Effective storytelling is an essential part of impactful advocacy. As Robert McKee said, “Stories are the currency of human contact.”
When we share stories of trauma-informed change, healing, and resilience, we can create an emotional connection with the audience that is powerful and lasting. An effective communications strategy inspires real momentum in legislation, funding, other forms of action, and public awareness of the benefits of trauma-informed care.
We believe every coalition, organization, and person has a story worth sharing, and we realize that the process can be daunting and time-consuming.
This month's CTIPP CAN call shares strategies and advice to help you develop or update your communications plan, secure earned media coverage in your local news, reach audiences directly with a "media platform" on your existing website, and model the model with trauma-informed storytelling.
ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:
00:00:04 Speaker 3: Thank you, everyone for joining a wonderful June 2023 CTIPP CAN cal. We are so excited to have everyone here, for everyone that's shared where you're coming from in the chat. It's nice to have such broad representation across professions and geographically around the country. Don't want to take up too much space early on, because for those of you who have commented on how well our website has improved and how nice our newsletters look, you may not have ever had the privilege of getting to meet Laura, who has done so much work on the back-end for Tips communications, and today she is going to share so much of her knowledge with you all today, Laura, for whatever reason, while you're sharing, I can see some of the notes on it. You want to try that again, but we're so excited to be discussing the communication side of our work, which is so critical to getting our missions out, and so we will. That looks better there, Laura. Without any further ado, Laura, please take it away and thank you all again. So much for being here with us today.
00:01:14 Speaker 1: Wonderful, ok. Can you still not see the notes? It looks perfect. Okay, great! Well, welcome! Welcome. Thank you so much for being here. This is going to be a really fun call. We will quickly just dive straight in, so we're going to start off real quick with an introduction agenda in context. We have a lot to cover today and so I'm going to talk fast so that we can cover it all, because there's a lot of really cool stuff to share with you all. So first just want to introduce myself. As Jessie said, I'm Laura Braden Quigley, I'm the director of Communications and Outreach here at CTIPP. I have been very lucky to get to do a little bit of everything within communication, so public relations, content, strategy, website design, project management, crisis communication, social media events, you name it. I've done a little bit of everything. So I bring hopefully a little bit of breadth and depth to you when you're put together your communications. So today's agenda, so many of these slides could serve as an entire stop calls in and of themselves. So I do just want to disclaim that this is going to be brief and what we really want to do is make this be the first conversation. We have a plan and I'll explain a little bit more as we go on. But we are going to create not only a pipeline to help share your stories with the media, but we're also going to create a resource library that has whatever it is you need temples for press releases, webinars on pitching media. We really want to hear what would be the most helpful to you, and so really, today is the starting point for that. For that longer conversation, the focus today is also going to be a little bit more on organizational par. So sharing your organization's mission and vision and values with media versus an individual lived experience, although a lot of the principles and concepts do apply. But as I'm talking, I'm sort of speaking through. That lends more through the organization as questions come up, whether it's about a specific project you're working on or just something that I'm talking about. Please chat please that Jessy directly. He's going to compile all of those and were going to do a big quina session at the versus breakout rooms that we can all learn from each other and then yeah, as I mentioned, you know, also be thinking about like what resources would be the most helpful for you. Where are your biggest pain points? Particularly if you've got smaller budgets and smaller staff. We want to really be here to help the other. I guess last disclaimer is that you know the only thing I can bring is my experience right, and so I wanted to give you sort of just first blush of how I look at communications and, as always, you know, take what makes sense for you and leave the rest. Hopefully, hopefully everybody takes away something today. But I really believe that communication is an ongoing process. It is not a set and forget it. I encourage organizations to do full communication audit at least twice a year, and what I mean by audit is you wooing at your target audiences and looking at your tactics and seeing if those are still aline, what's working that you can do more of and what's not working, that maybe you can drop or rejigger and redo. I also believe communications is a means to an end, and so what I mean? There is a lot of time people get really excited about the communications piece and they want to. They want to get right to the whiteboard and start brainstorming ideas. But if your organization has thou organization has to be rooted in a foundation with a mission and vision and larger strategic objectives that the communications comes in and supports, not the other way around. I also really believe in the model that two: for people to be able to receive the communications you're giving to them, three things have to line up the message. The messenger and the delivery have to be aligned, otherwise it's just not going to resonate at the full impact that you need it to. So if you're having any struggles with your communications strategy, that this is where I always tell people to look. First, is our message is our messenger and is our delivery of that message through that messenger and in a way that's going to. That reflects where our targeted audiences are and then, so speaking, of target audiences. The more that you can target those audiences, the higher your impact is going to be. So, whether that's geographical or whether that's demographic, but knowing who it is you serve who it is, you bring value to who it is. You are ideal partners with. The more that you can isolate those folks and then develop communication strategies around them specifically, the more impact you're going to have, and then again, a lot of what I'm going to present is sort of industry protocols and industry standards. I always believe it, no matter what the topic you know, learn the formal education piece, so that you can decide which rules to bend and break based on what you need to do there, an example there would be. You know, if you're going to do a mediate interview on TV. There are standard protocols for what you should wear and how you should assess your yes, and how you should put on your makeup and all of these things. But you know these days it's really more about being authentic and being comfortable. So that's that is definitely a rule that I encourage people to break now, now again. So this is a grounding for the presentation. I love this quote so much. Use it quite a bit. I don't mean it to be transactional. It really makes me more think of a time before social media and 247 news. We're really the only way that we were able to share stories and learn wisdom was around a campfire, right or at market or a cross roads. And so really story-telling is the way that we create human connectivity, which can then lead to a lot of change see tip. We believe that everyone has a story worth sharing, whether your organization or