30 Dec Three Items for your 2020 to-do list

January is a time to start fresh.

With the turn of the calendar comes the opportunity to review practices and processes currently underway, and to consider new ways to make improvements across the board. At NSPR, we advise clients to take the time each January to consider three ways to improve their communications and marketing practices.

Reinvigorate your Graphic Identity. When was the last time you reviewed your logo, color palette, image types, and font choices? For most organizations, the answer is almost always a longer time ago than it should be. Let’s face it: the process is an arduous one that can be both complicated and expensive. Therefore, many companies and organizations only review graphic identities when making other dramatic, sweeping changes in either name or leadership.

Strategic organizations will do more than this every once-in-a-blue-moon review. Color palettes can be freshened to reflect changing tastes, fonts can be refined for readability, images can be retaken and replaced to reflect a new commitment to diversity or in accordance with a new marketing emphasis or tagline. Taking the time to reinvest in these areas will signal to your clients, customers, donors or prospects that your organization is ready to take on the New Year.

Recalibrate your SEO Strategy. Truth be told, this should be an ongoing process for any organization hoping to compete in the digital marketplace. But at a minimum, forward-thinking companies should use the beginning of the year to reevaluate content marketing and the other components of a dynamic SEO strategy.

Each section of your website should be examined to ensure that you’re using the proper language to attract and engage your audiences. Similarly, keywords and tags embedded in your site should be compared with search terminology used by your industry.

Finally, January is a perfect time to map out a blog strategy through the first half of the year, ensuring that topics address the latest advances in both your company and industry. If you don’t have a content marketing strategy built around a blog or vlog program, now’s the time to start.

Reconsider conducting a communications audit. Audit can be considered a bad word in some circles, but for communications professionals, it’s a necessary procedure that ensures success. Strategic communicators know the value of engaging outside counsel to evaluate the performance of your paid, controlled and earned media activities.

Do you know who your audiences are as we begin a new decade? Do you know how they are consuming information? Are you reaching them? If so, does your message resonate with the right people – decision-makers that can influence your success?

If you don’t know the answers to any or all of these questions, it’s time for a communications audit. You spend too much time, money and energy trying to engage the right people to not know definitively if you are doing so.

If you agree that January is the time to reinvigorate, recalibrate or reconsider your communications and marketing functions, give NSPR a call at 813-865-8093. We’d welcome the opportunity for a no-obligation introductory meeting.