Struggling with your communications planning and need some help? Don't panic - this clear template, based on Melissa's 12+ years' PR experience, makes it simple and easy to stay organised, on track and on top of things while running your campaign. Planning ahead in this way means you won't get caught out with an imminent launch date and not enough time to get everything done.

A workback schedule is a planning tool that helps you prepare for an upcoming campaign or activity. It's called this because you determine your launch/go live date and 'work back' from that date to ensure you have sufficient time to prepare everything. Remember to allow plenty of time for things like approvals which can sometimes take longer than you might think! This workback schedule template has been created by Melissa Hobson to help you plan your upcoming communications activities and campaigns. There are separate tabs with templates to use as a starting point for different types of activities (event, press release etc.).

To use the workback schedule to help your communications planning, choose the relevant cells (add/delete/edit the listed activities to tailor them to your campaign - this template should be a good starting point but each campaign is unique!) and highlight when activities must be completed in order to meet your deadline. If you're working in a team, you might want to add the names of the team members responsible in the cell.

Guide to getting press coverage