an individual. We also know that sharing that story can be time-consuming intimidating, and so we really want to help you all do that and help help address those pain points as they come up. So first we're on to go into laying the foundation, which is really you know whether you're starting on day one or starting on a 1000. There's a bit of a process you can go through to develop your communications roadmap, and so real, briefly, you know you really want to. You want to start at the end and work backwards. Righ, you want to start at the end and reverse engineer, so that starts with like. Well, what does success actually look like? Like? What are we trying to achieve? Getting really clear on what your goals and objectives are? How are we going to measure success? Remove this out of the way real quick is blocking there we go. So whether you're building a communication strategy or auditing on this process is pretty much the same thing. Defining success will help you figure out the strategies, the tactics and the messages to then reach your target audience. So, speaking of audiences right, you also really want to get clear on who is it you're trying to reach? What's your, what's your organization's unique selling point? What sets you apart from other nonprofits in this space again, whether that's in the sector that you serve or in the community that you serve? And you can look at it both ways. Who are you trying to reach like? Who are they actually? Are they baby bums that live in this certainty code? Are you trying to reach students in different zip code? You know, having a clear understanding of exactly who your audiences are, we'll help you decide, should invest my time in twitter or facebook, because demographically those platforms are different. Or if we have an event and we're trying to get, you know, youth out to come to a community event, putting advertising in the newspaper isn't going to reach them as much as, say, you know, a targeted add-on facebook might. So that's why audience targeting is so important, so that you can really leverage and maximize all of your dollars and time into into the strategy and then always, particularly in the space that we're in. Right. Well, most of us, if not all of us, are doing advocacy or activism or education and all of the sort of overlap and play. And so in our line of work I always encourage people to always have a call to action. In fact, there's been plenty of times with clients where they wanted to issue press releases or statements or campaigns and I've successfully pushed back on them of like no, not ready yet until there's a clear call to action, that email is wasted. Right. You always want someone to do something, whether it's donating, volunteering, you now filling out a form to a legislator. That call to action is always really critical in your communications or educational based. Please read this report right, that's also called action. So the crisis response. So I've worked a lot in crisis communications. I've done political campaigns. I also worked on the BP oil spill for six months and typically what I have found is that most people don't have a plan in place. You know they say the best of it is a good defense and a crisis for an organization. On this call could be anything from a former employee posting negative or inaccurate information on social media, or it could be a violent community event or an accident at a hosted event. It could be a host of things, and so I always encourage folks. This is, we hope we never have to use it, but we're glad we have it. If it happens sort of strategy. You really want to sit-down with a team of trusted advisors, whether that's staff, board, members, volunteers, members, sort of your organizational family, and you want to really sort of think about what are all the potential things that could happen to your organization that you might, that you might have to face. And the point of that process is to then put a plan in place that's got very clear protocols and processes. Okay, if this happens, then what happens next? Who's responsible for what? When do we issue statements to the press? Who do we need to call all of those things? Having that on paper with clear roles and tell people to go as far as like, literally put the staff, person or the volunteers name and sephon and email attached to the responsibility and much like your overall communications plan. You know, looking at this at least once a year, updating it as needed saves so much time. It also, you know, helps you respond to things happening in a much more credible, professional and efficient way, which then, of course you know, dampens the impact of whatever the crisis is that you're facing. And then you know the last piece of this too is who is responsible for what? So beyond just the crisis communication strategy? It's really great to come up with a communications planned, but how are you on to actually go out and execute? Do you have staff available to take on this work? Do you need to find a local intern through a local college? Do you need to enlist a local PR firm to do some pro bono work which just about every marketing creative advertising firm offers pro bono work and particularly project based? So that's a really great resource to help you. You know, do these projects, whether it's a new website launch or whether it's a messaging strategy, there are definitely folks in your community that can help and I can help. That can be something too that I can help you. If anybody wants more ideas or how do you go about that? I'd be happy to walk you through it because I've been on both sides of it. So it's a really good, good process. So we're going to slide into securing our media or building your own media platform. So there are prose cons to each. I won't read the slide to you, but I want. I want to just highlight a couple of these, not to talk myself out of a job but is starting to get a tad bit antiquated. More and more people, and I'm starting to do this with more and more of my projects and clients, including CTIPP, are starting to not wait for a reporter to be interested and then you have to wait a week for them to interview everybody and then you have to wait them, wait for them to write the story and then your fingers are across the night before hoping that the story is what you need it to be. A lot of folks are just taking the initiative and creating their own content, posting it on their website and then promoting it through her social media channels, their newsletters, their email blasts and sort of bypassing the media entirely. So there's pros and cons to either approach. You know the earn media thing I just mentioned. I think the biggest can there is that you don't have any control over the content. You also, depending on who your targeted audience are, might not even be reaching your targeted audiences because a lot of younger people are just not reading the newspaper, listening to talk radio you as much as they used to. They live more in the digital space. Media platforms are great because you have complete control over everything, but they're also the most time-consuming and expensive to pull off, particularly on the front-end because someone has to. You now sit-down in brainstorm and strategize all this great content, create it, schedule, it, amplify it, etcetera. There's a whole process which I'll show you. I've got a little graft to show you that too. So just all considerations to take when you're sort of deciding, like what approach to go down. So just real quickly. I wanted to go over some examples of media pitches and content that tend to work these days. The media's just like anything else. What worked five years ago, 10 years ago, to get media is not what we have to do today. But these sort of buckets always are continually working and getting good success. So the first one's community events, and that can be. I always tell people like: think about what your organization's mission is, where