Developing an effective communication plan

Developing an effective communication plan is essential for keeping your business communications running smoothly. Such a plan will help you ensure consistency and clarity in both internal and external communications, meet deadlines, keep key people informed, and allocate resources.

Here are some tips for producing a plan that will help your business meet its goals for communications.

• Start by becoming familiar with the structure and purpose of communication plans. You may want to begin with a communication plan template to guide you through the process.
• Contact key players early in the process and meet with them. Departments that produce documents, such as Technical Communications and Marketing, should be included. Also include any high-level staff that are in charge of overall communication strategies for your business. By including representatives from key departments, you can increase the thoroughness of your communication plan and make it more effective.
• Gather existing notes on communication policies. Often these will be organized and distributed in an inconsistent manner. Writing a communication plan gives you a chance to consolidate them and make them easily accessible.
• Ask interested parties for any deliverables lists, documentation schedules, deadlines, etc. produced in the past. This information will give you a head start in fleshing out your communication plan.
• As you look over past communications, try to assess and categorize the audience for each. These categories will help you create policies for addressing each audience, so staff can refer to them for future communications.
• Also try to summarize the goals for each type of communication. Your plan will help you formalize the goals, but the process will be easier if you already have a clear understanding. If you have questions, follow up with the staff responsible for that type of communication, and ask them to help you clarify the goals.
• When the plan is complete, have all interested parties review for any inaccuracies.

Following these steps will help you produce a communication plan that helps your business reach its communication goals.

Technical communicators cannot be provoked

Have you ever received a review comment that totally ticked you off?

Perhaps a sarcastic comment with no practical suggestion for improving the content? Maybe even one that questioned your abilities as a writer and the value of your contribution to the product?

The dangerous thing about being a writer is that you're well equipped for unleashing scathing replies. If your buttons have been pushed, chances are your retaliation will bite deep and leave no room for misinterpretation. After all, you sling words for a living, right? Like the hands of Kwai Chang Caine, your words are deadly weapons.

Hold that thought...

Entrenched

Imagine you are knee deep in water and holding a musket over your head. It is a dark night, and the shadow of the bridge you're hiding under blocks even the faint moonlight.

You can't stop shaking from the cold.

Through the fog, you hear the muffled screams of injured soldiers as the doctors do their best to keep them breathing. Your stomach cramps from hunger, but you hold your post. At all costs, you'll hold your post, because the bridge under which you stand is the only passage for incoming supplies. It represents food, reinforcement, and a path for retreat, if necessary.

For days you've held that post, and now it is the only thought on which your starved spirit can focus.

Suddenly you notice a flicker out of the corner of your eye. A torch?

Then, you see the surreal image of a soldier reaching out and lighting fire to the bridge. As it burns, all hope of ever reaching home drains from your body, and the night erupts with the sounds of chaos and fighting.

On bridges, and burning them

As tempting as it may be to fire off a biting reply to an obnoxious comment, you'd be setting fire to your own bridge. Across that bridge are your allies. They have the information you need to win the war against bad documentation, and writing great user manuals requires more than an army of one.

Before you blow that bridge into oblivion, consider the cost. Sure, you might feel a bit better after blowing off some steam. But in the long run, you'll have lost a valuable relationship.

Instead, take a five minute break and do something enjoyable. Maybe when you come back, you'll see the offensive comments in a new light. You might even arrive at an understanding of why they were written.

Perhaps the reviewer was just having a bad day.

Keep the peace and everybody wins.

(Is this post too melodramatic? Sure. But it least you read it to the end.)

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