by David M. Freedman

All firms with more than one employee should have a clearly written media policy that spells out who in the organization may respond to media inquiries, what kinds of information can or should be released to reporters, and what information must be kept confidential.

It’s important to assure your employees that talking to the media, and establishing good relationships with reporters, can and should be constructive. It can help to establish an accurate public perception of who you are and what you do. There’s no need to feel intimidated: Reporters need you as a source of news and background information as much as you need them to give you publicity and clarify your point of view. Read the rest of this entry »

by Mike Doyle

Pitching a story to a blogger on the Internet is a different animal than pitching to a print or broadcast reporter. Unlike the “traditional” media world, on the blogosphere you don’t get to leverage your verbal agility to establish a relationship with a reporter over the phone first, and then ask if they’d like to see your press release. And you certainly can’t spam World Wide Web bloggers with a single, impersonal press release that you’ve already emailed to the whole wide world.

While traditional media and the blogosphere both rely on the integrity of honestly forged personal relationships, on the blogosphere more than anywhere reputations are built around endorsements by others: specifically, vouching from supportive bloggers and positive comments submitted by a community of interested readers. If your blogger pitches hit the mark, a buzz of third-party vouching can develop, where bloggers and their readers begin to debate your message among each other, with little additional effort needed by you. When that happens, you can even start pointing print and broadcast reporters to the hubbub around your message on the Internet, if they haven’t found it already. Read the rest of this entry »

By Gordon Mayer, vice president Community Media Workshop

1. Make Your Own List

Personalize this directory to make it work for you. Make sure to write your own notes in the margins and put your most important contacts in a personalized list—unless there are more than 50 of them, a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel should be fine.

Your personalized list is more important than ever in the era of mass layoffs at news organizations and everyday changes in which online news publications cover our organizations and issues. It’s simply not possible to craft a new list of print, broadcast, and online journalists from scratch each time you plan a media outreach campaign. Likewise, a media list allows you to keep track of journalists who have covered you in the past and are familiar with your work—and if more than one person in your organization works with reporters, it can be a good spot to keep track of who contacted which journalist most recently. But make sure one person is responsible for maintaining the list… that way you’ll know who to hold accountable for keeping it up to date! Read the rest of this entry »

By Gordon Mayer, vice president Community Media Workshop

To get a story in the media, you can’t rely solely on the written word; you can’t merely send a fax or a press release. You also must “pitch” your stories through phone calls to selected editors and reporters.

As difficult as it may seem, “pitching” your stories in this way is necessary to getting media coverage. Phone calls humanize and personalize your stories, so if you have a newsworthy story you believe in, get on the phone and tell the media about it.

Set aside time right after you have sent off your media alerts or press releases to make phone calls to those journalists you really must reach. Making “cold” calls to people you don’t know can be difficult, but most reporters and editors don’t and shouldn’t mind getting them; they depend on and encourage citizens to phone in story tips. Here are some tips to make this task easier. Read the rest of this entry »

Edited by Jessica Rosenberg

Words on the Web

Jessica Rosenberg

When writing on the web, panelists stressed nonprofits avoid jargon and use clear, concise language.

Especially when writing emails, Annie Kinnard Williams of EMMA said to never underestimate the personal touch.  No one likes a mass email so when possible, address your reader by name or organization and keep the language conversational.  It’s best to put your organization’s name in the subject line – that way your email is searchable once in someone’s inbox.

“Short updates on a frequent basis” is a good rule of thumb for email messaging, said Williams.  Stick to a schedule and try to be consistent.  And don’t rely on images to communicate information because some people block images and won’t get the message.

Brad Flora of Windy Citizen recommends nonprofits start using blogs to tell their organization’s story. Keep the language simple in blogs too, he said.  Even though it sounds informal, it works.

He also suggests that blogs should include links to other sites or blogs because it tells your reader that you are an authority on your topic.  Images are good too – it creates a visual appeal for your reader.

“The title of a post is absolutely critical,” said Flora.  It’s one of the first things that will grab a reader’s attention.

A good way to generate traffic to your blog or site is to fill a hole in a conversation.  Find out what’s missing in someone else’s blog and provide them with the missing piece.  For example, Flora said if a blogger doesn’t have any photos that pertain to their post and you do, send them over and ask them to link back to your site. Read the rest of this entry »