Designing a communications framework for community engagement
Most teams don’t realize that what they need is a communications strategist until they work with one, their engagement rates increase, and they need them forever. A communications strategist is not a magician, but we are experts in audience insights and motivation, content creation and storytelling. Most people think that good communication is about writing well, but it is so much more than that. It is about creating momentum, understanding what motivates your audience, how and where to talk to them, and how to be consistent in all the platforms where you engage with others.
During my tenure at the Wikimedia Foundation, I designed a communications framework with this holistic approach in mind. In 2014, I was hired to work in the Learning and Evaluation team, within the Community Engagement department, but I soon started supporting other teams in this division of the Wikimedia Foundation. I designed the communications process around two goals: more effectively tracking and responding to requests, and developing a consistent voice and identity for our department. In this blog, I outline the tools I use and some of the most significant lessons I learned in the process.
Communications logic model
A logic model [1] is a framework that describes the relationship between a program’s inputs, outputs and outcomes. I created this visual representation to map the various services I offer as a communications strategist, what outputs and outcomes they deliver, and how this is tied to larger department and organizational goals.
I described all the activities I was already carrying out, and also incorporated other activities that were led by my colleagues, which are also communication efforts. An example of this is the program Inspire Campaigns, the Foundation’s proactive grantmaking effort, led by my colleague Chris Schilling. Inspire Campaigns are month-long events that engage community members online. Participants propose ideas to meet some of the Wikimedia movement’s most pressing challenges. We identify a problem, and community members propose solutions. In the end, some of these ideas are selected for funding. These campaigns promote certain topics for community members to work on. By implementing these crowdsourcing campaigns, we are acting as agenda setters for the larger Wikimedia movement.
Mapping communication activities was also useful to identify possible gaps. What are we not doing yet? What do we need to do more of? Leveraging a communications strategy to reflect on existing work is key to innovation.
Communication plans
The main output of the communications planning meeting is a communications plan. I like to think of the comms plan as a contract with the project owner. In it, we agree what we want to say, what values we are appealing to, and how to distribute this message. There are four sections in every communications plan.
- Framing. Here, we choose the concepts and values we want associated with the project or event we are communicating about, as well as the reason why we are doing it. Why is this project important? Who is this project for? Writing this down will help you to pin down concrete words and phrases that evoke specific concepts for your audience. Later, you can use these words when writing a blog about the project, writing social media posts, writing reports, or in any other communication outlet that you include in your plan.
- Explanation. In this section, I explain how the project works, and add all the in-depth details that people need to know to communicate about the project. Does the project have different phases? What steps are required to participate?
- Theory of change [1]: A theory of change outlines the steps that link your mission and programming activities to the change you want to create. It uses logical cause and effect relationships. What change do you want to see? How are you going to get there? It is similar to Framing in that it describes the very essence of the project, but unlike Framing, you don’t necessarily reveal this in the messages you create. The Theory of Change helps everyone working on the communications of the project stay focused on why the project is happening, and helps them choose relevant communications channels and write relevant copy.
- Distribution plan. The Distibution Plan describes the ways in which you hope to implement your communications plan. For example, the dates by when you need assets (a blog, an email, a social media post, a video, etc), and who is responsible for them. What will your communication assets be? Blog, social media, mailing list, video?
During the planning meeting, I interview the project owner and ask them questions about their project, in order to start developing each section of the Communications Plan. This document also works as a collaboration tool. Anyone who reads it should be able to develop content and distribute it according to the guidelines.
Personas and content strategy workshops
One of the biggest mindset shifts I steered in the Community Engagement department is designing projects with a user-centered perspective. The question, “Who is this project for?” is relevant for any project. While in 2014 the Wikimedia Foundation’s response was a generic “Wikimedia communities”, in 2019 our understanding of the communities we work for is deeper [2]. Now, the characterization of the audiences we target needs to be a lot more specific.
The Personas and Content Strategy Workshop is an activity that I learned about from Kevin Dubouis at MozFest 2018. In this workshop, a team works to drill down on one persona at a time, describing the themes that matter to them, what information they consume and how, and at what time of the day they consume the information. Based on this information, the team then moves on to describe five topics they want to engage their audience in, what content to develop, what their distribution strategy is, and what community to tap.
Getting the teams in the Wikimedia Foundation’s Community Engagement Department to think about their audiences has opened the window to more innovation. Trying new communication channels and new message formats, like short animated videos, has led to increased engagement. The question, “Who is the target audience?” takes its own dimension within Wikimedia because we operate within a very complex ecosystem of stakeholders [3].
Motivation changes from one group to the next. For example, individual contributors — not associated with an organization— that apply for a grant are frequently motivated to develop their own professional skills, with the goal of acquiring a better job, while those involved with an organization are interested in developing and growing programs that matter to their communities. These motivations are very different, and so these target audiences will require that we appeal to different values when we want to engage them.
