The real value of a communications strategy for small teams

I am going to say something that might sound self-serving, given that I am a communications consultant who literally writes these things for a living. But here it is anyway: a communications strategy is not a luxury. Not for big cities with entire comms departments. And especially not for the small municipality with one communications person who is also somehow responsible for the website, the Facebook page, council agendas, and that one reporter who keeps calling about the water main.

I have been the single comms person in a small city and I have led larger teams in bigger cities. A strategy matters in both situations. But I would argue the smaller your team, the more you need one.

I hear the opposite a lot. A town of 5,000 people does not need a communications strategy. They just need someone who can write a decent media release and keep the website updated, right? Here is the thing. That person, the one doing all of it, is making dozens of communications decisions every single day. What goes on social media. What does not. How to respond to that angry Facebook comment. Whether to send a news release or just post it on the website. Whether to spend three hours on a video nobody asked for because a councillor saw another municipality do it (Am I right?! – How many videos have you spent thousands of dollars on?).

Without a strategy, every one of those decisions is made in a vacuum. Or worse, it is made based on whoever is loudest in the room at the time. A strategy does not add work. It removes the guesswork.

Let me be clear about what we are talking about here. Here is what a communications strategy is not:  a 40-page document that lives in a binder on a shelf, a social media calendar, a task list, or a crisis communications plan (although it should absolutely inform one).

A good communications strategy tells you why you are communicating, who you are trying to reach, and what success looks like. It connects your communications work to what your organization is actually trying to accomplish. That matters for the person doing the work because it gives them a framework for making all those daily decisions. But it also matters for the people who approve budgets, because it shows them what communications is supposed to be doing and whether it is working.

I have worked with municipalities where the comms person was doing heroic work: putting in long hours. producing beautiful content, running five social media accounts, but none of it was connected to the organization’s strategic priorities. These were super capable rock stars but no one had ever drawn a line or turned on that north star. A strategy draws the line and provides that shiny north star – it provides direction.

This might be my favourite thing about having a strategy in place. It gives you the ability to say no. Every communications person I have ever worked with, from towns of 3,000 to cities of 80,000, has the same problem. People come to them with requests. The recreation department wants a TikTok account. A councillor wants a YouTube channel. Someone in planning heard about a municipality that built an app and now they want one too.

Without a strategy, the comms person is stuck. They either say yes to everything and burn out, or they say no and look like they are being difficult. With a strategy, the answer becomes: “That is a great idea. Let’s look at how it fits with our communications priorities and our capacity.” Sometimes the answer is still yes. But now it is a yes that makes sense, instead of a yes that means something else is not getting done. For small teams especially, this is everything. When you have one person, or even half a person (and yes, I have worked with municipalities where communications is someone’s side-of-the-desk responsibility), you cannot do everything. A strategy helps you do the right things.

Here is where it gets strategic in the truest sense. Your municipality has a strategic plan. It has priorities. Maybe it is housing, or infrastructure, or downtown revitalization, or reconciliation. Those priorities require public understanding, support, and sometimes patience. Communications is how you build that understanding. But only if the communications work is deliberately connected to those priorities.

I have sat in rooms where a CAO is frustrated that the public does not understand why a project is taking so long, and the comms person is frustrated because they have been posting event photos and pothole updates all week and have not had time to write the project update. Both people are doing their best. Neither one has a strategy connecting those two realities. When I work with a small municipality on a communications strategy, that connection is the whole point. We are not creating busywork. We are creating clarity about what the communications function is for, what it can realistically deliver with the resources it has, and what it needs to stop doing so it can focus on the work that actually moves the needle.

A communications strategy is one of the best tools a CAO or department head has for making the case for resources. Not because the strategy says “we need more staff” on page one, but because it lays out what the organization needs communications to deliver, and then shows, clearly and without drama, whether current resources can get that done. I have seen strategies lead to new positions being approved. Not because I recommended it in the document (though, sometimes I do), but because the gap between “here is what we need” and “here is what we have” was suddenly visible to the people who make budget decisions. That is not a luxury. That is a management tool.

Five things you can do right now

1. If your communications work is not connected to your organization’s strategic plan, start there. You do not need a finished strategy to draw that line. You just need to ask: what are our priorities, and is our communications work helping people understand them?

2. The next time someone asks for a new channel, a new platform, or a new campaign, ask two questions. First: what is the goal and how does it align with council’s priorities? Second: how does it fit with what you are already doing, and what would it replace? If the answer to that second question is ‘nothing, we will just add it on,’ that is a capacity problem, not an enthusiasm problem.

3. Write down every communications task your team handles in a typical week. Show it to your CAO or director. The list itself is a conversation starter about priorities and resources.

4. If you are a CAO or elected official reading this, ask your communications person whether they have a strategy or are working without one. If it is the latter, that is not their fault. It is an organizational gap, and closing it is one of the highest-value investments you can make.

5. A strategy does not have to be a massive document. It needs to answer three questions clearly: why are we communicating, who are we trying to reach, and what does success look like? Everything else flows from that.