On this page9
- Why does a list of announcements fail as a quarterly plan?
- What goes in a quarterly communications plan template?
- How do you structure the three chapters?
- Worked example: one quarter filled in week by week
- How do you test each announcement against the story?
- Where does the founder fit in the quarter?
- When does a quarterly narrative arc not fit?
- How should the next quarter connect to this one?
- FAQ
A quarterly communications plan should read like one story told in three monthly chapters, not a list of thirteen weekly announcements. Write one sentence for what the market should believe by the end of the quarter, give each month a job (set up the problem, prove you're solving it, pay it off with the big news), and slot every announcement into the chapter where it adds to that sentence. Anything that doesn't fit gets merged, moved or cut.
That's the whole template in one paragraph. The rest of this post is how I fill it in, with a worked example you can copy.
Why does a list of announcements fail as a quarterly plan?
Most quarterly plans I'm handed are a spreadsheet: week, item, channel, owner. Partnership in week 2, feature in week 4, AMA in week 6, maybe a raise in week 10. Every row is fine on its own. Together they say nothing, because nobody outside the company reads them as a sequence.
A reporter who sees your week-4 feature has no idea it connects to the week-10 raise. Your community sees five unrelated posts and starts skimming. By the time the big news lands, nobody has been primed to care about it.
PR works when you have a long term approach, work on building relationships, carving out the brand, sharing your story, ongoing convos w journos Shilika Jain on X, 26 Jul 2023
A quarter is the smallest unit where that long-term approach becomes visible. Thirteen weeks is long enough to build tension and resolve it, and short enough that people still remember the first chapter when the last one arrives.
What goes in a quarterly communications plan template?
Six fields. I fill them in this order, because each one constrains the next.
- The end-of-quarter sentence. One line, written as what an outsider would say about you on the last day of the quarter. Not your tagline. A belief.
- The tension. The problem or misconception the quarter pushes against. Without it, the chapters have nothing to resolve.
- Three chapters, one per month. Each gets a job and a working title.
- The anchor moment. The single piece of news the quarter builds toward. It usually sits in chapter three.
- Proof assets per chapter. The data, user stories, founder pieces and visuals each chapter needs, each with a ready-by date.
- The cut list. Announcements you considered and parked, with the reason written next to each.
The cut list is the field founders resist most and the one I'd fight hardest to keep. It forces the conversation about what doesn't belong, and it gives next quarter a head start.
How do you structure the three chapters?
I give every quarter the same three jobs, even though the content changes completely.
| Chapter | Weeks | Job | What you publish | What you hold back |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Set-up | 1 to 4 | Make the problem visible | Founder opinion pieces, data on the problem, commentary on category news | Any hint of the anchor news |
| 2. Proof | 5 to 9 | Show you're already solving it | Smaller shipped updates framed as evidence, user stories, a podcast or two | The headline number |
| 3. Payoff | 10 to 13 | Land the anchor and say what it means | The anchor announcement, embargoed press, an AMA, a founder recap | Nothing. Everything goes out |
Chapter one is the one teams skip, because it doesn't feel like PR. There's no news. But this is where you earn the right to be heard in chapter three. If reporters and your community have spent four weeks reading the founder's take on the problem, the anchor news arrives as an answer instead of an ad.
Chapter two is where your smaller announcements finally earn their place. A feature release that would be ignored as standalone news becomes a data point: one more piece of evidence that the team is closing the gap you named in month one.
For the anchor itself, I run the same sequence as my four-step launch countdown, just with the narrative already warm.
Worked example: one quarter filled in week by week
To make the mechanics concrete, here's a filled-in version for an invented company: an MPC wallet SDK whose anchor news is a mainnet integration with a large consumer app in week 11. The company and its details are made up for illustration.
End-of-quarter sentence: "Wallet onboarding is a solved problem for consumer apps, and this team solved it."
Tension: Developers still assume embedded wallets mean weaker security.
Chapter 1, Set-up: "Why onboarding still breaks" - Week 1: founder thread on the three places new users drop off during wallet setup. - Week 2: op-ed pitch arguing seed phrases are a design failure, not a user failure. - Week 3: commentary offered to reporters if a wallet security story breaks. - Week 4: the team's own setup-completion data, published as one chart.