In 2014, when I joined the Wikimedia Foundation, one of my responsibilities was to develop an audience for Learning and Evaluation. This team had two goals: to train community members in program evaluation and design, and to monitor the outcomes of Wikimedia programs and activities implemented by Wikimedia communities all over the world. This type of systemic thinking about programs was a significant shift for communities at the time. I quickly realized, though, that this could be presented as a different framework for Wikimedians to talk about their Wikimedia activities. Once the vocabulary was down — inputs, outputs and outcomes— and the logic had sunk in, I presented L&E’s platforms as another opportunity for Wikimedians to promote their work. Since there are few things that Wikimedians like better than talking about the activities they develop, we were able to encourage a shift toward systemic thinking by tapping into the existing motivations of these communities.
Designing with an audience in mind is not just about understanding motivation; it’s also about deciding who you are talking to and who you are leaving out of your campaign. In 2019, when I worked on Wikimedia Education Greenhouse with Nichole Saad and Melissa Guadalupe Huertas, my task was to market this new initiative. I worked with both of them to name the program and do audience segmentation. Through this exercise, we decided that the primary audience was people who have experience with Wikimedia and want to start an Education project. At the time, the team had to decide what assets to bring to Mobile Learning Week, an ed-tech conference organized by UNESCO. Because the people attending that conference were identified as our secondary target audience group, we decided not to promote the new initiative at that event, but rather talk about the general landscape of Wikimedia in Education. We then launched the Wikimedia Education Greenhouse at the Wikimedia + Education conference, which took place a month after. For this project, I also developed the visual identity and narrative, which I implemented in the website and postcard for promotion.
Success and how to measure it
With this communications process, I support an average of 30 projects a year, serving teams in the Wikimedia Foundation’s Community Engagement Department. This process has enabled more collaboration across teams and better quality projects, with clear pathways for contributions from Wikimedia community members. Every time that I was able to design and implement a communications strategy, engagement increased. A few examples are:
- Learning and Evaluation Audience. Over the course of four years (2014–2018), our audience grew 400% (from about 30 to 120 participants), and the quality of engagement also changed. Participants shifted from being consumers of information, to becoming contributors of workshops and trainings, with 50% of sessions facilitated by open source contributors.
- Crowdsourcing Campaign to Raise Awareness of Wikipedia (2018). For this project, led by Kacie Harold, I developed the content for the campaign and designed the distribution strategy. Compared to the average outcomes of the four previous campaigns, there was a 236% increase in ideas submitted, and a 114% increase in contributors.
- Global Wikimedia Survey (2018). For this project, led by Edward Galvez, I designed an outreach strategy targeting volunteer developers. The response rate for this specific group grew by 37%.
Next steps
There is still more to be done. For example, Wikimedia needs to develop qualitative metrics that capture the impact that online conversations and consultations have. We already know that the work we started doing at the Wikimedia Foundation in 2014, incorporating community relations specialists, has improved change management in the Wikimedia movement. An example of this is the consultation held to change the name of the Wikimedia Movement and its representatives from Wikimedia to Wikipedia. At its launch, many colleagues in the Community Engagement Department thought community members would protest and reject this proposal for change. Yet, the conversation’s outcome was positive, because of increased trust in the Wikimedia Foundation, which has been cemented by more open and clear online communications. These results are significant, and we need to find ways to measure and document this progress.
Another way we can continue developing this communications framework is by creating a theme calendar for the Wikimedia Foundation’s Community Engagement Department. Like a map that tells an explorer where to go, this calendar will identify speaking opportunities and themes we need to promote, and will serve as a guide for staff to propose sessions at different conferences. This thematic alignment for the department would have a dual goal: to advance the topic areas in the Wikimedia Movement’s Strategic Direction, and to position Wikimedia in other international agendas (for example, UNESCO’s Year of Indigenous Languages), with the goal of raising awareness about Wikimedia in other contexts.
Discovering these opportunities for development is only possible because I spent some time creating the logic model that maps all communication services. A very common request from clients is to be on X social media platform, because their competitors are there. You may reach part of your audience and generate some engagement, but if you can’t tie this to an overarching organizational goal, then you shouldn’t be spending time on it. When I was working to develop an audience for Learning and Evaluation, I was posting on Twitter four times daily. After a year doing this, I only post during Wikimedia conferences and events, because this channel works well for audience acquisition. Collecting metrics and creating a logic model allows you to see how different channels work for engaging your audience toward your desired goals. Having a consistent framework like this should be part of the creative work for any communications strategist, because it yields as good results as well written copy.
Notes
[1] Learn more about Logic Models and Theory of change, and how to use these tools, here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Learning_and_Evaluation/Logic_models
[2] There are three user experience research projects that contributed to building this understanding: New Readers, New Editor Experiences, and Movement Organizers.
[3] The short way of describing it is the following: the Wikimedia Movement audience groups are the Wikimedia affiliates (independent organizations that can be user groups, thematic organizations, and chapters, which count more than 130 all over the world), independent content and code contributors (not connected to any affiliate), readers, donors, external partners (like museums, libraries, schools, and other institutions), and the Wikimedia Foundation employees. On top of this, across all of these groups (except for Foundation employees) we can distinguish between grantees and non-grantees. For a longer description, please read this article I wrote in 2017.
