“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
I am a big believer in plans. I think every great idea needs a plan behind it if we are going to bring that idea to life. My friend Ben always says that spreadsheets are the skeleton of ideas. If you have been to this blog very often you know I believe a $1 idea with a plan is far more valuable than a million dollar idea with no plan to make it actionable.
At Cross Point every event or ministry initiative we have is accompanied by a communication plan. Yesterday we were going over some of those plans and building our communication and social media strategies. There are 3 R’s that we bring into every communication/social media plan that we create:
- Reset – What needs to be completely overhauled or what new ideas do we need to incorporate into our plan? What didn’t work or what great new awesome idea do we need to include in our plan to meet the goals, gain attention, and create traction. This is where innovation gets a chance to play.
- Repeat – What are the things that worked so well that we need to repeat them either in this campaign or from another campaign? We have to be very careful we are not using ideas in a plug and play fashion. Not very many things are cut and paste for us because we want to always make sure we are creating communication ideas that are unique to that initiative. Repeating is the quickest way to lose our edge and stop innovating.
- Remix – What do we need to take from our past or from others and remix for this plan? What can we make better or make do a better job connecting to the ideas and initiative we are working on? Remixing is fun for teams because it is usually taking something that has proven to work and breathing new life into an idea. We work hard to make sure we infuse our DNA in any idea we decide to remix.
When we are building social and communication plans our goals are pretty simple. We want to be very clear with our communication. We want to tell a compelling story that shares the “WHY”, we want to be irresistibly interesting, we want give a next step, and we are always striving to create something that is sticky enough that people want to interact with the message or better share it with others.
Do you have a plan for your ideas? If not how do you know they will succeed?
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