Back to Work: Get your Autumn Comms plan together

Summer slows most things down, comms included. Everyone is harder to reach, with juggling going on a-plenty with staff on annual leave and juggling work around childcare. But September has a habit of arriving fast, and the businesses that use August well tend to come out of it with a head start.

If you’re an SME with a lean marketing team, here’s how to use the last weeks of summer to get your autumn PR plan into shape.

• Review what’s actually landed so far this year

Before planning anything new, look back at what’s worked since January. Which media stories got picked up? Which pitches went nowhere? What marketing activity generated interest or leads? What comms activity hit the spot? You don’t need a full audit, just an honest half hour with whoever owns your comms to spot the patterns.

• Map the autumn news moments

Autumn is dense with opportunities: Back to school and back to business messaging, conference season, awards deadlines, Black Friday and Black November sales campaigns and the run up to year end reporting. Pull together a simple list of the moments relevant to your sector and work backwards from each one.

• Check your spokespeople are ready

If your business has grown since the spring, there may be new people who could be speaking to the press or on stage at events, but have they had any media training? A short refresher now avoids scrambling later when a journalist calls with a tight deadline.

• Revisit your story bank

Every SME has stories sitting unused, a new hire, a client win, a product tweak, an award entry. Autumn is a good time to get these out of notebooks and into an actual content pipeline before the year gets busy.

• Don’t overload the calendar

It’s tempting to plan for everything once you start mapping opportunities. Resist it. A smaller number of well-pitched stories will always beat a crowded calendar of half-finished ideas. Getting this right in August means September doesn’t start with a scramble.

If you’d like a second pair of eyes on your autumn plan, that’s exactly the kind of conversation we like to have at Padua Communications. We have a range of packages designed for SMEs that range from some mentoring and strategy work right through to content creation, events support and PR pitching.

If you need a hand to keep you on track but don’t want to employ a full-time senior marketer, we can definitely help. Get in touch by emailing nicky@paduacommunications.com or ring the office on 0203 282 7570.