Planting the Seeds for Green Communications

With the Green Communications Toolkit, launching a green communications campaign is quite simple. The toolkit offers key insights into strategy, operations, and program maintenance. This communications strategy can support municipal sustainability programming in a manner that aligns with existing government aims, objectives, and visioning.

To start, defining the problem, determining the scope, identifying the target audience, and goal setting are crucial steps to grow a thriving green communications campaign.

PROBLEM DEFINITION

STEP 1: DEFINING THE PROBLEM

The first step in creating a marketable and successful green communications plan is to define the problem at hand. Defining key issues will allow the municipality to best target campaigning to address and ameliorate problems and weak points in existing programming. A good place to start is assessing current municipal sustainability resources and programming.

Think about existing programming and 'big picture' questions, then critically and assess:

Engagement and Outreach

• How many residents participate in sustainability-centric events and municipal programming?

• Is the dissemination of sustainability events and programming reaching the majority of residents?

• Do current engagement and outreach practices adhere to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) principles to ensure all voices are represented?

• What current media and interpersonal communications streams does the municipality tap into to encourage participation and engagement?

• What media platforms garner the most attention from community members? Which platforms garner the least?

• What sustainability events have historically been the most popular? Which events have lower levels of participation?

Asset Organization

• Are municipal sustainability resources easily accessible to residents?

• Are resources concentrated in a single location, or are they segmented across different departments and web platforms?

Successes and Setbacks

• Does the current sustainability campaign address problems that are directly impacting the community?

• Who is affected by the problem? Why are they affected by the problem?

• Are there 'shock-wave' effects of this problem?

• What areas of current programming are successful? What areas of current programming are challenging?

Based off these questions, identify gaps and issues in current communications strategies. Create a comprehensive written list of areas in need of expansion and improvement. Going forward, these initial considerations will inform the development of the green communications strategy.

Then ask, how can a new communications strategy ameliorate the identified gaps surrounding sustainability-centric campaigning?

TARGET AUDIENCE IDENTIFICATION

STEP 2: IDENTIFYING THE TARGET AUDIENCE

The second step in developing a green communications strategy is to determine the desired target audience for campaign dissemination. Communicating the urgency of adopting sustainability and critical action steps can be a daunting matter for municipalities, as the topic can appear highly technical. However, determining who the target audience is and utilizing clear and digestible information dissemination tactics can help communities participate in the conversation without overwhelming them with anxiety-inducing jargon.

By identifying the target audience and determining what they care most about, municipalities can better create messaging tailored to diverse community identities, interests, and concerns.

Communities are diverse, so messaging ought to be as well to ensure all residents are represented, included, and informed. A good first step to identify the target audience is to ask:

Who is currently participating in sustainability programming?

What groups are less engaged in sustainability programming?

Who are we trying to reach?

After identifying your intended target audience, regardless of how narrow or broad the scope may be, reflect on how this audience contributes to the larger mission of expanding best community sustainability practice. Then, ask:

• What are defining demographics of the intended audience?

  • (E.g. ethnicity, race, age, national origin, income level, education, professions, disability status, gender, sexual orientation, etc.)

• Where is this audience geographically located?

• What are the guiding values and policy priorities of the audience?

• What is the target audience's scope and awareness of local sustainability issues?

• What is the target audience's level of interest surrounding sustainability?

• What media, print, and interpersonal channels does this audience access information from?

  • (E.g. print news, online news forums, television, radio, community centers, public meetings, email, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Nextdoor, etc.)

• How can the target audience help advance the municipality's aim of improving community sustainability?

GOAL SETTING

STEP 3: SETTING REALISTIC GOALS

The third step in drafting a green communications strategy is to set realistic goals that are both feasible and compliment existing municipal aims, resources, and capacity. Many local governments operate under conditions of varying precarity, often due to budgetary constraints, staffing capacity, and time; setting reasonable goals that do not stretch beyond realistic means is crucial to successful campaigning.

Before setting guiding goals and objectives, municipalities should:

• Take inventory of existing municipal resources

  • Are there resources that could be reallocated or shifted to achieve green communication goals?

• Look for overlap and/or disconnect in sustainability programming/resources across municipal departments

  • If overlap exists, are there areas for collaboration?

  • If disconnect exists, what is the source?

  • Would it be more effective and efficient to have resources/programming centralized?

Take these considerations and questions into account before setting goals. There may be 'easy' fixes to some issues in communications, which can narrow down the scope of the problem and better inform the overarching goals/aims. Administering the University of California's, "S.M.A.R.T Goals" criteria can be helpful in drafting realistic and progressive communications goals.

Goals should be,

(S)pecific:

• What needs to be accomplished?

• What are actions steps to take for success?

(M)easurable:

• What evaluation metric should be used to measure progress and the goal itself?

• Is the goal quantifiable?

(A)ttainable:

• Is the goal achievable and realistic within existing means?

• Does the municipality have access to the resources, technology, and skills necessary to reach the goal?

(R)elevant:

• How does the goal align with existing municipal values, aims, and goals?

• How does the goal align with community and target audience goals and values?

• Does the goal ameliorate pressing community and municipal concerns?

(T)ime-Oriented:

• What is the specific time frame necessary to achieve the goal?

• Is the time frame adequate in addressing the problem without it growing into a larger issue?

Goals should be at a large enough scale to reach the desired outcomes of the communication strategy, however, they should be specific enough so that successes are quantifiable. A good starting point may be setting four to five umbrella goals and allotting specific and related objectives to meet the desired outcome.

Example of Green Communications Goal and Objective:

Goal: Increase Community Participation in Sustainability Events

Objective 1: Increase in person attendance at sustainability events by 10% by October 2022.

Objective 2: Increase and improve event outreach on Facebook by posting promotional materials (following language and design best practices) 1x per week till the date of the event.

The Green Communications S.M.A.R.T Municipal Goal Template can be used to articulate and structure sustainability goals:

S.M.A.R.T Municipal Goals Template

Green Communications Logic Model Template