Here at New Boston, we work with many small to medium-sized businesses and nonprofit organizations. As we help them develop and execute communications plans or evaluate their digital presence, we often hear a version of the same problem: Communications teams are stretched thin.

We understand, because the truth is, a lot of communications are required to run any kind of business or nonprofit these days. Websites, social media channels, print and radio ads, digital ads, billboards, internal communications, donor/supporter/stakeholder communications, e-newsletters, signage, printed handouts, trade show booths and giveaway items … and we could go on. What’s a communications director or coordinator to do? How can a small team get it all done and do it well?

Hiring New Boston Creative Group to help you is obviously an option, but we know budgets can’t always accommodate that. So, what then?

Ask yourself (and your team, if you have one): What’s your biggest time suck? What’s the thing that just takes too much of your time and has questionable return on investment?

Find the time suck

Take a hard look at what you’re doing. What is working well? What’s not? What looks, well, subpar? Honesty is tough here, but crucial. Look at some models or competitors. How do you stack up?

If you’re struggling to get everything done and done well, you might have a time suck. It’s time to make some changes.

Just about everyone has one of these, or maybe more than one. Usually, you know what it is. Hint: It’s often lurking in “we’ve always done it that way” or “[insert high-level leader here] asked us to do it.” If not, you could try tracking your time for two weeks or a month to find out what’s dominating your days. But I bet you have a quick answer.

I also can guess what, for many communications directors and staffers, that time suck might be. For many, it’s the dreaded internal newsletter. You know, the thing you spend hours on because you have to collect the information from various sources or people, edit it all, put it into a nice package so it’s inviting, send or deliver it … and then listen to people ask questions that they could have answered if they had read it.

If your time suck is an internal communication such as a weekly or monthly newsletter chock-full of information for your staff but they aren’t reading it, well, you’re spending your time doing something you shouldn’t. You’re also potentially creating a time suck for your employees by bombarding them with information they don’t really need. (The same is true if your time suck is something else: social media series that don’t get results, web pages that no one visits, regular media releases the newspapers don’t run, and so on.)

So why are you doing it? The answer is probably inertia. You’ve always done it that way. The CEO likes it that way. Your predecessor did it that way. Your team likes it that way. The same reasons that help you spot the time suck in the first place.

STOP. Or at least reevaluate.

I have nothing against internal newsletters per se. Your staff needs information. But if yours has become a time suck, it’s time to reevaluate. So how do you do that? If you can, track analytics. If you can’t collect open rates or find out how the audience is using the information, consider a survey. Or have an honest conversation with the person who’s most wedded to the newsletter and talk to them about sharing information more effectively. A brief weekly email with two or three items might be more digestible than a monthly newsletter with three or four pages of stories, photos and fluff. A quick staff meeting might be a better way to convey important information. Or you may have other ideas.

This can lay the foundation for an experiment: Try approaching your time suck differently, then follow up to see how the new format/delivery/tactic compares.

Adapt your approach to the time suck you’ve identified. Be sure to talk about how you’d like to invest your time savings and how that will help meet your organization’s communications goals. If you have a communications plan tied to your organization’s strategic plan, you’ll find it fairly easy to determine where you should spend your time. If not, you’ll need to build a case. But time is your most precious resource, and your team or your manager will mostly likely come to appreciate removing a time suck. And so will you! 

If you could use someone in your corner to combat time sucks, we’d love to talk. We’re all about helping organizations Be Seen. Be Heard. Be Better.