The AFGE Communications Department is launching its first ever content planner for AFGE leaders and activists. This communications tool is designed to help you stay on track and laser-focused on your digital content planning.
While this planner focuses on email campaigns and social media content, you can use it as a basis for all your communications planning.
Over the years, the AFGE Communications Department has strategized with countless locals and has found that content planning is often a major hurdle for AFGE affiliates. How do you know what to post? What about when to post? Where can you get content to share?
This tool will help you answer those questions and stay on track with your communications goals. It will guide you in outlining your goals, creating a content schedule you can stick to, and boosting communications outreach to your members.
This planner is designed to help you plan your communications strategy to know exactly what to say, when you want to say it.
Here’s what you can expect with this resource.
Goal Setting
This portion of the planner helps you hone your communications goals for your local. With your goals set, you can map a course for improved communication and engagement with your members. The goals setting worksheet gets you thinking about your 3-month and 6-month goals, as well as your top three goals for local communications.
Additionally, there is a space to identify which communications tools your local is currently using and a section to jot down how those platforms are performing. You can use this as a guide to develop a more robust engagement tracker.
Content Ideas
We’ve included multiple resources in this planner to help you develop content ideas. First, you’ll find the 30 Days of Content Ideas for Union Communicators chart that provides a sample plan of content you can share every day of the month.
Next, you can skip to the end of the planner to check out examples of engaging social media content that we’ve shared on AFGE’s social media accounts. Hopefully this gives you some inspiration on what you can share on your social media platforms.
At the end of the planner, we’ve also included a full worksheet that you can use to plan out your content for events. Rallies, conferences, demonstrations, meetings and other gatherings are great opportunities to tell the story of how your local is engaged in the labor movement and the local community.
The Event Content Planner Worksheet will get you thinking about everything from Facebook posts to a newsletter article. For any event, meeting or conference you’ll be able to use this worksheet to map out your social media posts, photos you want to capture, video you’d like to film and wrap up articles you’d like to write. Print out copies and use it again and again!
Social Media Best Practices & Content Warnings
As government workers there are a few tips and best practices that you want to keep in mind as you use digital and social media tools to communicate with union members. With this planner we have outlined some key best practices including tips for personal use, a sample comment policy for your Facebook page or group and various content warnings for posts related to legislative and/or political issues.
Weekly and Monthly Planning
The heart of this planner is the monthly and weekly planning pages. Each month includes various holidays, celebrations, anniversaries, observances, and more! You can use these and any other occasions that your local may observe as opportunities to create content for your members. You can also use the monthly pages to add any production deadlines or a social media posting schedule so that you can have a full view of when your communications are being released month to month. Each month also features a pro tip that gives you some insight on how to stay on top of your communications strategy.
The weekly content pages allow you to plan out your content from week to week. These weekly pages are included after each month so you can drill down on what you are posting and when. Use the weekly pages to create to do lists, take notes, and plan out what topic you are going to discuss on which platform and on what day of the week.
Here's an example of how to complete the weekly planner:
Go Digital or Analog!
This planner is designed to work as a printed document where you can write in all your notes, or you can upload the pdf into your favorite digital notetaking app like Goodnotes (www.goodnotes.com) and unlock all the features of digital notetaking. You can also use a program like Adobe Acrobat Reader and make use of the Fill & Sign feature to type in your planning notes in the fields provided. If you are a fan of Canva you can also use that platform to import the planner and plan out your content.
You can get started right away in planning your communications content for July! We’ve also included the previous months this year. Feel free to add the work you’ve already done this year to the planner and view your progress.
Happy planning!
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