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This blog is all about do-it-yourself nonprofit communications and marketing. I love helping small and medium-sized nonprofits communicate more effectively with their members, donors, volunteers and other supporters, so that together, we can all make the world a better place. I do that as a blogger, trainer, speaker, coach and consultant.
I believe that even the smallest nonprofit staffs with the most modest budgets can achieve tremendous results through savvy marketing and communications. I hope this blog and my online marketing training and other resources encourage you to do just that, while helping you grow personally as a nonprofit marketer and communications professional.
Please comment on posts and feel free to contact
me with your questions and comments. You can also learn more about hiring me to speak at your conference or workshop and to assist you as a coach or consultant.
Check out my calendar of events for upcoming webinars, live broadcasts of Magic Keys Radio, online office hours, and more.
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Last week I had the opportunity to chat with Politico’s managing editor, Bill Nichols, over a dinner hosted by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. (I was there to teach local and state school choice advocates how to develop nonprofit marketing strategies.)
Bill gave a fascinating presentation about the start-up of Politico, emphasizing many of the qualities that have turned it into one of the most popular and influential sources of national political news in just a couple of years.
Though the scale is obviously different, I see many parallels between Politico’s model and what I advocate that nonprofits do: become your own media mogul (or mini media mogul).
Define your niche. Decide what you want to be known for and good at. Politico focuses on Congress, lobbying, and the White House. They don’t cover state or local news or anything else happening in DC. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Be selective.
Hire and mentor smart people. Politico was launched by a handful of veterans who had been covering the national political scene for decades and were already very well-respected. But they also hired some great young journalists. The energy and Web 2.0 smarts of the younger staff combined with the savvy and experience of the veterans creates a powerful team. Never underestimate the value of your really good and really smart staff members, no matter how young or old they are.
Be transparent. Politico wants to be a trusted, non-partisan source of national political news, which strangely enough is no longer assumed for a media outlet. That means they need to be super-transparent, especially when they make mistakes. Bill described the day they had to retract a story as one of the worst of his life, but admitting the errors and being completely honest about how they happened was far more important than saving face. In today’s world, being transparent IS saving face. Hold integrity and truth in the highest esteem, and admit right away when you screw up.
Be willing to experiment. Politico’s website is its hub, but they also produce a profitable print edition and you’ll frequently see and hear Politico reporters on the radio and TV. Play around with all the different media available to you and find the combinations that work best for your own media empire.
Get out there and update as you go. Bill said stories on the Politico website will often be updated multiple times during the day. What starts out as just a few lines will grow into several paragraphs, then pages. You don’t have to wait until you have all of the details to start conversations with your supporters. That’s the beauty of the web and social media in particular.
Claire Meyerhoff and I are planning to create a series of guides and webinars on how to become your own media mogul in 2010. Stay tuned!
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Posted by Kivi Leroux Miller on Sep 1, 2009 in
Media Relations,
Nonprofit Communications,
Online Tools 
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed Beth Ann Spiegel’s status update on Facebook:
“Beth Ann Spiegel needs your help finding hip songs (rock/alternative/punk/indie/folk/bluegrass/reggae, etc) related to disability/ability, respect, achievement, dignity, friendship, etc. –basically a soundtrack for The Arc of Atlantic County — to play on Stockton’s radio station…we’ll be on 91.7 WLFR talking about The Arc and playing songs connected to our work. Thanks for your help, all!!”
Beth Ann is a fund development and communications associate with The Arc of Atlantic County (New Jersey). The Arc is the world’s largest community-based organization of and for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, with more than 780 state and local chapters across the nation, including Beth Ann’s. This sounded like a perfect way to procrastinate on book writing and still help a nonprofit out, so I spent some time scrolling through iTunes and offered some suggestions: Beautiful (Christina Aguilera), Unwritten (Natasha Bedingfield), New Soul (Yael Naim), Everyday (Dave Matthews Band), Waiting (Green Day), and Shine (Collective Soul).
The more time I spent thinking about it, the more I was intrigued by ways that other nonprofits could use this soundtrack concept. How about collecting song suggestions from your supporters, or even iTunes playlists, and then having your fans vote on the best ones? You could use the winning soundtrack during a DJ’d event or get on a local radio show like Beth Ann is doing this afternoon.