you are in the community and then, if you can think one level further out, you can create some really interesting events that media will want to cover. That could be resource base things like hosting a free yoga class at a new city park, bringing in a financial planner to do free seminar for you know the community if you have, if you have space for that, partnering with, you know, local like-minded organizations on timely issues or projects. So that could be, you know, an art mural on mental health awareness at a local coffee shop. Thought leadership when it comes to media stories that could be again hosting policy briefing with relevant state holders. So like a policy breakfast, you know, think, like Chamber of Commerce used to do this a lot back in the day. Local chambers, would, you know, host different speakers or have breakfast seminars on different events, different issues impacting the community, those sorts of policy briefings, particularly if you're if you're combining local expertise with say, like a statewide, maybe government person or someone from DC or someone who's just maybe like coming through town on a book tour. Pairing sort of the micro, local and the macro state or national voice are a good combination for those sorts of things. Obviously you've got beds on timely local topics in your newspaper. So I always encourage folks to at least have someone on your team that's constantly monitoring the news and the local community, social media, to try to find ideas of things that you that you can jump on and leverage for your own for your own purposes. And then, yeah, and then also thinking about, like: where is your nonprofit being innovative? Whether that's in fund-raising whether that's in recruiting volunteers or in your advocacy work? What are you doing? That's different, innovative, unique, because those all make really great media stories. Sort of the story ends up becoming about that strategy. And then you're an example of how that strategy gets demonstrated and the impact. So this can work. This can work really well for both the website or for media. But you know, trying to historically gather data that shows the impact you've had in the community. Whether that's financial or, you know, population-based it doesn't really matter. But if you can show impact and sort of go back through the historical audit of your organization, we are always really interested in those sorts of stories. Same thing. If you've ever any sort of unique partnerships that you have that maybe you haven't discussed with media, media, love to talk about local community groups coming together for a larger purpose and then behind the curtain. You know again this could be for media or for website. I tried to sort of bucket them all alike. They could work in either direction, depending on what you need. But this could be, you know, as simple as a facility or if you have that sort of set up, you could share success stories on the people and populations that you serve. You can do, you can pitch profiles on your volunteers and on your staff, particularly even donors. Donor profiles can be really interesting and then every community has just about every community has local warrants, whether it's through the local business Journal or the chamber, or, you know, a larger regional non-profit entity. I'm thinking about. Like you know, most business journals have like authority under 40. So I would try to identify what those awards are and just every year pitch a different staff person right. Just it's such good visibility in the community and media end up doing stories about the winners and that's another opportunity as well. So the content creation process is pretty straightforward, is very similar to developing the communication strategy itself. But so when you're trying to figure out like what content creation do I need for my website and for my social media, my newsletters and my emails, you at first do the common strategy that we previously discussed. Once you have you no sort of that down, then you want to really do a big deep dive on those audiences. Where do they live online? Where do they live in the media? Do they listen to talk radio? Do they spend most of their time on Linton? Are they on Instagram? Where do they live and where are you the most likely to reach them? It also is really good too. If you've got any historical data right, are your newsletters performing? Are your email blasts performing? Are you sending too many emails? Are you sending too few? You're also looking at sort of your internal infer structure. Any data and analytics you have there can help guide that decision-making process as well. Once you sort of understand that you know what you want to say to them, you know where they live and where you need to say it to them, then the fun part, or at least for me the fun part, comes in. You get a big old white board, you get the right team together, whether again that's your staff, your board, advisors, community volunteers, whoever you deem to be helpful in this regard, and you get together and you brainstorm and you just try to be as creative as possible in coming up with as many ideas as you can. And then after you execute that content, whether it's blog posts or infographics or webinars or two videos, whatever the content is, then you want to use a program to schedule the content. You can post things every day, but it takes probably three times the amount of time, as if you just took like a half a day and scheduled out a month and then just sort of monitor it and make sure you know like if something happens in the news that then makes the message not work, that you remove it right, you still have to sort of monitor it so that you don't say something that's one for just sort of off message from your from your organization. My favorite program to use for that is called Loomly. They have a free and a paid version, but it does a couple of things. It helps you schedule out your content across all everything: Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, all of the platforms. It will suggest hashtags. It will based on you know what's popular. It will let you tag other accounts and other people as you schedule. It also provides a lot of data analytics so that you can really see what's working and what's not. The paid version also has additional. They. They provide content ideas based on what other people are saying on social media or Hay Today is, you know, international donut Day. Those sorts of things right, and sometimes those do work for your mission to jump on that band wagon. But they let you know about different holidays and other things so that you can just again schedule this out really quick and easy and then be able to monitor it. And then you want to reschedule as many times as possible. So the best content is content that's evergreen, which means has a long shelf life and or it can be updated on a regular basis to extend its shelf life. Content creation is one of the most, if not the most time-consuming and expensive things for any organization to pull off. So the more that you can repurpose and repackage that content, it's just going to increase your and and make the bang worth the buck. And then last but certainly not at least monitor, analyze and pivot as needed. As I mentioned, I usually recommend doing an audit twice a year just to make sure that you're still everything's clicking the way that you wanted to. So a couple of notes on the current media landscape, and sort of tis I guess to engage with media. The media has changed so much. When I first started out in communications 20 years ago, we still faced press releases individually to newsrooms, and that just seems like a million years ago now. What's happening now are a couple of interesting things. Newsrooms are continually continuing to shriek. A lot of folks are turning to shrinking budgets. Less advertising than they used to. It just means fewer people actually working in the news. That