Communicating With Your Constituents

by Bunnie Riedel, Host, Nonprofit Conversation

I do a lot of benchmarking and needs assessment studies focusing on communication.  Whether you manage a nonprofit or a business, effective communication with your constituents (and prospective constituents) is essential.  However, for many, lack of time and resources (both human and financial) are major roadblocks to good communication.

I am fascinated by the results of a recent Focus Group I conducted in Massachusetts.  In the group was a sprinkling of small business people but mostly local nonprofits.  For the Focus Group, which takes about five hours, I go through a series of multiple choice questions and provide opportunities for narrative responses.  We engage in large group discussion and small group discussion.  The session is designed to get them thinking about how they receive information, whether they perceive their communications to be effective, what messages they want to deliver and what vehicles of communication they believe work best for them.

Seventy-two percent of the participants spent less than $5,000 per year on communicating with their constituents or prospective constituents.  In that seventy-two percent were the small community based nonprofits.  Eight percent spent over $25,000 per year, that group included a real estate agency, a tourism agency and a radio station.  Emails, phone calls, word of mouth and website were cited as the vehicles most used for communication.  However, meetings, phone calls, newspapers and word of mouth were rated high for effectiveness, while email and websites were rated low. 

When asked if they thought their communications were effective forty-eight percent answered “Maybe.” 

Again, this group was very local, very micro.  The opportunities to have meetings and word of mouth work for them as communications tools are greater than one would get from a larger organization, such as a national nonprofit.

They had very important, sometimes critical information to convey, such as availability of social services, assistance for problems, solutions for community building and even their own existence.  The group found that obstacles to communicating their messages included an inability to know if the constituent received the message, lack of return phone calls and emails, misunderstanding of what services they provided and competition from too many other messengers (information overload).

Friends, community groups and religious institutions rated quite high as ways they received information about organizations in the community.  While newspaper articles, websites and promotional advertising rated quite low. 

In mulling over these responses it struck me how the “personal touch” worked in this community and it made me wonder how does one take that personal touch and apply it in the larger sense?  Especially if you are talking about a larger regional or national nonprofit.  Could it be that our challenge is to find ways to take the tools we assume have a wide ranging impact, such as our websites, emails, Facebook pages, etc. and personalize them?  Can we make them work and feel like a community meeting or a person to person communication?

In theory, Facebook edges in that direction, it seeks “friends” and “fans,” people who have affirmatively selected to have some sort of an interest in what your organization is doing.  However, Facebook also has a way of de-personalizing messages.  Lost in the clutter that is Facebook, important messages risk becoming just more electronic background noise. 

How do we create websites that provide intimacy and personal interaction rather than simply act as placeholders for information?  Are our websites inviting and friendly?  Do any of us really update them enough that people want to keep coming back to see what’s new?

And those email blasts, like Constant Contact, do they behave more like pop ups intruding on one’s communication experience or can we use them almost like friendly handshakes?

I think smaller communities often have an advantage in communication.  There’s always the chance that you will run into your constituent at the grocery store or on the street corner and be able to pass on the latest information or affirm the personal relationship.  The challenge for all of us is how to create the personal when the geography is so large.

As always, I welcome your thoughts on this article.  Feel free to leave a comment or submit an article for Nonprofit Conversation by contacting me through my website http://www.riedelcommunications.com

Thanks for reading! 

Old Media: Yes, It’s Still Relevant

We’ve had a couple of posts regarding “new” media. Wonderful advice on how to build SEO rankings and using social media sites to connect and engage. There will be more discussion on this blog as I have asked a range of nonprofit managers and advisors to weigh in on how they are using technology, especially in this down economy.

For a moment, I want to turn attention to “old” media and it’s relevancy. Every time a new way to communicate has come along, people have heralded the death of the incumbent technology. Radio would displace newspapers. T.V. would replace radio or T.V. would replace the movies. The internet would replace everything. Social networking would make in-person conferences obsolete. The truth is we add tools to our battery of communication, but we don’t necessarily get rid of the old tools altogether or we integrate the new with the old to create an even more robust platform.

At the core of old communication is building relationships between your organization and those who would pay attention to them. That requires a good list of T.V., newspaper, periodical and radio reporters. It requires making sure you are always pitching them what they can use, and being straight to the point about it. It also requires developing a relationship over a long period of time until you or your organization become the one they turn to for an opinion, quote or contacts.

