Multicultural communications is the discipline of conveying culturally-appropriate messages that resonate with people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
According to the 2021 Census, over 22% of people in Australia used a language other than English at home. As Australia becomes increasingly diverse, it’s important to consider how we effectively engage and communicate with people from diverse backgrounds.
Communications professionals would be familiar with developing communications strategies or plans at an organisational, campaign, or project level. A multicultural communications plan takes this concept and focuses on the unique aspects of specific audiences and how they need to be addressed appropriately.
What is a Multicultural Communications Plan?
A Multicultural Communications Plan is a strategic document that helps your organisation effectively reach and engage with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) audiences.
A Multicultural Communications Plan provides you with:
- insights about your organisation’s diverse target audiences
- insights about your audiences’ preferences
- a plan on how to effectively communicate and engage with your audiences
Does your organisation have a comprehensive strategy to effectively communicate and engage with multicultural audiences in Australia?
Consider these questions…
- Do you know who your target audience is and what languages they use?
- Are you developing content that your audiences wants?
- Do you know the preferred communication channels of your diverse target audiences? Are you using them effectively?
- Are your answers informed by consulting with the community?
If you answered No to any of these questions, it might be time to think about developing a Multicultural Communications Plan.
What’s typically found in a Multicultural Communications Plan?
An effective Multicultural Communications Plan should include at least the following information.
Audience research and insights
An effective Multicultural Communications Plan requires thorough audience research and insights. Understanding the diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds of your target audiences is essential in order to create tailored and engaging communications.
This typically involves a combination of desktop research and community consultations in order to identify your target audiences. This also includes demographic information, priority language selection, social norms, values, and traditions of different cultural groups, as well as identifying the preferred communication channels and formats for each audience segment.
Strategies and tactics
Armed with an increased level of understanding, it is now important to development specific strategies and tactics to help effectively engage and communicate with your audiences.
Strategies and tactics may be tailored to each audience segment in order to ensure that each communities specific needs are addressed. Strategies can include content localisation approaches, channel and media selection, community organisation identification and many other specific strategies tailored to your situation.
Messaging, creative and content recommendations
Messaging, creatives and content need to be considered in the context of the overarching strategy. How will the messaging potentially differ between audience segments? Will the same message resonate across communities? Based on our experience, we often see quite significant approach differences for communication campaigns for the general population compared to multicultural audiences.
Distribution recommendations
Distribution recommendations is the final phase of a Multicultural Communications Plan and is the result of proper audience research and insights, the right strategy, and appropriate messaging, creative and content. This can include media budget recommendations or priority channels and focus community partners.
Next steps
Developing a Multicultural Communications Plan is essential for effectively engaging with diverse audiences. If you’re interested in exploring how Ethnolink can assist in developing a Multicultural Communications Plan, reach out to our Multicultural Communications Adviser, Rachael Coulthard – rachael@ethnolink.com.au.
