everything in place to start your communication effort. And finally, you'll evaluate your effort so that you can continue to make it better.

2.EVALUATION

 If you evaluate your communication plan in terms of both how well you carry it out and how well it works, you’ll be able to make changes to improve it. It will keep getting more effective each time you implement it.

And there’s really a ninth step to developing a communication plan; as with just about every phase of health and community work, you have to keep up the effort, adjusting your plan and communicating with the community.


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