February 3, 2012
This week’s news regarding the Susan G. Komen Foundation and Planned Parenthood sent shock waves around the world. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, this has been an important lesson in the power of social media and individuals to affect a decision.
This has affected me, and many of my friends and colleagues, in a variety of ways:
- As a communications professional I have read many posts analyzing the communication strategies of both organizations. There will undoubtedly be many more.
- The situation also puts the spotlight on the research smart corporations should complete before selecting community partners.
- As an individual, there are also obvious implications for personal funding choices.
The need for this research doesn’t change because the issue changes. Research and a strategic focus should always be part of a giving strategy.
I don’t want to get into who’s right and who’s wrong here but instead provide a guide to choosing nonprofits you support – as an individual or as a corporation. If we haven’t seen anything else this week, we’ve certainly seen the power social media has in swaying public opinion.
I’m sure you’d agree you want to know where your hard-earned dollars are going. It’s not that time consuming to make sure the vast majority of your check will go to direct services. Merriam Webster defines these as:
“active service on cases and work with patients as distinguished from staff functions”
While I understand completely the need for administrative costs, it’s important to understand the details behind those numbers. Here’s a portion of my post from January 20, 2010 detailing the research you can do before writing that check:
In talking with my children about the importance of giving and the school’s drive, we’ve also had to teach them a bit about what unfortunately might be called the seamier side of fundraising. As we saw after 9/11 and the 2005 tsunami, there are unscrupulous fundraisers who are more than happy to take your hard-earned dollars. It’s important to take a few minutes to make sure your money goes where you want it to go. Make sure you give to organizations you trust, or that your friends trust.
Guidestar and Charity Navigator both offer services that help you learn about nonprofits. United Way of America is another organization that thoroughly screens their partners before providing them funds. And, of course, there are any number of blogs and experts out there to tell you what to do as well. One of my favorite public relations people, Shonali Burke, offered her thoughts about the aftershocks on fundraising.
If you have the time, an organization’s IRS Form 990 is a great source of information. Pay close attention to the percentages of funds that go to “program services” as compared to administrative costs. Program services funds are actually getting to those the organization helps while administrative costs are generally overhead. Personally, organizations I like to support keep their overhead to no more than 10% of expenses.
November 16, 2011
After more than 30 years in public relations, I have seen a lot of change in our profession. As you might imagine, it’s especially noticeable in technology. What hasn’t changed is the need to be smart and strategic in order to be most effective. If you haven’t completely defined your problem, how can you know what to do to solve it?
It used to be that most research was fairly formal in that a study was done, a focus group conducted, etc. While these tools gave us valuable information, and still do today, there’s a lot more we can do to receive timely data. A big part of what I do is listening to and for clients. It’s about hearing what they are saying, and understanding what’s being said about them. A few ideas on places to begin listening:
- Set Google Alerts for the topics you care about.
- Subscribe to RSS feeds for people covering (blogs or traditional media) your topics.
- Set up a twitter search for the key words or hashtags you want to learn more about.
- Check twellow to find the influencers on Twitter in a specific geographic area.
- See if your industry has a Klout topic or influencers listed for your industry.
These are just a few of free tools that help you listen. There are many, many more you can find just by Googling “listening tools.” You may have to tweak your search terms to make sure you’re capturing the conversations.
To make sure you’re searching the right terms and listening where your customers are, do some of your own research. Have your customer service team ask those with whom they interact what sites they read and use? If you do a quarterly awareness study, include questions to find out where people are getting information pertaining to your industry or business.
Who influences the conversations has also changed considerably with the advent of blogging, Twitter and other social tools. It used to be influencers were titans of industry and community leaders. But today they are no longer just the people with reach, but the people who have influence over the people with reach.
Are there other ways you listen? Tools you use that others can easily access?
Tomorrow, I’ll discuss ways to join the discussion. Trust me. It’s not as scary as it may seem.
Part 2: Now That You Know What’s Being Said, Join the Conversation
Part 3: Successful PR Plans are a balance new and old tools and tactics
Part 4: Reach Out and Engage Someone
September 21, 2011
Last weekend I was in Walla Walla, Washington for the Whitman College Alumni Board meeting. We were basically a group of 13 people (graduates from between 1962 and 2007) from across the country joined by a common experience. A group committed to strengthening ties other alumnus have with the school.
Talk focused on finalizing our five-year strategic plan with a vision to create a place alumnus call “home.” We want to strengthen the bonds Whitties have with each other and the school.
