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Effective Marketing
Using New Media to Tell Your
Story
by Todd Cohen
Introduction
Working with news
organizations in the era of ‘round-the-clock news and as
print, broadcast, cable and Web media converge requires
adapting the lessons of old media to the demands of new
media.
Traditional principles still apply: Use common sense and
keep it simple.
The
challenge is to tailor those principles to the digital
news environment.
Understanding
new media
Your job as a
communications officer is to get your organization’s
story told.
The
key is to use words and images that capture your
agencies’s impact and prompt news professionals to want
to tell your story to their readers, listeners and
viewers.
In
simpler times, doing your job meant cultivating
relationships with reporters, writing compelling news
releases and being creative about art and photo
opportunities.
New
media have made your job more challenging and complex
but also have handed you powerful tools with greater
potential to reach people.
Doing
your job today still requires building your connection
to news people and using words and images to make your
story sing. But it also requires that you study new
media, embrace it and put it to work.
A
daily newspaper or TV news program reaches a mass
audience, but you also can use radio or the Web to
target a particular audience. And new technology gives
you a broad range of choices in how you tell your story
and send it to news organizations.
You
might, for example, tell your story through text, photos
and sound and video clips at your own website. Or, you
might send sound and video clips to news organizations
to use in their broadcast or web news in reporting on
your organization.
Understanding
reporters
Reporters today share many
characteristics with their predecessors, although
they’ve changed a lot, too.
Reporters still want good stories. They still face tight
deadlines. They still wrestle with limited news space or
airtime, and must compete with other news organizations.
They still talk on the phone and get news in the mail or
by fax.
What’s different is how reporters do their jobs. They
search the Web for news, background information and
sources. They communicate by email.
And their work appears in an expanding variety of
media – from print and broadcast to cable and Web.
Doing
your job as a communications officer today requires that
you understand the environment in which reporters work
and the tools they use.
Valuable tools and resources for dealing with the media
can be found on Web sites of such organizations as the
Poynter Institute
www.poynter.edu
and the Benton Foundation
www.benton.org.
Choosing your medium
Assuming you know the
message you want to communicate, you must decide the
medium in which you want it communicated.
Who
is your target audience, and which medium or media will
reach it?
Answering those questions requires doing some homework
about news organizations and the form of media in which
they produce news. Your local newspaper, for example,
also may publish its news on its own Web site, or even
swap stories with a local TV station.
And
your local TV station also may publish its news stories
on its own website.
In
short, individual news organizations are developing
multiple outlets for distributing news, giving you more
opportunities than in the past for telling your story.
It’s
important to identify the news organizations that can
reach the audience you’ve targeted, to know which media
those organizations use to publish or broadcast their
news and to understand the ways in which those
organizations gather and publish news.
Connecting
Dealing with
reporters and editors can be tough. They may not respond
to news releases you send them. They may not return
phone calls or email messages. They may tell you they
don’t have time to talk, or that your story is not worth
their time. They just may not get it or care.
Don’t
give up. If you have a good story to tell, keep trying
to tell it. That means working the old-fashioned way to
cultivate reporters and using traditional and new-media
tools alike to communicate with them.
There’s no universal rule for how to communicate with a
reporter – other than to do your homework and not be
afraid to simply ask each individual reporter how he or
she prefers to get news.
A
few suggestions:
-
Keep your communications short and to the point.
-
Don’t expect instant results.
-
Don’t bother reporters on deadline – unless news
breaks on deadline.
-
Send news releases a day or two – or even a week or
so -- in advance of the day you hope the story will
run.
-
Whether you send news by mail, fax or email, follow
up with a
phone call to make sure the reporter got the news
release.
-
Regardless of the medium you use to send news, be
sure to include your organization’s Web address,
along with phone numbers and email addresses for
sources the reporter can contact.
-
Post your news release on your own Web site.
-
Before you even have news, get to know the reporter
and offer to be a
resource whenever the reporter is working on a story
involving your field of interest.
The medium is the message
It’s critical
that you tailor the format you use to tell your story to
the medium in which you choose to tell it.
In
addition to sending your news release, for example, you
might send a photograph to a newspaper, a video to a TV
station, a tape to a radio station and a video-and-sound
clip to a Web site.
And
while you might send your news release by email to any
news organization – newspaper, TV, radio or Web – the
release should include hyperlinks to any organizations
it mentions and email addresses and phone numbers for
any individuals cited in the release as sources.
Competition drives the news business, and news
organizations increasingly understand that their
customers are media-savvy.
To
understand what your target audience is accustomed to,
take a look at a TV commercial, an MTV video or Web site
of a major news organization or foundation.
Reporters – particularly those working for TV or Web
news organizations – are looking for stories they can
tell by making sophisticated use of multi-media.
Publishing your own news
It’s been said
about newspaper publishers that you should not pick a
fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.
In
the world of the Internet, you don’t need to own a
printing press to be a publisher: By creating your own
website, you can be your own publisher.
There’s no magic formula for creating a website, but
some common guidelines might help. Your site, for
example, should:
Be easy to use and
reflect the needs of users – external and internal
alike.
Tell your story and
be a resource for people wanting to know about your
organization, including basic information about your
mission, programs and services, board and staff, and
how to reach you.
Feature frequent updates of news and information, giving
readers a reason to return to it.
-
Take
advantage of audio and video technology to engage
the readers. For example, make a short video to
illustrate a program you support or to let your
president talk about your mission.
-
Give
readers a chance to actively do something, such as
fill out a guest book, make a contribution or ask to
be notified when the site is updated – and offer
something in return, such as a coffee mug.
-
Publish an email newsletter that lets you keep in
touch with readers.
-
Provide forums and chat rooms that let visitors talk
to one another.
-
Include links to related sites and resources.
Not only will your site serve as a source of news for
your core members and supporters, but it also can be a
valuable resource for reporters.
Reporters doing Internet research on a particular topic,
for example, might find your site and contact you. And
reporters doing a story about your organization can use
your site to get background information.
Adapting to change
Technology is transforming the way we do business –
and it’s evolving rapidly.
It pays to pay attention to technology and to keep track
of how other foundations are using it to tell their
stories and carry out their missions.
It’s also critical to invest in the planning and
training your staff needs to make the most productive
use of the Web.
A host of online resources are available to help you
improve your use of technology. It’s well worth your
time to visit these sites and find out about the tech
resources they offer. To name a few:
A growing number of websites also publish news about
philanthropy, including:
The medium’s message
New media offer unprecedented opportunities to
rethink how to tell your story. The challenge is to be
resourceful and willing to communicate your news in new
and innovative ways.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Study new media.
Talk to people at other organizations like yours. And do
some surfing, talking a look at how other organizations
– nonprofit and for-profit alike – are using the web.
Then think about your own communication goals and decide
which new media best fit your strategy.
Above all, in using new media, use common sense and keep
it simple.
New media can pack a powerful punch. You can put these
new tools to productive use in telling your story – and
in the process send the message that your organization
means business.
Todd Cohen is editor and publisher of Nonprofitxpress, a
Web newspaper at
www.npxpress.com that reports on philanthropy and
nonprofits. Todd is the founder and former editor and
publisher of the Philanthropy News Network and the
Philanthropy Journal of North Carolina. He writes a
philanthropy column for the Raleigh, Greensboro and
Charlotte, N.C., weeklies of the American City Business
Journals newspaper chain, and
a technology column for The NonProfit Times.
--
June 2000
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