Beth Ann explained how this opportunity came about:
“My colleague and I went to a business mixer and met a radio show host, Joe Molineaux, from the local college’s station–he also runs their small business development department. He hosts a radio program called Money, Management, Marketing and Music. He invites people from small businesses and nonprofits to talk about their work for a whole two hours–but must say something about each of the first 3 M’s. Last night he booked us instantly, on the spot, for September 1st. We’ll get to play a selection of music over those two hours that reflects what we do. Absolutely brilliant, and a way to really engage listeners. We’re promoting an October walk-a-thon to the college students through the radio show so we want them to be able to relate to the music and really get what we do. It’s been such fun thinking of songs and helps us consider our work in a different way. Would be a good exercise for any nonprofit, I think.”
Want to hear Beth Ann’s playlist for The Arc live? Tune in today at 4:00 – 6:00 p.m. ET (1:00-3:00 p.m. PT) to 91.7 WLFR or listen online at www.wlfr.fm, the radio station of Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. I’m on my way out to the Charlotte airport in just a few, but I’m going to try to catch some of it on my netbook.
Listen in and let me know what you think by leaving a comment. Or tell us what songs would be on your organization’s playlist. Happy mixing!
Tags: nonprofit soundtrack, radio
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On Tuesday, August 4, Alia McKee of Sea Change Strategies and Kevin Gottesman of Gott Advertising will present a webinar for us called Beyond Viral: Building Your Email List through Paid Marketing. If you are wondering how the leading nonprofits in U.S. expand to their email prospect lists to hundreds of thousands of people, Alia and Kevin will let you in on how it’s done.
I asked Alia to share some of her lessons learned about capitalizing on media coverage. Just how do you turn those viewers and readers into members of your mailing list? Read on, and register for the webinar. Here’s Alia . . .
Growing an email list is a crucial element for nonprofits to build their movements, cross-promote their social media, and raise more money. Every email list member is a prospective activist, volunteer, donor, and sneezer – someone who can help spread the word on your behalf.
Typically, any surge in media attention, regardless of subject matter, causes a surge in related web traffic. So for instance, when your organizations’ report on Iraqi refugees launches, you can expect two things to happen:
- More people will visit your website;
- More people will search on Internet search terms such as “Iraqi refugees,” “Iraq war refugees,” “Iraqi resettlement,” etc.
Generally, both of these secondary effects of media coverage are short-lived. Unless the report really takes off, the media coverage will peak within 3 or 4 days.
Our experience is that as the media dies down, so will the traffic. The challenge therefore, is to use the window of opportunity – roughly 100 hours – created by the earned media spike to convert as many visitors as possible to list membership – which is the gateway to participation with your organization.
The current industry-standard best practices for doing this would include:
- Amplification of traffic via blogs, Twitter and online PR. Online coverage leads to more traffic to your site than more traditional PR. The best way to amplify traffic is develop one or two clear calls to action and ask bloggers, tweeters, etc. to repeat them.
- Capture and divert Google searchers via customized search ads related to the media activity. For 100 hours (give or take) search activity will surge on a wide range of plain English variations of “your media topic here.” While organic search may get visitors to one page or another on your site, the only way to get searchers directly to the landing page is via paid search ads. Maximize those Google grants – or if you don’t have one – consider an expenditure and track your return. In most cases we’re talking hundreds, not thousands, of dollars.
- Launch concomitant online paid media. In an ideal world, the report release would be accompanied by a flight of online ads. As with search, one could expect click- through rates to be much higher in the 100-hour media coverage window.
- Devote significant home page real estate to diverting traffic to a landing page related to the issue in the media spotlight. For 100 hours, the top home page priority should be getting traffic to the conversion landing page.
- Develop a landing page that makes a very brief yet compelling case for signing on — by offering a free benefit or calling them to action. The quality of the landing page will be the single largest determinant in converting media coverage into traffic into names on the email list.
The following is an excerpt from the Marketing Sherpa Landing Page Handbook, considered the bible in the field:
“We suspect some marketers truly believe that if their outbound campaign is good enough, the creative will pre-sell prospects on the offer no matter how lame the landing page is. In other words, many marketers think the outbound campaign is doing the heavy lifting, and the landing page exists simply as a passive collection cup for all the sales or leads generated by the campaign.
The exact opposite is generally true.”
General guidelines for a good landing page are well-documented and include:
- Suppression of global navigation
- Minimal choices
- Collection only of information viewed as appropriate by the visitor
Conclusion
Many organizations fail to maximize the 100 hours of PR opportunity in converting traffic to leads.
It is critical that your organization work across the “departmental divide” – meaning communications, marketing, programs, advocacy, and fundraising work together to anticipate media spikes and create integrated marketing plans to convert those spikes into real live leads.