There was a very expensive daily industry publication (the kind where the subscription is $3,000 per year) with which I developed an important relationship. I started by inviting the editor to one of our conferences and followed up by having an in-person meeting with him and a few staff. I made sure they got every press release we sent out. It didn’t take long until I was being called on a regular basis to comment on an issue or a story. And given this publication ended up on the desks of staffers on Capitol Hill, our having a presence in it was a coup.

And while new media, especially the blogosphere, has enhanced print publications, the concept is the same. Organizations now require a good list of reputable, reliable bloggers to get their message out and organizations need to develop relationships with bloggers in the same old way, personally and one at a time.

If you don’t have a list of old media reporters and writers, get one. If your organization is strictly local, that shouldn’t be too hard. If your organization is national in scope, there are companies that will sell you a list. The bloggers require a bit more work because you have to go looking for them and sometimes you don’t always find their contact information readily available.

If you’re tired of waiting for T.V. to discover your organization, I have the perfect solution. There are literally thousands of Public, Educational and Government access television stations in this country. These stations are filled with local producers and loads of talk shows. Contact your local stations and ask for producer contacts; who might do the kind of public affairs show that will fit well with your organization? How can you become a guest on that show? Larger organizations with more capacity invest the $15,000 to $20,000 to produce a thirty minute segment and then distribute them to access stations all over the country. One of my clients, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, has programming on addiction out on 457 access channels nationwide. Each of these channels air the programming an average of 12 times per month. The return to the federal government is now over $10 million per year in free airtime. Access channels are always looking for content and nonprofit organizations have plenty of content.

I love all the new ways we can communicate, there are so many new tools that are changing the way nonprofits do business and how they get their unique stories out. But, while we celebrate the amazing world of cyberspace, we must never forget the power of old media, the necessity of the well-written press release and imperative of forming solid relationships with those work in it.

So...what does your media list look like?

Bunnie

info@riedelcommunications.com

Compare and Decide: How to use SEO 2.0 in Marketing

I have a love hate relationship with technology. I love all the things it can do, I hate being tethered to it through endless emails, facebooking, twittering, etc. However, today nonprofits must stay ahead of the curve and learn new terms, like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and social networking if they are going to grow their organizational capacity.

Nonprofit Conversation asked Juan Munoz, Executive Director of Open Global Marketing, to share a few tips on nonprofit use of SEO. He wrote "Compare and Decide: How to use SEO 2.0 in Marketing." This is just a peek at the iceberg and certainly compelling. We hope to have him back to share more of his insights. Bunnie.


Juan Munoz

Compare and Decide: How to use SEO 2.0 in Marketing
by Juan Munoz

When people talk about Marketing Strategies, many ad agencies and publicists are switching from the conventional traditional to the online jargon: SEO, PPC, PPA. Printing, radio ads and brochures are becoming out of date.

This article isn’t just about explaining SEO, but also exploring the new techniques to optimize Web sites for Non-profits.

The Difference between SEO and SEO 2.0

Three years ago, you built links, exchanged links, paid for links and manually added them to static directories to generate web traffic. Now, optimizing your content also includes getting links, blogging, writing pillar content, creating link bait and socializing.

Three years ago, you’d concentrate on creating sites or pages with many keywords related to your business. Today, that is wrong. In SEO 2.0 many spiders penalize the excessive us of the same keywords in one page. The next SEO 2.0 uses attention-grabbing post titles and limits the amount of keywords to two or three.

Three years ago, you’d compete with others to be on the first page Google’s search results. Now in SEO 2.0, you build a network and cooperate with peers – creating a neighborhood of web sites around you to generate a steady stream of traffic. This works perfectly for nonprofits who normally think that charities are all about getting money or grants and giving it all away.

Three years ago, you thought that exchanging one-to-one active links would give them value. Now, you can create links in your web site regardless whether you link back because it increases the relevance of your web site.

Three years ago, you’d likely say, “We’re not doing SEO. We can’t show our client list publicly, etc…” Now, transparency is the model. "Welcome our new client xyz. We are proud to work together with them, two-way communication, etc."

In the nonprofit world, you normally are used to keeping your donors or foundations very hidden because you do not want competitors to know where you get your grants. Now, more than ever, you can be proud and show your capacity to raise money with a very interesting list of donors in your website.

You can implement these strategies for the non-profit or for-profit world. Not matter what you do and how you do it, it is important to evolve and innovate by staying in tune with the new market-penetrating technology.

Remember, if you hit first, you will hit hard.

Juan Munoz
Executive Director
http://www.openglobalmarketing.com/
email: jmunoz@openglobaltrading.com
phone: 410-505-5551