has a whole cascade of consequences for the purpose of this call. But that usually means is like fewer beat reporters, fewer reporters who have an indepth understanding on issues, more reporters that have to write five or six stories in a day. They're they are burnt-out their time crunched and they're not always able to go into a deep dive like maybe they used to two or three years ago. The new cycle. You know we always say 24, even new cycle. It's now 24 and seven. Plus. Right, I don't know about you, but it just feels like the world's accelerating faster and faster and faster, and which can be good and bad right if it's a true crisis, you now give it a day or two and something will replace it. So it doesn't have the longevity. Let's say, you know it may be used to, but again it's also like that makes it a little bit tougher. If you've got something that's super timely, it's very common for your for your news to get pushed because of something happened. It's some breaking news that's happening right, son of going back to the Proton slide. If you've got, if you've got news that needs to get out into the public really quickly. Sometimes the media just isn't able to do that. Coverage is also driven by virality. So what I mean by that is, I think we're all familiar with clickbait right and rage. So because of because of traditional advertising dollars being down for news, generally speaking across the board, they now make a lot of their revenue through the clicks that people literally people clicking on the website and on those on the app and on social media. They make money off those clicks and unfortunately a lot of folks turn to things that are goin to get you to click on it, and that is usually something that scares you, outrages you or or just super controversial, as we all I'm sure I've seen on various websites. So that can also be tricky for pitching media because they tend to want, because they need you to click on the article to read it. They tend to skew a little bit more towards the controversial. They're looking for the controversy, they're looking for the divide, not for the connection, and so again, depending on what your local media landscape looks like. This also might be another reason why it's best to just create your own content on your website and get it to the to the folks you're trying to target. Because of all of that, it's also really hard to get reporters or producers or even newsroom editors on the phone. So I always tell people: just don't bother do a really solid email pitch, which could be its own web, and but do a solid email pitch with everything that they could potentially need. Try to do all their work for them. And what I mean by that is like if you reference study linked to that study, don't make them go google, search it right. If you have experts that can speak on a particular topic, provide the link to their bio or a couple of sentences of what they're experts on, don't make them do it for them. Do their work for them because they simply just don't have the time. Social media can also be a really great way to get in touch with reporters. If you have only really, if you have a smaller community and, let's say, there's only five people in the media that you need to have a solid long term relationship with. Make sure you follow them on social media. Make sure that you're interacting with their posts wherever it feels appropriate, whether that's liking or retreating or responding. They notice, and so when they get an email from you they're going to pay more attention because you've engaged with them on social media. So that's just a little there. And then I always tell folks after the media interview itself, you a few other ways to sort of stand out to create that long term relationship. If you have time, consider sending them a quick thank you, note the email and just sort of reiterating how their media story is going to help the community, even if it's just by educating the community on a particular issue, will help drive home for them their angle and where they need to stay focused on the story. And then I always just tell folks, include a reminder that they can contact you for future stories because they will. They. They will add you to that road if it's appropriate, depending on what the subject-matter is, always suggest. Telling cuse me always suggest posting a picture on social media. So, for example, like if it's a TV interview, taking a picture with the crew, an informal smiling picture with the crew and then posting a thank you on your social media for educating the community on the benefits of Truman, form care et cetera right. But like, try to get your car message in there because it's another opportunity to do so and then you can tag them in the post and a lot of times they'll rated it. But they love that because again they're trying to create their own level of engagement with the community so that they can get those clicks that they can get revenue, never be afraid to ask for corrections. There are a bunch of actually temples on line of like. How do I word it? But just for edification, so they won't correct anything that you don't agree with. They are only going to correct factual errors. Sometimes you have to provide the documentation or citation to prove it again. You have to do their work for them and particularly if you can include that in the information on the front-end it just makes it a little bit easier for them if it's more of a contextual issue or sort of sort of new, and if they refuse to correct something that is factual, you are well within bounds to contact their editor or the newsroom or the producer and just see them in that forwarding of the email and ask for a review. That is 100% normal and won't shouldn't burn that bridge. As long as you know, the email is worded professionally and nicely and then amplify and repurpose a little bit of what we talked about earlier. Right, you've got all this great media coverage or content, and now what so I always tell folks, particularly media coverage. Consider the shelf life of the article. Is it about an event that's happening next week or is it about a policy issue that is going to be important to the community for months? If it's the latter, great now. Wha you're going to want to do is take that media article and slice and dice it as many times as you can to schedule social media captions linking back to the article. That can be quotes, that can be excerpts, that can be statistics in the article, but you just want to create. I'd try to aim for six to eight from each news article and then you want to schedule them out again, depending on how evergreen the content is every one to two weeks, just to keep it going and get more leverage out of that article. And then I also always consider so it's it's sort of tangential to communications, but I always can always tell folks, create and excel, grant. It can be a symbol as an excelled, but create an email list of just your stakeholders, your partners, the people in the community that are sort of central to what you all are doing, because every time you get whether it's a piece of content that you create or news article, you also want to share it with those folks right. You want to make sure that they know what you're up to as well and it's totally appropriate to include and ask if he can. You can you share this with your networks whether it's through newsletter. Sometimes, if I've already done the social media post, I will actually link to the facebook and linkedin and twitter post so that all they have to do is click on it and hit retreat or, like you again, make it easy on them too. But you'll be surprised by how much people want to do that for you and particularly your willing to do it back for them, and that can really sort of expand the scope and the coverage that you get out of any piece of content, whether it's an article or or a media interview. So I am going to turn it over to Miss Whitney Marris for a minute.