Chapter 2, Proof: "What changes when setup takes seconds" - Week 5: passkey support ships, framed as "one fewer drop-off point". - Week 6: developer case study from an existing integrator. - Week 7: founder records a podcast, timed to publish in week 10 or 11. - Week 8: AMA on security trade-offs. Collect every question for the FAQ. - Week 9: quiet in public. Reporters get briefed under embargo.
Chapter 3, Payoff: "Onboarding at consumer scale" - Week 11: anchor integration announced, press lands. - Week 12: founder recap of the quarter, written to the community. - Week 13: early usage follow-up if real numbers exist. If they don't, skip it.
Week 9 is deliberately empty in public. Gaps are part of the plan, and they make the week-11 news feel bigger.
How do you test each announcement against the story?
Before anything goes on the calendar, I run it through four checks. This is the part worth printing out.
| Check | What you're testing | If it fails |
|---|---|---|
| Fit | It moves an outsider closer to the end-of-quarter sentence | Move it to next quarter or cut it |
| Chapter | It matches this month's job | Move it to the chapter it fits |
| Weight | It's news on its own, not just evidence for something bigger | Bundle it into a chapter recap |
| Readiness | The proof asset is ready two weeks before the date | Push the date rather than ship it thin |
Most plans shrink by about a third after this. That's fine. Fewer, better-placed announcements get read. I go deeper on the spacing side in announcement fatigue in crypto communities.
Where does the founder fit in the quarter?
The founder is the narrator. Chapters one and three both open with the founder speaking, and the quarter closes with the founder explaining what it all added up to.
so many stories to tell, but lack of clarity on how to present, plan & share Shilika Jain on X, 10 Dec 2024
That line describes most teams I meet. The stories exist. What's missing is a sequence that tells people which story they're in. In practice, that means:
- The founder writes or approves every chapter opener.
- The founder does the podcast in chapter two and the press interviews in chapter three.
- The founder closes the quarter with a recap, which is where a quarterly founder letter does its best work.
If you're building founder visibility at the same time, the chapter openers double as founder profiling material: op-ed drafts, podcast talking points and bio lines all come from the same three chapter titles.
When does a quarterly narrative arc not fit?
It isn't right for every team, and I'd rather say so up front.
- You don't have an anchor. If nothing in the quarter is real news, a three-act structure turns into theatre. Run a thought-leadership quarter instead, with no payoff chapter, and be honest about that internally.
- The market moves faster than your plan. A hack, a token event or a sudden regulatory change bends everything. Keep the end-of-quarter sentence and rewrite the chapters around it.
- You ship daily to developers. Changelogs have their place in docs and release notes. Pull only the ones that support the story into public comms.
- The anchor date isn't firm. If engineering can't commit within two weeks either way, plan chapters one and two and leave chapter three as a placeholder. Building toward a date that slips teaches your audience to stop believing your dates.
The real cost is patience. Chapter one feels slow, and someone on the team will ask why you aren't announcing more. The answer is that chapter one is what makes chapter three get read.
How should the next quarter connect to this one?
The last week of each quarter doubles as planning week for the next. Before writing the new sentence, I look at three things:
- Which chapter got the most response, judged by replies, inbound press questions and community questions rather than impressions.
- What the press actually wrote. Their framing is a free read on which part of your story landed.
- What's still unresolved. An open question from this quarter often becomes the tension for the next one.
Ideally, quarters stack. The sentence for Q2 should assume the market already believes the Q1 sentence. That's how a run of quarters becomes a narrative people can retell, which I cover in the Web3 narrative and positioning playbook. For the themes that sit above every quarter, start with three narrative pillars.
FAQ
### How far ahead should a quarterly comms plan be finished? Agree the sentence, tension and chapter titles two to three weeks before the quarter starts. Lock the week-by-week detail for chapter one by then, and firm up chapters two and three at the end of each month as dates become real.
### Who should own the quarterly communications plan? One person, usually whoever runs PR or marketing, with the founder signing off on the end-of-quarter sentence. Product and BD feed dates into it. If three people own the plan, nobody owns the story.
### Can a small team run this without a PR hire? Yes, if the founder commits a few hours a week to the chapter openers. The template itself is one page. What small teams usually lack is the press work in chapter three, and that's the piece most worth bringing in help for.
### What if two big announcements land in the same quarter? Pick one as the anchor and turn the other into evidence in chapter two, or hold it to open next quarter's story. Two anchors in thirteen weeks split attention, and reporters will rarely cover both.
Planning next quarter and want a second pair of eyes on the arc? Book a 30-min call with me and bring your announcement list.