It’s Kivi again . . . pretty good stuff, eh? Join us on August 4 for more in-depth advice like this, along with real examples from Alia’s and Kevin’s work.
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On Wednesday, Thom Clark, co-founder and president of Community Media Workshop, will present “How to Be an Effective Spokesperson for Your Nonprofit” during our weekly webinar series.
I asked Thom to present this training because spokesperson skills are incredibly helpful to all nonprofit communicators, whether you are personally speaking with the media or not.
Are you trying to recruit more volunteers or board members? Being an effective spokesperson is critical to successful recruitment of the right people. Trying to keep loyal donors or attract new ones in a soft economy? Learning how engage contributors with stories of your organization’s work and impact on people will raise more dollars than any well-crafted five-point plan to save the world.
And, of course, spokesperson skills still work with journalists too.
Join us on Wednesday, July 8, at Noon ET (9:00 a.m. PT) to learn more about defining strategic audiences and discovering that message and story that will engage their interest. Thom will teach you spokesperson techniques like bridging and flagging that help keep you on message. Five people who register for the webinar will be selected to role play a four-minute radio interview about their organization’s work.
As co-founder and president of the Community Media Workshop @ Columbia College Chicago for the past twenty years, Thom Clark has produced a weekend public affairs radio program and hosts a weekly cable show featuring nonprofit leaders. He teaches in Columbia’s graduate journalism program and is a popular conference presenter. We are lucky to have him teaching for us at Nonprofit Marketing Guide this week!
Register now for the Spokesperson Webinar.
Tags: spokesperson
More Goodies: Get Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Tips E-Newsletter (2-3 times per month)
I’ve created a couple of new partnerships recently to help nonprofit communicators.
Free and Discounted Services from PR Newswire
First, Nonprofit Marketing Guide has teamed up with PR Newswire to provide you with some outstanding discounts, free services and resources. Join PR Newswire today and receive a free annual membership (normally $195) and access to more than $2,000 in free and discounted services. They’ve created a special Nonprofit Toolkit just for you.
If you are really serious about getting far and wide distribution of your press releases, PR Newswire is the way to go. PR Newswire’s powerful, targeted online distribution reaches thousands of websites where millions of media, bloggers and consumers are. It’s not cheap, but it does work. And they do offer some great discounts from time to time and in this Nonprofit Toolkit, so take advantage of the free membership for a year and see what happens.
Free and Inexpensive Stock Photography from BigStockPhoto
Next, BigStockPhoto.com has made 500 stock photos available for free. You can download them from the Nonprofit Marketing Guide Stock Photography Image Search Page. You can use these images on your own website, in newsletters, etc.
More Goodies: Get Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Tips E-Newsletter (2-3 times per month)
Posted by Claire Meyerhoff on Feb 11, 2009 in
Claire Meyerhoff,
Media Relations
By Nonprofit Marketing Guide’s Media Maven,
Claire Meyerhoff |
Extra! Extra! Read all about it!
Once upon a time, in the Olden Days we now refer to as “the ’90’s,” if you wanted to get the word out about your good cause, you “did some press.” You slaved over a press release, made copies on something called “paper” and sent them to news editors by way of the U.S. Mail (gosh, things were so complicated back then). You followed up with a phone call, speaking to an editor, and hopefully, the Newspaper/TV Station/Radio Station would send a reporter to cover your story.
That was Grandma’s strategy for getting media attention when Grandpa manned the city desk phones at “The Olden Days News and Record.” Well, I have a NewsFlash for you, my friends in the nonprofit world . . .
. . . that’s old news.
Today, a newspaper’s staff is shrinking daily as advertising revenues dry up. Check your local paper’s bylines and you’ll see more stories from the Associated Press and other news services. TV stations and radio stations are feeling it, too. To top it off, a news organization’s shrunken staff also has to feed a beast called “the website.”
What does that mean for you, and how you go about getting media attention for your fine organization?
It means that you can get media coverage, if you know what’s going in your local media and how to pitch your story in a real-world way.
The #1 Rule is . . .
. . . always know what’s in it for them.
What’s in it for the harried assignment editor at WBIG-TV? What’s in it for the busy beat reporter at The Cutback Chronicle?
Find out “what’s in it for them.” Then give it to them. Savvy nonprofit communicators tap the trends and feed the beast, when the beast needs to be fed.
At Nonprofit Marketing Guide, we believe you should be your own media mogul. At the same time, mainstream media can still play an important role in getting the word out. But the rules of the game are different now.
