Simiya

Every non-profit organization needs to have regular events to help their communities, encourage their volunteers, seek new donors or increase their influence in an area of public interest. There are many ways to conduct the marketing campaign to promote your activities. This Simiya blog post will highlight ways to use both new and old techniques to help make your efforts more effective.

Local Media

Spread the word about your campaign by speaking to local media. They will write about what you are doing in the newspaper if they like what hear. Practice with your local community newspaper and then speak to a larger publication that covers an entire city. It’s an effective way to tell your story!

Using the Internet to Target Local Media

Whether your campaign is national, regional or within your city it is always a good idea to know which communities are interested in your organization. Use your website’s tracking data from tools like Google Analytics to determine the zip codes and cities from where your visitors come. Focus your local media campaign in these locations. If they are not in your own community, foster a relationship with donors, volunteers over there and get them to speak to local media on your behalf.

If you require further information, the Google Analytics You Tube channel has many good tutorials on ways to get a better understanding of the visitors to your website.

Strategies to Effectively Contact Local Media

Remember to make it easy for the journalist to cover your story. Try this to-do list:

When: Provide lots of warning: Prepare journalists by calling them before any event or announcement. Let them have enough time to plan the story in the paper

How: There are many ways to reach journalists. Consider this advice:

• Call Them: Use the phone to give your favorite journalist the details of your campaign event or activity. Contact information can be found in the newspaper or on its website
• See Them: A face-to-face meeting is always best. Visit the newspaper’s local office and ask to meet a journalist to tell them about your campaign
• Write it Down: Follow up your meetings and calls with an email with the details of your campaign.

Now you understand some of the “whens” and “hows”, let’s discuss what your message should contain.

The Press Release

Create a press release with a story of the event and its most important information that the journalist can use as the basis of their article. Send your press release before, and as a follow up just in case.

Your story about the event should have a clear message that is must be delivered well. Try these options:

• Give all the relevant details. Have answers for the ‘who, what, when where and why’ of your story.
• A picture is worth a thousand words. Add a photograph to your message.
• Use full names and ages, if possible, for all persons referenced or featured in your images. It will help to bring your story to life. Remember to get their permission before you do so.
• Numbers are always interesting. Use them whenever possible, for example give the number of expected attendees to your event.
• Make it easy for the journalist to get more information. Include contact details in your message.
• Include contact information for key marketing people in your campaign. A link to your website is critical.

No press release story is complete without a images, let’s talk about some strategies for taking good ones.

Creating a Picture

Your press release should always have a photo attached. It helps to make your story more compelling. Try these tips to make your images more interesting.

• Faces make a story interesting by helping us make a connection with what we read. They make your story more impactful. Newspapers often send a photographer to visit you if the story is of interest. However, if they don’t, it is important to provide them with an image of a similar quality to that of their photographer so they can use it in the paper.
• There are many tips to creating a photo that is useable by a newspaper. Here are a few:
• You will often hear that the image should be high resolution (high res) or 300dpi (dots per inch). Pictures of this quality can be printed to any regularly used size and will not lose clarity. Most digital cameras with their image quality settings are set to high will work.
• Remember to keep the subject of the picture in the center of the screen.
• Take a look at the background of the photo. Keep distractions such as bins, signs or door frames etc in from the main picture.
• Another distraction can be strangers in the shot who may be walking past or standing next to the subject of the picture.
• Make sure everyone in the photo adds value to your story.
• Where possible, make sure everyone in the photo has their eyes open and is looking at the camera.
• Get permission from everyone featured in the picture to have the image sent to the newspaper.

Remember, images help to make a complete story. Ensure you get this part of your message done correctly.

Talking to Local Radio Stations

If you want to encourage as many people as possible to become interested in your campaign, radio is a great way of getting your voice heard and your story out there. There are different ways to prepare for radio interviews. They are either live or pre-recorded.

• Live: Live interviews either occur in the studio or over the phone. You will need to think on the spot and ensure that you get your messages across. Everything you say is heard instantly, so keep that in mind.
• Pre-Recorded: This method has the benefit of allowing your response to be record it again if you stumble in your response to an unexpected question. The radio station will edit it into the final piece. You will be able to listen to your interview before it’s played out on air. Always prepare by thinking of potential questions that the interviewer may ask. Practice your response. Also think about the main points you want to get across in the interview and try to build these into your responses.

Even though it may be old media, many people still listen to the radio in their cars and streaming over the internet. It is still a good way of getting your campaign noticed.

Campaigning Materials

Meeting people face to face provides a chance to explain the benefits of your campaign. Create flyers and give them to the people with whom you speak and encourage people to put them up in their windows or share them with friends and family. Use the information in your press release as the basis for your online campaign which will be discussed later.

Getting Local Influencers Involved

These are persons or organizations in your local area who have a voice that can reach a large number of people are called local influencers. For example, a local government official, a celebrity or influential businessman could help greatly in spreading the word further and perhaps make your story more newsworthy.

Be prepared. Before asking these people for their support you should visit schools, universities, libraries and other institutions, and don’t forget local officials, to highlight the benefits to the local area. Ask local businesses for a small sponsorship fee to back your campaign for naming their business in your marketing material. A ‘tweet’ about your campaign from the Twitter feed of a local influencer or celebrity is always valuable. Get them to also mention it on their Facebook page.

Your Online Message

It’s easy to forget the older traditional media outlets which is why they were treated first in this post. Online social media is developing rapidly as a increasingly credible source of information, especially if the message is controlled by your campaign. Your organization should enroll in the most popular social sites and networking tools such as blogs. This is not all, here are some further tips you can use:

• It is cheap and easy to use social media to spread the word about your campaign and get support from others in your online community.
• Use your own Twitter feed to notify followers of any news about the campaign trail.
• Create a Facebook fan page or group. Use it to upload stories, photos, videos and other results of your activities. It is a great way to speak with your local community.
• Also add your photos to a photo sharing site like Flickr or Picasa.
• Put videos of your organizations work on its own YouTube channel.
• Start a blog to record the progress of your work. Allow trusted volunteers to post so that new perspectives can be heard.
• Keep an eye on local community forums and chat rooms for people who are discussing work similar to yours. They are an excellent source for ideas.
• Though it may be old school, consider the latest email marketing techniques to get the message across to your existing supporters so that they are kept up to date the risk of new updates being eliminated by older ones the way RSS and Twitter feeds can. Tie your email notifications to links to even more information on your website, blog or other pages you control. Many email marketing services can give you statistics of the effectiveness of your email campaign such as who read it and the most popular links clicked. This is further valuable information to use.

I’m almost finished. We have seen low cost strategies to promote your event in both traditional and new media. The next challenge is to keep the momentum alive.

Remember to Keep Your Story Going

You will always need fresh news to announce to the local media, via social media channels or face-to face. Create a schedule for the updates. Host a party to gather more support, or even get a group of local community members together with a journalist to discuss the impact of your organization on the community. If new people begin to support your cause, perhaps a new local influencer, then make sure you tell people about it. This could give your message an extra boost.

During, and especially after your event, assign roles to persons in your organization to get the work done. Meet regularly, evaluate the data surrounding the effectiveness of your campaign. Consider creating a permanent marketing team with outside volunteers or donors who may have good ideas on how to proceed. Make sure your marketing team can always survive the loss of one member and strive to find a replacement quickly if someone moves on to some other role.

This is not an extensive list of actions you can take to get people interested in your event, but it should be enough to get you started with confidence. Good luck!