Communication Schedule

Modern media platforms are powerful interactive channels, but their features can make it challenging for team members to remain focused on company objectives. Each channel manager must balance their proactive and reactive tasks; they must contribute to organizational goals yet remain responsive to ad-hoc requests. Time logs and a media schedule will contribute to time management struggles by creating an environment of purpose, accountability, and direction.

Creating rapport with your key audience takes time; but, time is scarce for resource-strapped organizations. Publishing content regularly, on schedule helps develop relationships by building trust and predictability. Media platforms that enable real-time conversations and analytics complicate matters. Each channel has enough "busy" features to keep an expert working all day with little quantifiable benefit. The key to getting the most out of each channel in your mix is to remain proactive, but "proactive" looks different for each channel. 

Your time log should be an ongoing, standard operating procedure, yet not stress resources significantly. The goal is to classify your media tactics quickly to quantify how each contributes to organizational goals. Here are a few examples for your consideration. 

• Write and distribute the monthly internal company Newsletter (proactive)
• Respond to a customer support question (reactive)
• Interact with a comment on YouTube post (reactive)
• Create and post a new branded Instagram image (proactive)
• Prepare an analytic insight, report for a scheduled meeting (proactive)
• Prepare a presentation for a last-minute meeting (reactive)
• Launch an unscheduled paid search campaign upon request (reactive)
• Create a Facebook Display ad campaign for a holiday campaign (proactive)
• Answer email questions about data integrity (reactive)
• Make last-minute changes to copy or images on profile pages due to internal requests (reactive) 
• Contribute to an internal messenger discussion regarding integration protocols for Google Analytics (reactive)

The list in the previous column is just a sample of the many activities to consider with modern media platforms. The point is that all your channel managers are balancing their proactive and reactive duties with internal and external requests. In reality, all the activities above help the organization to some degree, but some are proactive while others are reactive. The proactive ones generally hit a wider audience with a more remarkable ability to communicate branded messages. 

Every channel in your media mix is unique. A paid search account requires little, if any, interaction with external people. In contrast, a social media profile page, like Facebook, needs daily attention. Working tirelessly on your site's search engine optimization requires no outside interaction, whereas answering customer support emails requires immediate responses. The trick is to find the correct media mix that allows you to pursue your communication objectives with limited resources. 

You're more likely to create the branded impressions you want when you are in proactive mode. Feedback channels are essential, but they are fundamentally different. Proactive tactics allow you to control the message, include branded elements, touch a larger audience, remain predictable, and create valuable propriety content. 

Here are a few calendar ideas you can schedule that will give more purpose and direction to your media channels: 

1. Holidays: Valentine's Day, New Year's Day, Religious Holidays, Mother's Day, Black Friday
2. Annual Industry Events or Summits
3. Strategic Partner Events
4. Company Events: Earnings Reports, Anniversaries, Product Release, Software Update
5. Annual Promotions or Sales: Winter Clearance, New Arrivals, Cyber Monday 
6. Seasonality: Back-to-School, Tax Season, End-of-the-Year
7. Monthly Newsletter
8. Crisis Management Planning (Plan for Fires in advance!)

Placing any of these events on your calendar allows your channel managers to schedule their time in advance to create thoughtfully branded content that will connect with a broad audience. Collectively, the material you make for a single event can be leveraged across your entire media mix. From a communication perspective, it's proprietary wealth. 

Balancing your public-facing communication goals with internal demands is tricky. Employees have numerous ways to interact with each other: video conferencing, email, messenger groups, phone, desk drop-in, virtual meetings, scheduled in-person meetings, and more. Channel managers also need to grapple with the interactive features of the channels they manage, like Facebook. Modern media tools are powerful, but their utility can also be distracting. From our experience, an internal policy, a communication schedule will help increase productivity.
 

Imagine you're a web developer, a search marketing manager, a graphic designer, or a copywriter. The content you create for the organization requires a significant investment of focused time. Random interruptions by drop-in, phone, email, messenger groups, or otherwise can severely hamper focus and productivity. True, all the internal interactions likely benefit the organization but consider the audience size of the activity and whether it's proactive. 

Creating a company communication schedule is as much about placing events on the calendar as creating expectations for day-to-day media managers. Every company is unique, as is the scope of work for each employee, but, from our experience, a culture of predictability increases productivity. Emergencies will always need immediate attention, but one of the goals of a schedule is to minimize these types of crises. 

Office Hours. Your team members will likely be busy throughout the day, but creating a set of cross-team "office hours" allows them to interact freely with members of other teams for questions, explanations, follow-ups, etc. More importantly, it sets the expectation that ad-hoc requests will likely not get immediate responses outside of those hours. The goal is to create a culture of collaboration yet still give each employee the time they need to focus on their deliverables. 

Meeting Hours. One-off questions with simple answers are best addressed during office hours, but sometimes team members need a more intense collaboration. These situations are ideal for meeting hours. More importantly, each team member should identify a regular, predictable time that other members can schedule for meeting hours.  

Creative Hours. These are the regular hours when each team member will work on their specific channel(s). Ideally, these hours will be the same across teams to facilitate uninterrupted or collaborative work projects. Most of your media team's proactive work will be performed during designated creative hours. They should be a large block of hours on the schedule.

Creating a culture of predictable office hours, meeting hours, and creative hours may seem like common sense, but it isn't as easy as it sounds. From our experience, a company's ability to coordinate for an external calendar event depends on its adherence to an internal schedule.

Modern media platforms can be disruptive or powerful tools. Your media managers have to balance internal and external requests. They must also determine whether their tactics contribute proactively or reactively to company goals. And they must balance all the interactive features of each media platform they manage. Putting a time log in place will create transparency for each manager and across the company. Creating a 

Your brand's predictability and public perception will likely be due to your proprietary content than your reactive interactions. Vagary will help you create a realistic communication schedule for external calendar events and internal day-to-day tactics based on your resources.