What a real communication strategy looks like

Most communication strategies are a deck full of channels and a posting schedule. That's a plan, not a strategy. Strategy is the harder, quieter work of deciding what you are and, just as importantly, what you're not.

Start with the audience and the belief

Before tone, channels or campaigns, answer two things: who is this really for, and what do we want them to believe that they don't today? Everything else flows from that. A brand that tries to talk to everyone says nothing to anyone. Pick the people who matter and the one shift you want in their heads.

One message, repeated, beats ten clever ones

Consistency is underrated because it's boring. But people don't remember your fifteenth clever campaign; they remember the one thing you kept saying until it stuck. Find the core message that's true, specific and yours, and have the discipline to repeat it across every channel and every quarter, even when you're sick of it. You get bored of it long before the audience has heard it once.

Decide what you'll say no to

A real strategy is a filter. It tells you which opportunities, trends and requests to turn down because they don't fit who you are. If your strategy can't kill a bad-but-tempting idea, it isn't doing its job. The no's protect the brand more than the yes's build it.

Make it survive a Tuesday

The best strategy is useless if the team can't apply it on a Tuesday under deadline. Write it so a junior can make a call with it without asking you. Keep it short, concrete and honest about the trade-offs. A one-page strategy people actually use beats a fifty-page one that lives in a drawer.