00:30:10 Speaker 1: Yes, so Whitney, I'm sure most of you know, has this incredible advocacy series on our website. Nine modules on basically how to become a true, informed advocate. And one of the modules is specifically on story-telling a few slides from now we will have a car code, but you can use your phone to access that whole module, but Whitney, I'll let you take it from here and talking a little about modelling the model.
00:30:37 Speaker 2: Absolutely thank you so much for, first of all, I was so enraptured by all you were sharing. It was like jotting down notes that were here that I mean, yeah, I just want to take a quick moment. Make comment to modelling the model in your story-telling in your communications and your engagement with other rights which, when we say that at tip, what we are really thinking of is anchoring in the six values and principles of a tram informed approach. Really utilizing our awareness and knowledge to engage in, was intentionally seek to reduce dramatization and which move us toward resilience and wellbeing. Again, there's really an entire module of this specific topic in our advocacy theories that are, Laura will share with you again, to link momentarily with codes, so you can leave those tabs open, for you know, whenever the opportunity to take a closer look. But first there are just some key principles that we find are really important to consider in really operationalizing those six values of a drama informed approach and engaging in ways that model the model and, by the way, the story-telling framework that we share in our advocacy theories. Just to make this something where you have a model for your putting your story together and framing it for an audience is coined by Marshal Gan and it's called the story of both, and now personal narrative. Feel free to check that out. It's really about integrating your own personal story into the mix. When you're working to bring folks together around causes of common concern that we recommend diving into and within that framework, you might find that that works for various contexts as well, sort of like you get your main messages down and and then you can distill them for all the beautiful places that Laura is sharing with you to repurpose them and repurposed. I believe in my brain, Laura's language. So you know, I think, that one of the good places to really start thinking about that is you are going to want to think about bringing people together around issues and causes of common concern. Right within the framework. You will likely always want to anchor in things that are connecting and engaging right. We want to focus on our shared values and our shared bascope through a preferred future that both ourselves and our audiences can get behind rather than sitting in that difference or misalignment that we inevitably will encounter, and that depends really that collaboration and mutuality and that six values framework of principle. We also want our stories to engage both the head and the heart right. And regarding that part, it's critical that we're telling the truth: this alliance with the trustworthiness and transparency values, in terms of, again, those six principles being succinct and distilling down to the key details, rather than distracting from the North star that you're really being guided by our alice. As much as you know, we have so many different nance and details that we might want to share. Really honing in on the main methods not only helped demonstrate respect for others time, but based on again, what we know about learning, particularly adult learning, is that the central idea and most how we construct meaning around these aspects, of what is shared is what tends to really stick and be integrated over time into our ways of knowing, thinking, being doing and relating and where change happen and information dumping, a bunch of neuroscience concepts that we on this hall like totally nord out together over isn't always appropriate right for other audiences. It is important that we meet whoever our audience is, as Laura mentioned before, where they are really act rather than where we wish they were or think they ought to be, which again calls to the importance of knowing your audience and again recalling finding those areas where the 10 diagram about what is mutually important does being system focused is a critical lends to maintain here, because we, we must more continue the patterns that we see of individualizing and pathologizing and biternalis ing. We see that in our policies and practices and if we're really looking for addressing, mitigating and preventing drama, we cannot place the ones on individual actors but instead are really wise to bring awareness to the ways that our systems and institutions are not built to support holistic well being for all people and in our theories we talk about this more deeply, giving you some ways to really think about how to link that micromeo macro in your own advocacy and activism. Thinking through an empowerment and strength base lends empowerment, voice and choice. Being another one of our trama informed value, we think it gives some insight into really how you can think about engaging your audience by piloting was already working that can be built on and also support from the person or persons you're meaning, who is absolutely essential to continue that upward trajectory, making them the hero in the story, depending on who your audience is right. They want to see themselves out of place of strength and capacity, not of needing to operate under fear, uncertainty or doubt or crisis or roma again, coming from that place of abundance, that there is enough for all of us and that each of us has a contribution to make in pursuit of a greater good rather than as Laura calls it earlier. I think she said Rabat, right like her mongering or ring in those 40 mines that or villain sing other people. It just isn't going to be as impactful in moving the needle in, grow tense and it sometimes results again in defensiveness that actually works against you and creates detractors in your movements and finally, leveraging their ment lends to invite people to make the choice. To engage in action, for change is really the key, and we need to consider coming through all conversations with an askin mind, like Laura mentioned before, and in doing so it's important we give consideration to any and all levels of engagement that someone might be willing to do right. Not all of us are going to be able to dedicate 20 plus hours a week to the 40 plus hours a week to this, and yet every single step in this journey matters, and the weed of collective action is made up of many eyes and story-telling we find is one of the most impactful ways of approaching advocacy and activism to really continue to grow, the movement to allow everyone to find their path and belonging in this movement, that we really need to generate the needed political and social will and momentum to create lasting and sustain change. And so again, there are more expensive modules. On all of these things it might continue to grow. I think Laura has a beautiful theories here that might be added on to the Advocate theories or perhaps become its own theories because there's too much information. But just want to give you these considerations to think about and I'm going to pass the back to lovely Laura to keep us moving forward, killing.
