One of the most important elements of an effective communications and dissemination strategy is making sure you know your audience, and not just who they are. You also need to know their interests, what you are going to say to them, how they prefer to receive information and when is the best time to contact them.
Crack all that and you are well on you way to being able to ensure your project and its results are being seen by those who have a genuine interest in what you are doing – an engaged and receptive audience.
Don’t think of them as users, beneficiaries, or, those catch-all groups “wider society” and “stakeholders”. Your audience is made up of people and you need to know these people and provide them with information that you know will be useful, interesting and relevant to each and every one of them.
That’s how we at Insight Media approach the development of our dissemination, exploitation and communications strategies for all our projects, and though there is a basic template to follow every time, each strategy is different depending on the type of project it is and the people we are trying to reach.
So where to start?
We always start by identifying who we believe will be interested in the project outcomes – so, looking at what we are setting out to achieve in the project and then who is likely to benefit from that work. Of course, at the start of this process, this is not a precise science and we are looking at groups and sectors and connected bodies and associations to get us going.
For example, if the project is developing technology to be used in manufacturing, we are assessing the types of industries where this tech may be applied and then looking at relevant bodies, clusters and associations related to that industry as well as specific companies.
If the work may have potential policy impacts, then we look at where these may apply and at what level – EU, national or municipality, for example.
Perhaps the work will impact directly on workers in specific industries, then how are we going to access these people? Perhaps through the companies themselves, of course, but trade unions and trade associations may also be valuable contacts.
Projects will often be developing standards or addressing issues that impact on existing standards, so it will be useful to understand which the relevant standards bodies are, and who is best to contact in relation to your specific work.
Academia, fellow researchers, other relevant projects – here we have a rich vein of contacts who will need to know about your project. Collaboration opportunities and shared insights are extremely valuable for those involved in EU projects – and the EU looks very favourably on this type of communication, too, as sharing what you can and working on common goals often delivers better exploitation opportunities for all.
The media is always a valuable friend to have in a project. Remember, we are communicating with people, and people access a huge amount of information through the media. If you can interest the media, specialist or mainstream (or both!) in your work, then this will amplify your message across your audience groups very quickly.
Insight Media has a large and responsive media database so has access to a huge number of media channels and journalists working in very targeted sectors, which is why we recommend working with a specialist consultancy like us. But if you don’t have this in your armoury, use your press departments in your company or university and ask them to help you with this task.
Having identified your target audience groups at this top level, then your stakeholder analysis starts in earnest – the task of identifying the people in these groups with whom you will be communicating and building your database – and building your relationships.
Of course, this analysis of the “who” will also involve many other tasks – identifying the specific outcomes of your work which apply to each group, defining the messages that will best resonate with each, and assessing the best ways to target them with this information and when to do that.
I will cover this work in future blogs in this series, but I hope, for now, you have a good understanding of the importance of knowing your audience and that your audience is made up of that key ingredient in every project – people.
- Insight Media is a leading European agency specialising in communication, dissemination and exploitation strategies designed for research projects and organisation. Insight Media has also worked with several research funding programmes in Europe, and provides a full array of communications services from publications, event coordination and media relationships to project films, websites and exploitation planning.