"What are communications objectives?"

Understanding why communications objectives are important makes a big difference to how you shape your communications. 

 

In a nutshell, communications can inform, involve and engage your audiences. All of these results can help to change what people understand or do. If you are ambitious and have long-term plans, you can use communications to change what people think or even believe. 

To do these things successfully you need to be clear about what you want to achieve. 

 

Then you can start to think about how you can use the process of informing, involving and engaging people to help you succeed. 

 

Usually you will plan to inform, then involve and finally engage people; each step leading to the next. 

Sometimes, however, you might need to do things the other way around. This is especially true when you are dealing with an environment where employees are disengaged and are not getting involved in projects or initiatives and say that they don’t know what’s going on. 

 

If this is your communication challenge, then it is your chance to get really creative. You will then be looking for exciting and interesting communications that will catch people’s interest and make them want to know more. 

 

Then you can slip in the information you want to share. 

You will also need to decide how you will know whether you have successfully communicated the right messages, and whether they have had the results you intended. 

 

If you don’t include measurement in your communications plan you won’t know what’s working and whether you need to do anything more or different.