Understanding the Organization through Analysis
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Once you understand the situation, next comes understanding the organization. Getting a feel for how an organization is run is crucial to determining how to proceed with creating the strategic communication plan. The internal and external environments, public perception and overall structure all play a role in learning how to conduct a situation analysis and why it’s important.
The way organizations show their publics who they are and help them see the kind of business they are is through a series of statements.
Strategic Planning for Public Relations sixth edition lays out what three questions every business must answer:
What kind of organization are we?
What kind of organization do we want to be?
What kind of organization do people think we are?
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These questions lead to mission, vision and values statements, three descriptions we are all very familiar with. The book Strategic Planning for Public Relations sixth edition describes each statement and its importance. Mission statements communicate the purpose of the business, vision statements explain what
the business aspired to become and values statements state what beliefs drive an organization and how it makes decisions.
Each statement serves a different purpose and according to Forbes, these types of statements only work if they are written correctly. To have a strategic statement, businesses must put in the time and effort to create a unique statement that accurately reflects their organization, its goals and values. Another important aspect of having successful mission, vision and values statements is knowing the difference between them and how to portray that to the outside world.
Once the mission, vision and value statements are created the second step is to begin a communication audit. The purpose of the audit is to find strengths and weaknesses that relate to the organization. Finding those factors requires situation analysis. The most common tool used to conduct a situation analysis is a SWOT analysis.
SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and weaknesses. Strengths consist of things the business does well, that sets them apart from the competition. Weaknesses are a shortcoming of the company, something to improve upon or overcome. Opportunities are situations that the company can take advantage of to improve. Threats are situations that can arise to impact the organization in a negative way.
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According to LinkedIn, using a SWOT analysis can also help develop key messages based on information gathered to use later in the campaign. SWOT analysis is also useful to specify and refine the goals and objectives of the campaign states LinkedIn,
SWOT analysis can be used for a variety of departments in the public relations industry, According to Sprout Social, SWOT analysis is also very beneficial when bettering your social media, SEO, email marketing and more.
References:
Smith, R.D. (2020). Strategic Planning for Public Relations (6th ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003024071