It’s important to know the bonds are already pretty strong. We all realize our college experience is different from the experience many others have in college. Around 50 percent of our alums give financially to the school each year. Many more are involved through their volunteer effort. Many of us started the planning process by asking ourselves questions:
- What do I care most about regarding Whitman?
- Why do I care? After all it’s been more than 30 years!
- Who else cares? Why does that matter to me?
- How can I help those who care?
- What can I do to make more people to care?
By asking fellow alumni these questions, we’ll be able to create a plan that helps strengthen ties with the school. It’s a long-term project we’re excited about and hope is successful.
In thinking about it, these are great questions for communicators to ask when creating community relations plans. When I look at applying these lessons to clients, the same principles and similar questions apply:
- What do employees care most about? Why?
- What are the biggest needs in our community?
- How can we help strengthen the community?
- Is there a way our employees can also help through volunteering?
- What about our customers? Where do they want us to help?
- What can we do to make more people care about this?
The answers to these and other questions help provide a framework from which a targeted community relations plan can be developed. Like many other aspects of communications, without a plan that includes measurable goals you can’t possibly know if you’re truly been successful.
How do you help your clients make sure their community programs are on target and focus in areas they care about. How do you identify organizations that need your client’s help?
~It sounds simple but it’s really not.
August 30, 2011
Almost every day I see another discussion about who owns social media, whether social media will completely reinvent the profession of public relations and on and on. I’m not going to weigh in and answer any of those questions because, quite frankly, I don’t think it matters. Instead I’d like to offer my own viewpoint on how public relations professionals can enhance strategic communications programs by employing social media tools.
For more than thirty years, I’ve been proud to be a public relations professional. I’ve built strategic plans that are based on research, analysis, communications and evaluations. Those fundamentals haven’t changed with social media and I don’t expect them to change with the next mousetrap to come along either.
What has changed are the tools in our tool box and the way we communicate and engage our target audiences. Obviously, the reason this change is occurring is the way our audiences receive their news has changed. Does it mean every program needs to contain all the social media tools? There are literally thousands of social media tools from which to choose so the answer is a resounding no.
I maintain it all goes back to planning…if you don’t know where you’re going and why you’re going there, how can you possibly know when you arrive? By the same token, if you don’t know to whom you’re talking, how can you possibly know how to reach them?
As outside strategic counsel to my clients, it is important I understand the tools and when it’s best to use (or not use) each one. That’s how we rationalize spending time each day reading, learning about, and using the new tools. Some days it seems there are too many but most of the time it’s fairly easy to know where to concentrate.
That means I do a lot of listening and planning before I choose the tools. And, I haven’t completed too many plans lately that don’t include a mix of traditional and new tools that are available. If we are going to affect change for our clients, we need to know what’s out there and what is having an impact on their customers’ decision making. In the end, it’s normally telling a story to a variety of people, using multiple tools and tactics.
How do you listen and learn what’s important in your world? Do you believe public relations can continue to grow and thrive? What do you think are the obstacles in our way? Can we really live in peaceful harmony?
August 5, 2011
“If you wait for all the lights to turn green, you’ll never leave the house.”
I hadn’t heard this phrase before last weekend when a candidate for national leadership position in the Public Relations Society of America used it to describe why she decided to run for a position.
However, it really resonated with me. I sometimes feel that as communicators we fall into two buckets:
1) Those who dive in the deep end with no idea how deep the water is, or even if it’s clean and
2) Those who research an idea to death so afraid of what might be on the other side.
As outside counsel, I find myself trying to drive that stake somewhere in the middle offering both an outside perspective and caution to spend at least some time on research and discussion with affected parties. Before diving in, I always ask:
Why do you want to…?
What is it you’re hoping to achieve?
Most often, these two questions lead to a deeper discussion that in the end brings everyone back to a clarity of purpose and strategy.
In the meantime, there are twists and turns and everyone learns a bit more about each other’s viewpoints, and strengths. Questions that might be thrown into the discussion include:
What resources do you need to do this?
Can you derail another project to make this happen? If so, what are the ramifications of doing that?
Who else do we need to include in these discussions?
What else do we need to know before moving ahead?
It’s during these discussions that I often reach into my network to get more information. There are many ways we all do that regularly and social media can make it even easier. Sharing our knowledge, expertise and vision with each other helps us all to make a move without all the assurances in place.
When you have a trusted network of peers, we can leave the house more easily knowing the lights aren’t all green. What questions do you ask before diving in? Or, how did you get comfortable just diving in?
I know I prefer to leave the house together, asking and answering questions together.
