25 Ways to Increase Your Organizations Communication Capacity

25 Ways to Increase Your Organization's Communication Capacity Without Hiring New Staff Tirza Hollenhorst Mark Sutton ifPeople Artez Interactive @tirzalyn @marksutton tirzalyn@ifpeople.net msutton@artez.com Join the conversation: #10NTC.25W

Why Does it Matter Tight budgets = No new staff  > need to communicate across > channels  Stakeholder expectations of interactivity are Up More noise to cut through

Agenda 1. Communications Strategy 2. Process – Scale it 3. Who’s Involved?

Strategy ( a really, really good one)

1. Define Your Goals  Where are you going?  How will you measure if you are heading in the right direction?

Keep track of goals with quantitative data… Influential Friends New names added to email file Comments Voting participants Increased Influential donations blogs linked to you Increased webpage hits Content of keywords

Define Your Goals Increase Engagement Acquire New Supporters Build Relationships Increase Donations

2. Define Your Audience Personas are…  Descriptions of individuals that represent your target  They’re not real people  Just archetypes that represent real people.

3. Go Where Your Audience Is  Speak their language  Address their aspirations  Meet their needs  Go to their communities  Test  Test  Test

Our staff knows fashion. http://dcgoodwillfashions.blogspot.com/ We sell things you can’t find anywhere else. We want to target young women. http://www.fashionofgoodwill.org/

4. Clarify your Key Messages  Starts with the mission  Defines your ‘elevator’ pitch  The context for all communications  Differentiators  Directed to stakeholders

5. Research Your Keywords  Your site has two audiences….People & Robots

6. Listen Broadcast Platform Conversation Medium

7. Build Your Social Database “Relentlessly Build Your Email Database” –Ted Hart

Process Automation

8. Stop Entering Data

Stop Entering Data Plone > Saleforce  Staff never touches data  Custom reporting  Automatic response

9. Use an RSS Reader Consume more Data More Efficiently

10. Cross Post Most social media tools have a widgets or features that allow you to bring content in or push it out!

11. Schedule Tweets What to Schedule?  Schedule calendar events  Non-time sensitive ideas  Links to partners or affiliates  Schedule Re-Tweets

12. Communications Calendar  Key for new forms of communication  Decide what you can do, don’t over commit  Establish the structure & responsibility  Get in a Rhythm

Make Communications Part of Everyone’s Job

13. Create and Use Templates  Easier to Begin  Most communications have replicable formatInformal  Consistency  Saves Time

14. Create a Central Info Bank Central repository of:  Success stories  About us paragraphs  Quotes  Photos  Recent statistics

15. Teach Writing for the Web Essay style college writing does not work on the web. So, what works?  Conversational  Direct  Informal  Skimmable

16. Be Deliberate About what tools you use

17. Get More People Participating  Delegate Ownership  Incorporate routine communications into your process  Train, document, train

18. Use Checklists  Press releases should not go out without your URL – ever!  Clarify standards  Document process  Enforce quality  Get new staff up to speed

Example Checklist Email Announcements:  Does your subject line entice readers to open?  Are you making the most of the preview pane?  Is your email easy on the eyes?  Does the message come through, even if the images don’t?  Does this email have a personal touch?  Are you being CAN-SPAM compliant?

19. Identify Guest Bloggers Spread the Work & Expand Perspectives  Program Staff  Board members  Practitioners Volunteers  Experts (doctors, etc)  Partners

20. ‘Digital Natives’ on Staff  Social media, digital comms is not ‘new’  Not about the tools, it’s about the connections  Natural ‘conversation’ and relationships more likely than broadcasting  possibly ‘edgy’

21. Interns, Interns, Interns  Take the grunt work off your plate.  Offer an opportunity to learn (and learn from them!)  Not fixed overhead (seasonal/project based)  Management & recruitment time a consideration

22. Expand beyond Text “A Picture is worth 1000 Words…”  Easy & Powerful  Fast & Inexpensive  Not every piece of content has to be a viral juggernaut  Repurpose content  Events, Galas, Etc

23. Supporters as Fundraisers  Supporters as fundraisers  Supporters as content generators  Videos  Blog posts  Tweets

24. Test, measure and adjust. Test, measure and adjust. Test, measure and adjust Figure out the right formula for your organization  Try new things, not all will work  Define success and measure  Cut the things the aren’t working

25. Have Fun & Be Creative

Thank you! Mark Sutton Tirza Hollenhorst President, Artez US IfPeople msutton@artez.com tirzalyn@ifpeople.net Twitter: @marksutton Twitter: @tirzalyn www.artez.com www.ifpeople.net

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25 Ways to Increase Your Organizations Communication Capacity

by ifPeople on Apr 27, 2010

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25 Ways to Increase Your Organizations Communication Capacity — Presentation Transcript