PRINCIPLES OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION
The practice of Strategic Communication, as earlier observed, is not haphazard; it is subject to
certain principles or guidelines. Different relevant literature on Strategic Communication present
different guidelines. This is not surprising, considering the differences between organizations and
the goal every organization seeks to achieve. Nevertheless, there are some basic uniformities
regarding the principles that should guide the practice of Strategic Communication as a whole,
regardless of sector and organization. This uniform pattern proceeds with a situation analysis, goal
setting, audience profiling, message development, selection of communications channels,
timing/message control, measurement, and feedback. These key principles are discussed
succinctly below:
Principle 1: Situation Analysis
At every interval of time, organizations and institutions that desire success must pause and take
stock of their activities to see if the corporate goal is being achieved or otherwise. Relevant in this
context is the question: What could be the challenges undermining the general performance and
attitude of stakeholders toward the organization? A common strategy used in this regard is known
as the SWOT Analysis. SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) Analysis helps
a strategic communicator to explicitly understand the prevailing organizational situation (Patterson
& Radtke, 2009).
Principle 2: Set the Communication Goals
In every strategic communication, the goals of the communication must be identified and stated
before anything else. These goals are mainly rooted in the core organizational goals, vision and
available resources, as revealed by the SWOT analysis. The goals are simply the expected outcome
of the communication efforts. Strategic Communication goals must be SMART (Simple,
Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound). An example of a SMART Strategic
Communication goal for Government Covid-19 Vaccine Promotion can be “To create awareness
about the importance of vaccine intake in ten (10) rural communities in Nigeria, from January
2023 to February of 2024.”
Principle 3: Identity or Profile the Audience
It is important to note that in Strategic Communication, there is no general audience (Patterson
and Radtke, 2009). The communicator must identify the various target audiences and group them
based on certain characteristics such as age, sex, level of education, language, and media
consumption patterns, among others as the case may be. Pilotta and Schultz (2005) opine that
members of the audience can be profiled based on their susceptibility and receptivity to change.
Audience profiling or segmentation, as it is often called, is important because it informs the
packaging of messages and prioritization of communication resources. To adequately profile the
audience, an audience study, often known as audience analysis, is necessary.
Principle 4: Message Development
One of the fundamental principles of Strategic Communication is content development. Content
in this regard refers to the actual messages, both audio and visual, that will be transmitted to the
target audience to influence certain behavioral changes. The communicator must have the skill to
develop simple and appealing content for every target group – good strategic content that resonates
with the cultural biases of the target audience. As observed by Crawford and Okigbo (2014), many
communication campaigns suffer resistance to the messages because the target audience feel such
messages contradict their ingrained behaviors and culture. Therefore, it is usually advised that
strategic communicators must use appropriate emotional and/or logical persuasive appeals to elicit
desirable attitudes and behaviors.