00:37:46 Speaker 1: Thank you appreciate that that was all really really great information. I want to go backwards for a second because yeah, I skipped a slide. But this is good because it's really about the media interview itself, which again could be its own webinar, because there are definitely formulas and tip centric for all media interviews, but it feeds into what Whitney just said. So were on. Go backwards for two seconds. So in preparing for the main interview, as well as conducting or participating in the media interview, I always tell folks you definitely want to research the publication and reporter ahead of time. You want to make sure this. Does a couple of things. Do they have a bias against the topic right? Have they written negatively on this? From your perspective? Have they written negatively on this topic? Have they been adversarial in the past? Are they brand-new to the topic and so may need a little more education and briefing on the front-end social media is a really great way to do this, particularly for the reporter, because everyone puts everything on social media so you can even do a search of the twitter handle with the topic to see if they've ever said anything on that. And you know I will go back all the ay to 2015 and beyond. So that's a really great way to sort of see where they're at during the interview. These are just kind of like my biggest tips and tricks. So one thing that reporters love to do is they want you to talk as much as you can, because it gives them more to work with in developing their story. But we don't want that. We want to deliver three messages over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, because realistically, you're only going to get a few sentences of a quote into a media, into a newspaper article and you're only going to get 10 to 15 seconds on radio or TV, and it is just universal. If you talk too much they end up using what you don't want them to. So it just never ever fails. So how do we prevent that? Always brief the reporter before the interview itself, whether you have a staff person doing that or you're doing that? So that could be a phone call that could be forwarding them a whole bunch of links and articles and praying that they read them before you get on the call of them. But they call, you want them to have the best understanding of what it is going to talk about so that the interview can be. There are two or three questions, to get some quotes from you, to confirm some stuff and then and then you're done. I also tell folks: never fill the air medium. Views can be scary, intimidating, fun, awsome as well. But for folks who are either new to it are a little bit shy with it and stuff a trick that reporters will do is ask a question and then just sit there hoping that you will answer and then keep talking. So embrace the awkward pause. You also stop talking and just wait for them to ask their next question and they will make it. It'll be like a four or five second awkward pause, sometimes before they do. But they will, they're just trying to see if they get you to say more. Obviously, never lie, assume, speculate. In this world what that could look like. A reporter could say: yeah, but do you really think the governor is going to sign the bill? Well, we can't speak for the governor right, so you can say like I can't speak for the governor. However, I think that if the legislator legislature understands the benefit again back to your messages of boom, boom, boom, then they will absolutely support this bill. So message discipline is sort of well off the record versus on background. Ok, this is also really important. So if you say something that then you want to take back or not say the it depends. Sometimes reporters will take it easy on you and let you take it back, but mostly if it comes out of your mouth it's technically on the record. So if there's anything that you want, particularly if it's again, if it's something you don't want to be quoted on, whether it's you just want to explain some context or some landscape behind the issue. But that's not what you want to be quoted on. You want to be quoted on your call to action messages right, then simply say: you know, let's go on background for a second, so I can just explain and like we can have a conversation about and then we'll go back on record. So off the record means you cannot use any of this and attribute it to me. You can use off the record if you want to point them in a certain direction. You should go talk to so and so or you should go look at this report right if you want to gently nudge them in a direction. That's a great time. You use off the record on the background again as if you just want to explain contexts. So on background means they can use the information to shape their story. They can even use your wording, they just don't quote you on it. And then of course on the record is every word that you say can be actually quoted in print or on radio or TV. So that is why message and discipline is so key to success. Again you only get two to three sentences in print, 10 and 15 seconds on TV or radio. So the easiest formula is to develop three key messages and then back it up with statistics and personal anecdotes so that you have those ready. The statistics and personal anecdotes can also be really good pivot points to get to get the conversation back to your three main messages. The personal anecdotes don't have to be. It can be as far as you want to be comfortable. It can be anonymous anecdotes about populations and people you serve. It can be your own personal experience, it's whatever you feel comfortable with. But I always tell folks to have that prepared ahead of time. That way, if you need to check with the person, if you need to check with sort of the organization to make sure that that's an anecdote to use, you're all good to go and ready to use it if you need it. And practicing is really important in terms. So I will have friends or colleagues fret me by. Okay. Here's the topic. Ask me as many crazy questions as you can and can answer them by pivoting back to one of my three main points and it can make it fun and silly so that it kind of takes some of the intimidation out of it. But you do sort of. It's a practice thing right and you'll get to a point where you can just do it in your sleep. But that's a really good way to to try to try to get there. So back to so. This is the first car code. I'm going to give it a few seconds so you can either scan the QR code with your phone or this is the short link to get you there. But this await. Sorry, sorry, sorry, yes, yes, okay. So this is the one for Whitney's storytelling module for her Advocacy Series. But it will also link you to the full ABC series if folks are interested. So again, this just plays off of what White was talking about in a much more robust way. The next resource we want to share with you in it. Okay, we're switch next resource. This is a guide to train for meetings, discussions and