Process
The process I undertake with you depends on your needs and the project. Fairly consistent phases are:
Exploration
You come to me with a need. Your need might be well defined: “We need to launch a monthly e-newsletter” or “This white paper has great content but is disorganized and deathly dull.” Or you might have a broader need that’s less well defined: “Our website needs fresh content!” or “We want to make people better aware of what we do.”
In either case, I work with you to refine your need and define what I can do to help. Mostly I ask a lot of questions. When the project is well defined, the questions revolve around the piece itself:
- What do you want this piece to accomplish?
- Who is our audience? And what need of theirs can we fulfill?
- Where does the raw information come from?
- What should the final product look like?
When you know you need something—a more robust website, a better public image, more outreach—but you don’t know exactly how to get there, the questions get broader:
- Who are you? What is the purpose of your organization? How do you accomplish those goals?
- To what extent are you currently “getting across” who you are and what you do? How do stakeholders perceive your organization and its work?
- Where does your communications program need to get to, and how will we know when we’ve arrived?
At this point, I would generally submit a proposal for a comprehensive, strategic communications plan.
Contracting
For specific products, I work on a per-piece (not per-hour or per-word) basis. I’ll write out the scope of work and propose a price for each piece (or set of pieces). My rates vary depending on the level of expertise needed. Copyediting, for example, costs less than writing from scratch, which in turn cost less than communications strategy.
For a comprehensive communications strategy, I’ll give you a proposal for developing the strategic plan. The plan includes specific pieces I can develop for you, and what outside expertise might be needed. We then use that plan to decide together what to implement. Depending on your needs and budget, I might suggest per-piece pricing for all products including the plan itself, or it might make sense to set up a retainer arrangement for a specific period of time.
So we negotiate prices and deadlines, and then we sign a contract—my form or yours.
Implementation
So then I retire to my home office to write or edit. Rarely, with simple projects, I write or edit for a while, then I hand over the final product, and we’re finished.
More often, I come back to you with specific questions or suggestions. I might hand over a first pass for your feedback. Together, we further refine what we want the piece to accomplish and how to make it understandable to our audience. Then I take another pass at it—and we keep at it until we both think the product is perfect.
Obviously Implementation gets much more complicated when we’re working together on a strategic communications plan. I’ll give you a plan, but we work together to refine it. Only then do we start implementing specific pieces to ensure that we meet your goals.
Implementation often includes working with designers to ensure attractive presentation, either online or in print. I’ll work with designers you already have in place or help identify the right person for the job.
Successful Completion!
A project gets completed--a website launched, a brochure ready to take to the next conference or trade show, a legislative brief ready to go to your lobbying office and website, a journal or newsletter published. But a successful communications program is never finished. Websites need fresh content as often as possible, the newest program needs its own brochure, the e-newsletter needs to go out weekly or monthly, the next issue of the journal has to be in process before the previous one even goes to the printer. I hope that our first project together will be the start of a long and fruitful relationship.