Want to learn more about what you need to do in today’s environment to get press coverage? Join Kivi and Claire on Thursday, February 19 at Noon Eastern for a webinar on Getting Media Attention for Your Good Cause. We’ll look at the kinds of stories that are hot right now and how savvy nonprofits are tapping into those trends. We’ll also explain how to give the media what they need, when they need it, so you maximize your chances of getting coverage for your good cause. Learn more and register.
Tags: nonprofit PR
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Last week I gave a short talk at a statewide conference for the United Way. If I had to pick one slide that summed up my talk, it would be this one:
As Claire Meyerhoff, who was also on the panel, put it, you can spend a whole day writing a press release and trying to get a reporter to use it, and get nothing. Or you can spend that time creating your own content, using it in several different places, and having it work for you for months to come.
Nonprofits are no longer dependent on the media to get their messages out beyond their inner circles, and yet so many groups are still fretting about whether to double-space a press release. Traditional media still plays an important role, but it’s not what it used to be.
Instead of thousands of newspapers landing in the driveways of your potential supporters, you should be looking at ways to generate thousands of messages from members of your inner circle to their own inner circles, talking about your cause, using everything from email to social media to do it. The tools to make that happen are now easy and inexpensive. Anyone, or any nonprofit, can be a publisher, broadcaster, and media mogul.
I’ll be talking a lot more about this on Wednesday, February 11, during the webinar called “Online Marketing Basics for Nonprofits: From Email to Social Media.” During the webinar, I’ll help you sort through your online marketing options, emphasizing how they all fit together, and helping you see how they can help you form your own media empire.
For those of you who are really ready to dive into the social media components of this in particular, check out NTEN’s We Are Media wiki.
You might also find two additional webinars helpful: Blogging for Nonprofits on February 12 and Creating Online Evangelists on February 17 March 20. Single webinars are $35 and the All-Access Pass for 12 weeks is $97 (attend as many live webinars as you want and watch the rest as recordings).
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Be the One They Call.
“How to Position Your Nonprofit
as an Expert Source”
Webinar on Thursday,
January 22 at Noon Eastern.
Registration is just $35.
Learn more and register |
If you are interested in how you can increase your organization’s visibility and credibility — and position your staff as expert sources for the media, policymakers and others — you’ll want to check out these three new resources.
First, we’ll be talking about how to be a credible source for the news media this Friday on our first edition of Magic Keys Radio & Podcast in 2009. Join Claire Meyerhoff and me from 1:00 – 1:30 p.m. Eastern (10:00 a.m. Pacific) on Friday for the live show, where you can call in your questions over the phone or send them in via online chat.
We’ll be joined by special guest Irina Lallemand, who is a long-time broadcast news director who launched WLRN-Miami Herald News on South Florida’s NPR station and headed the news department at XM Satellite Radio. Her twenty-five years in journalism includes 17 years as Assistant News Director at WCBS 880 News in New York, managing one of the busiest newsrooms in the nation. If anyone is an expert on expert sources, it’s Irina. Join us for Magic Keys Radio live and ask Irina your questions about how to become the media source that always get the calls when a reporter is covering your issue.
Magic Keys is part of my free “Friday Office Hours” program, so feel free to call in with any nonprofit marketing questions you have, whether they relate to our discussion topic or not. Claire, Irina, and I will do our best to answer them! The podcast is available for download immediately after the live show. Here’s the link to this week’s show where you can listen online, find the call-in number and chat window, and subscribe to the podcast.
Second, I’m offering a live webinar on How to Position Your Nonprofit as an Expert Source on Thursday, January 22 at Noon Eastern (9:00 a.m. Pacific). During the webinar, I’ll explain what people are looking for in experts and why most nonprofits are already well-positioned to become expert sources, if they’d only take just a few more steps. We’ll examine five characteristics of a good expert source and explore a handful of strategies your nonprofit can use to promote your expertise. As usual, it’s $35 for as many people as can fit around one computer and it’s included with the All-Access Pass. Learn more and register.
Third, I’ve posted a new article on Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com called “Five Qualities That Will Make You a Good Expert Source.” It explains how good sources have a well-understood niche and solid track record and are trustworthy, accessible, and cooperative, with examples of what those words mean in this context.
Have questions about how to raise your nonprofit’s crediblity as a source?
Do reporters call you all the time? If so, share your tips.
Click on the comments bubble by the post title on the blog to add your comment to the discussion.
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