Communications Strategy and Plan

Good info from Kathy Reid about creating a Comms Strategy and Plan

Have a key message for communications and a key theme - ours was 'under the stars' - and you would have noticed a lot of our media releases had things like 'stellar' and 'reaching for the stars' etc to carry through the theme. Yours is pretty much covered already with the 'party time' tag with it being Canberra's anniversary.

Have a plan - this might help - http://wiki.linux.org.au/Event_Media_Marketing_and_Promotion - it has a template that you can use The key events you will have to plan around include
 * Call for Papers opening
 * Call for Papers being extended
 * Early bird opening
 * Main rego opening
 * Keynote speaker #1
 * Keynote speaker #2...

Understand which channels you will use for which events, and what you're trying to communicate

Have a standard footer / email signature for every team member - this helps with continuity

Social media is incredibly powerful - and I strongly recommend having a Twitter list that people can follow - makes it all a lot easier.

We actually found that our highest referrer was Facebook - believe it or not!

And Google Plus is definitely one that's popular with our community.