Hi Reader -

Well, apparently my LinkedIn post last week about the exhausting quest to feed the content beast hit a nerve! Welcome to the more than 200 of you who signed up for the newsletter and this month’s behind-the-scenes look at a content management plan that works.

Last week, I kicked it all off with an overview. Here’s that email if you missed it.

At its core, the content management process is a regular cadence of three types of meetings throughout the year: yearly, quarterly, and weekly.

The ultimate goal: To get processes in place to help your comms team adapt to changing plans without losing your whole strategy, give you the space to jump on key advocacy moments, and not lose track of the important but not urgent items that always slip.

For the rest of the month, I’m digging into the details of the three types of meetings, starting with the Weekly Communications Team Meeting.

The Weekly Communications Team Meeting

If you only adopt one thing from this series, it’s to start a weekly comms team meeting. It will start slowing down the content hamster wheel, where you’re racing to keep up but feeling like you’re going nowhere.

Goal: Keep your comms team & content production coordinated

A weekly communications team meeting will help keep your team more coordinated, limit surprises, and help you adapt quickly along the way.

When I led comms teams in-house, I had too many situations where I realized (often too late) that team members didn’t know about key information that impacted their projects. When people are scrambling, they’re often only looking at their to-do lists and not communicating with colleagues or thinking strategically about how to adapt to changing circumstances as much as they probably should.

A weekly communications team meeting is an opportunity to (briefly) slow down, take a breath, and get organized.

Purpose: Project Management

This meeting is all about project management. What’s on deck for the week? Who is doing what? Any road blocks or changes? It is not for planning or strategy.

It’s a riff on the idea of a “stand up,” often used in Agile project management. The idea is a brief meeting – sometimes literally while standing up – to quickly run down what everyone is working on and any road blocks/challenges that need to be addressed.

If there are projects that need a deeper dive or a key strategic question, assign someone to set up a meeting with the appropriate people to dig in and make a plan, and move on to the next update.

Time Commitment: Less than 30 minutes every Monday morning

I’ve found Monday morning, when everyone is getting their heads around their week, works best.

Keep it short. Less than 30 minutes. That’s it. Once you get the hang of it, this should only take about 15 minutes.

Attendees: The comms team

Keep the attendees to your core communications team. If you’re a one-person communications team, this might mean a quick weekly check-in with your Executive Director instead of a team.

Assign a clear meeting lead, usually the comms lead for your organization. This person keeps the meeting moving, flagging items that need a longer discussion and identifying the staffer responsible for organizing that follow up.

A sample agenda

Before the meeting, staff will want to take a few minutes to review their projects and the week ahead, so they can give a succinct report.

Keep the meeting format simple. Go around the table, either popcorn or round robin style.

Each person in the meeting gives a brief, verbal topline review of what they are working on for the week and any road blocks or challenges in their way.

For example, a verbal report might sound like:

• Sitting in on a coalition call this afternoon, will report back on any updates
• Writing the first draft of the annual appeal letter, due to the Development Director by next Tuesday for their first review
• Writing and sending the weekly e-newsletter, noting that Carol (who is on the comms team) will need to be ready to proof-read it on Wednesday so it can go out on Thursday
• Policy team is delaying the release of their report, will set up a meeting this week to rethink the launch plan because the new release data conflicts with another major project
• Reminder of planned time off next Thursday and Friday

...and so on.

Once each person has given their report, that’s the end of the meeting.

Give it a try and report back! I’d love to hear how this goes for you and your team. If you have questions, I’m always happy to help. Just reply to this email and ask away.

And stay tuned for next week where I’ll dig into the yearly communications strategy meeting.

Jennifer ​Founder, Buoy 231 Consulting​

P.S. If you read this and thought "great, one more thing to build and maintain," that's exactly the kind of process work I help nonprofits set up and actually stick with. Reply and let's talk, or you can book a time to chat.

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