conversations. So this could be helpful in just trying to navigate again. Sort of what what he was talking about it like. How do we model the model right? This brings in a lot of concepts and practical advice of how do you not tell your story from a place of scarcity? How do you make people heroes instead of villains? That sort of thing. So this is also a really helpful resource. Okay, we're going to switch in three, and then the last one is a trauma informed journalism toolkit. This was created for media, but this could be really helpful, particularly if you are thinking about pitching people's personal stories and lived experience. This has a lot of really good practical tips, more resources to just ensure that you know choice, transparency, empowerment. All of those things are happening without retreating. Folks that are participating in, sharing their story and making sure they haven't have autonomy over how that story gets told. So that's a really great resource. And then the exciting part. And how are we on time? Okay, we're good, we're going. So this is a new service that were going to be providing at CTIPP day one. This is the launch. You're all here so excited. We want to do a couple of things. We want to help. It's hard see. We have our own issues getting media coverage, because what are we do? We pitch healthcare reporters, we pitch education report. There's not a lot of mental health reporters. There are no trauma-informed reporters, right, because trauma-informed covers everything under the sun. And so sometimes it can be really challenging to get earn media, particularly if you have small teams, small budgets and lots of things to get done. So we want to be helpful. We are creating basically a pipeline for you all. This is the link that you want to capture: bit slash, stip, dash, calms if you go there and there'll be a car code on the next if you prefer those. But if you go there there's one form that you can fill out where you can basically just say hey, I need help with an event or I need help with messaging, or I need help just even figuring out. Like what do I do with my communication strategy, anything that we touched on today, social media, crisis communications. I am more than willing to sit-down and help you all with, so that form will help me. Just have, like a better understanding of what you're looking for and where you need help. And then then we will get on a call and we will talk through it more of like a discovery call that I can really understand what's happening. I'll provide initial strategies and ideas to insure that we're in sink and then the hands-on support could look like me just ideating for you. It could look like me helping you develop media pitches. I could even be the one pitching your story to the media for you. I can help you. I identify like relevant communication support that you need, whether it's a local intern or now getting a firm to help you. I can help with media training, can help train your staff to create content canvas. You know, whatever it is that you all need, it could look like that at the very I don't wan to promise too much. That is at the very least I will. I will send you in a good direction. I will at least give you advice, advice and ideas and I will be very upfront and honest if I don't think that I can actually help. There also may be times when we have to decline participation due to band with issues, misalignment, other, for you know, unforeseen constraints. But again I will always be very transparent and try to point you in the right direction. And then now I'm bouncing around. But I do want to highlight the expect at least a 72 hour response time. If it is super duper urgent, just email me directly past the form entirely and if I'm available I will absolutely help. We're really excited to launch that. Here's where you can find that form and then, before we turn it over to Jesse to facilitate questions, another fund announced at so many announcements this week, as we mentioned at the top of the call, we now have a spotify playlists. We are. The goal is to once it's finalized because we want to hear your suggestion. We have about 30 songs, so we want, we want more. The whole idea is like: what do you want to listen to when you're at your desk working on that memo, that grant writing proposal, on that email behest, when you're trying to get pumped up, to go into the meeting with a legislator? So a lot of what we're hoping to do with this playlist is motivate and inspire and also just sort of feel connected to each other even when we are apart. So please email me any suggestions you have for this playlist. That is my email address, and then not to completely overwhelm you. Few, our code, but the last one. We have also created a new form that will just be alive all the time and it's just a generic stip can call feedback form. So if you have feedback on this call or on any others that you want to share with us, use this code to take you there. But, Jesse, I have not looked at the cats. I have no idea. Do we have any questions or.
00:49:39 Speaker 3: Laurel, we had quite a pression, so you're all good. Well, we'll leave this slide up for one more minute, Laura. Thank you. We've gotten a lot of just like wonderful presentation. Thank you, so I know how much work went into this. So thank you to our entire network. Please do give us feedback. We're going to start doing this during every tip can call. We want to know what was valuable for you, what you want more of as we continue to build upon, and just to say, these are Whitney. We got our new business cards, but just form on the code bandwagon. Now we have the codes on the back. So we are officially a code organization, which is just wonderful to be a part of. So a few of the questions. We're very indepth. I don't know if we have answers to them or if we need to come together as a group and think through these. But Whitney, Laura will pose them to you. The first one is: how does a nonprofit on social media respond to distress messages if the person managing the social media account or accounts is not trained in crisis management, which is wonderful.
00:50:53 Speaker 1: Really excuse me, great question. I would suggest creating some boiler plate language. So a lot of templates exist online already, but I would include local resources. You know hotline numbers, that sort of thing and have, like a boiler plate response that you just have somewhere where you know anyone who might meet it has access to it so that it's very quick copy paste in responding and so that it's a consistent message with, you know, any tool or resources that they might need. If it's something specific that isn't covered with that boiler plate, then I would just adjust accordingly right and work with again, sort of figuring out if, if our boiler plate doesn't work, though, the Canario, who's the team who adjusts it accordingly? Right? Who has approval? Who needs to review it before it gets responded to that sort of thing.
