HSH704: Communications Strategy- Legionnaires Disease- Strategy & Implementation Plan- Communication Plan Assignment Help

Internal Code: 1HEGH

Communication Plan Assignment Help:

Task: Effective communication is vital in the health promotion space. We can produce fabulous research, interventions, and activities such as seminars and conferences but if we do not communicate well no one knows about them and nothing changes. This task asks you to develop a sophisticated communications strategy around a specific awareness campaign. You need to ensure that your awareness campaign is publicised to the right people in a timely manner. You will need to think carefully about who your stakeholders are and how you can best reach and communicate with them. Today we also need to be willing and sufficiently skilled to integrate social media communication techniques with traditional methods such as bulk emails, webpages, media releases and radio announcements. This task asks you to consider both strategic and functional communication. The strategy is the big picture: what is it you hope to achieve and for what purpose? The functional is all about the detail. What, when, where and how will you deliver it? What tools will you use (i.e. media releases, radio, survey, website, Twitter, Blog, etc.)? 1. Select your Issue Develop a communications strategy to raise awareness about an issue. Select from the following issues: i) Legionnaires’ Disease (NB: media reports of several cases linked to Melbourne’s CBD reported in Jan/Feb 2018) ii) Listeria (NB: media reports of several deaths across Australia in early 2018 linked to eating rock melons) iii) Alcohol culture among university students (NB: recent media reports of disturbing incidents particularly linked to ‘O week’ events and on campus residential accommodation) iv) Online bullying (ongoing reports of suicides and distress caused by online bullying) Once you have selected your topic, you should then position yourself as being responsible for raising awareness about this issue to relevant stakeholders (e.g. communications officer in the health department; health promotion officer working with universities and schools; other). If unsure how to proceed talk to your tutor, but do so early... not the day before it’s due! 2. Develop a Communications Strategy Briefly describe your issue and provide background information, including any reputable data (using Deakin Harvard referencing). Write a strategy that explains what you are trying to achieve. This is all about big picture thinking. What is your goal here? Are you trying encourage the development of more knowledge and understanding about the issue? Are you trying to advocate or lobby for a change in attitude or a cultural change in your organisation or region? Are you hoping to influence a change in policy or an injection of funds from politicians? Are you wanting to get people talking about a sensitive issue so that we as a community can have a more informed debate about appropriate interventions to address it? In your strategy you need to explain who the stakeholders are and how you will communicate with them. You should include a stakeholder analysis in your strategy. It is essential that you refer to the stakeholder analysis lecture found in weekly resources. Explain what tools you will use and why? (e.g. 5 media releases in local paper over a 10 week period to keep the issue bubbling along; a survey monkey survey to gauge opinions; a blog; a simple 30 sec video to advertise an event; other). How will you measure your success? Develop a set of metrics to determine the impact of your communications strategy. (E.g. How many hits on the website? How many calls to register for the event? Other?). Think carefully about how you will measure the effectiveness of your communications strategy. This is important. Good strategies have clear impact measures. What are the risks? A good communications strategy will also consider the potential risks and will include a simple risk management plan. This will involve identifying potential risks to you and/or your organisation and appropriate mitigations and responses should the worst case happen. This typically can comprise a series of statements or can be presented in a simple grid or matrix stating the potential risk and what could be done to minimise and/or respond to it. Examples of risks for activities presented here include: a) to reputation or image b) to finances c) to physical/mental health and wellbeing 3. Develop a Communications Plan A Communications Plan is the functional document that provides a precise template for all the detail involved in delivering your strategy. What will you do, when and how? Use the sample template provided in the AT2 Resources folder to help guide you. Keep your Communications Plan clear and simple. Make sure you are targeting the right stakeholders for your event with the right tools. Make sure the dates make sense. Allow plenty of lead time. Make sure your key messages are clear. This document is often a one to two pager presented in a matrix or table so that it is easy to follow. Word count for the Communications Plan part of this assignment will typically be about 500 words. 4. Develop on social media tool for use in your strategy Utilise Twitter to help publicise your issue. Create a Twitter strategy that enhances your overall communications strategy. Include general reference to this in your communications strategy and your communication plan but provide the specific details here in this section of the task. Describe your twitter strategy. What are you trying to achieve with it? How will you ensure significant reach with your key messages and how will you scaffold them (i.e. build the narrative from one tweet to the next)? Consider how you will time the release of each new tweet for maximum effect. You are required to also provide between 5 – 10 sample tweets and between 5 – 10 suitable hashtags in order to demonstrate that you understand the mechanics of  Twitter.