00:51:50 Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'll just add that this is really complex. I know that less at Timor. When I was at the community center that I worked at before joining Stip, we would oftentimes receive these calls and, in line with train form practices, being explicit and setting healthy boundaries for yourselves, because we're so many of us are underpaid, understaffed, under resourced and, you know, really can't do everything ourselves. And so just being explicit with what you can and can't do can be so helpful. And that is in line with you, Tom, informed values, and so just know that you know it's not always on you and when you're a trusted resource for the community you can get a lot of those calls, for sure for content creation. There there was a question if the organization should have their staff write their own content or hire someone to do so. Not. This was put in the chat before set before you offered the cat content creation.
00:53:01 Speaker 1: Hopefully everybody makes the same request and we can just copy pace. Yeah, so I mean gosh, that really depends on a lot of different factors. Right your budget. I will say this: if my general advice and if my advice doesn't resonate hit me up off-line and we can talk specifically about what your situation is. But generally speaking, I always suggest if you can outsource it, outsource it unless you need two things: super duper technical subject-matter expertise that you know, I always say should probably be in-house because you're also developing that expertise as well by having the house. And then, if you need someone who is going to consistently over a long period of time, need to develop relationships. Good working relationships with local media. You're probably going to want them to work in-house exceptions, though, because particularly if the work that you is very project based, we need a new website, we need a social media strategy. That kind of thing is really good to outsource whether it's an intern project that a local college student takes on for the semester to develop a plan for you. If you've got a longer timeline again, the pro bono, you know the firms in your, in your community, but then there's also a ton of freelancers out there. I don't know. There's regardless of how small your community is, there's probably somebody in it that that knows how to do content, strategy, marketing, Peter, and so tapping those folks and you know, maybe developing a long term relationship with them where they know: okay, this is a three-week project, but in two months she's going to come back to me with a two-week project right. And so that way there's consistency and you're not having to read Transome one new on your, on your brand voice and your vision and all of those things. That way you have consistency over time usually leads to better quality content. So yeah, I hope that answers, but it really depends on a couple of things.
00:54:59 Speaker 3: Appreciate that, Laura, and then the last question in the chat was: and if someone has other questions, there was just another question put in. So for social media or media contact lists, Laura, should that go through that com support plan? Do you have lists that are available for folks or for those?
00:55:26 Speaker 1: Yes, I do. Thank you. Yes, because media lists are expensive and firms will charge you $5,000 to $40,000 for a media list. I have a Cision account. It is not complete or perfect, but it is a b plus of Medialis exporter and so I can pull it by town state industry because again, most a lot of reporters don't have beats any more, but a lot of them will put on the back-end of their profile the stories they're interested in. So yes, I can absolutely create media lists for folks with, like you know, usually a few days turn around for free. Of course we don't we're not charging.
00:56:05 Speaker 3: Accessibility is a core value to the tip team. So Laura very much appreciate how you're modeling that and then the last question in the chat. Or I'll let you take a stab at this and then happy to pile on with my thoughts. But does communication support include fund-raising projects?
00:56:23 Speaker 1: It could. If one of your organization's core folds and objectives is fund-raising right, then a key part of that fundraising strategy would be a communications leg of that stool right. And so that could be anything from, you know, working to design events that donors want to attend right, cool community events that people actually want to come to when they're going to be more likely to donate. It could be, you know, through creating really impactful infographics or short videos that demonstrate impact in the community, that are appealing to donors, that help them understand where their dollars are going to go. So yes, it's definitely a piece of it. And then on the side of things I mean depending on your comfort level, everybody is in a different place, but I've and I've worked for both types of nonprofits. But you know if you have a new record of giving one year right or if you have a particularly successful big day of giving, or if you have a huge doner that came through or a big project that gets funded, particularly if that project has other community groups involved like it's a big effort. Those are all great press releases, those are all great media pitches. Media do want to cover that sort of thing, so it could also be part of your strategy as well.
00:57:41 Speaker 3: And my thoughts were: if the question is geared toward writing a grant, that's not going to be in the same wheelhouse. That's a different story. Developing a narrative around what the organization does that you can put into a grant application could be used. A lot of what's on our website is what we put in our grants and we try to aline those things, but just to add that little new once. But those, those were all the questions, and it is two and 58 on one at least. I recognize that we have a number of time zones highlighted throughout this call. So thank you so much, Laura. Do you have any last words before I sign off for?
00:58:23 Speaker 1: No, just please hit me up for anything that you need. I'd love to hear what resources you want in that library, online temples, all sorts of things, and then, yeah, I look forward to hearing from you all to help with your communication strategies. Thank you for being here.
00:58:37 Speaker 3: Thank you. Thank you, Laura, for all that you shared. We look forward to seeing everyone. We hope in July we're going to be discussing cross sector community coalitions and a lot of the principles that we see across the various coalitions, because we know that the work looks different depending on the resources, populations needs desires. But there are some common elements and principles and we look forward to that discussion led by Witty Maris. But until then we hope that all of you are well, will be in touch. Don't hesitate to reach out and again: thank you for all you do. We really really appreciate all of you so much, so thank you so much, be well.