Everybody's Talking About You -- Why Your Nonprofit Needs to Listen, and Listen Hard
What happens when control of your nonprofit's message
(frankly, always an illusion) passes from your organization,
and the traditional media, to your audiences? Well you better
figure it out quick, because it's happening right now.
Every nonprofit I know has centered its communications
strategy around a brand (whether defined as such, or not),
expressed through a graphic identity and a narrative one
-- positioning and key messages. We've trained our leaders
and staff members to keep on message, and ensured that our
print and online content does so as well.
That's the right way to start. But it's only a start -- now
more than ever.
The shift is all about decentralization. In the past, your
audiences have gathered their news from you (via direct
communications) and the media (your conduit). Not that
message control was completely in your hands. Journalists
and letters to the editor often reframe, or even dispute,
your messages. But that could be addressed, as long as you
tracked (and responded to) coverage.
Now these approaches are being superceded by what's
happening at the edges of increasingly ubiquitous networks.
As your audiences combine powerful online tools and
innovative "social networking" approaches (peer-to-peer
information sharing), they create online content on your
nonprofit and its programs. While the audiences for this
content are still relatively small, it is likely they will
become mainstream. For many 18-30 year olds, they already
are.
Two Key Alternative Info Sources
Here are the two core genres of alternative news and
information sites that have evolved outside of traditional
media, and, in many cases are driven by a self-defined
community.
- Aggregators:
- Sites such as Google News and Huffington Post are
aggregating news produced by nonprofits and
traditional media, and repackaging it by topic or
point of view.
- Alert services such as Google and Yahoo Alerts
deliver links to online content on user-defined
words and phrases, directly to users' email boxes.
I have Alerts set up on the following words and
phrases:
Nancy E. Schwartz
nonprofit communications
nonprofit marketing
Getting Attention
Nancy Schwartz & Company
I use this input to shape blog and e-news content,
track coverage of Nancy Schwartz & Company and
Getting Attention, and see what's going on in the
world of nonprofit (and broader) marketing. And I
respond (via a comment to a blog post or an email
to an e-news editor) when it makes sense to share
my point of view or correction.
- Blog readers (I use Bloglines) that allow your
audiences to easily aggregate content from a
variety of sources (but mostly blogs at this
point).
I use Bloglines to track bloggers who write
in the marketing and nonprofit marketing arena,
so that I can keep up, and join the conversation
with a comment when it makes sense.
- Email mailing lists that enable any self-defined
group of individuals to discuss your organization,
and to post this conversation online. Our block
(Owen Drive) has an active mailing list where
neighbors talk fast and furious on everything from
school board elections to the forced eviction of
old-time small businesses at the local strip mall.
- Participatory Communities – Think Idealist.Org,
TechSoup, Nonprofit Blog Exchange...
Broadband networks, wireless access and new online-
publishing tools all contribute to the emergence of
audience-generated news, information and opinion.
Blogs and message boards are the most visible
form right now, serving to connect folks with
common interests and sometimes perspectives.
Email and IM (instant messaging) also accelerate
audience-to-audience information flow.
Picture:
- A program participant blogging about the
strong facilitator, or the sloppy handouts.
- A frustrated online advocate complaining
about the glitch in your nonprofit's system
that prevented him from easily registering
his protest on your key issue of the moment.
- A satisfied donor with the information she
receives about your nonprofit's new programs,
and related use of recent gifts, shares that
information on a community bulletin board.
What's happened is that audiences -- starting with
teens through 30s -- have become dissatisfied with
traditional media and are becoming more active
participants in the exchange of news and ideas.
So the dissemination model of marketing and
communications is transformed to conversation.
- Why Your Nonprofit Should Care
Very simply...
- Your audiences are now participating in
shaping the way your nonprofit is perceived
via joining in blog and message board
conversations, among others.
- Their content may be viewed as being just as
valid as yours is, and is just as easily found
via online search engines and links.
- As a result, your nonprofit has less control
than ever before -- on how the organization
is perceived.
- Your communications model has to change.
- What You Should Do About It
Lots. Scan. Listen. Participate.
© 2002-2008 Nancy E. Schwartz. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Nancy E. Schwartz helps nonprofits succeed through effective marketing and communications. As President of Nancy Schwartz & Company (www.nancyschwartz.com), Nancy and her team provide marketing planning and implementation services to organizations as varied as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Center for Asian American Media, and Wake County (NC) Health Services.
Subscribe to her free e-newsletter "Getting Attention", (http://www.nancyschwartz.com/getting_attention.html) and read her blog at http://www.gettingattention.org for more insights, ideas and great tips on attracting the attention your organization deserves.
NOTE: You're welcome to "reprint" this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the copyright and "about the author" info at the end), and you send a copy of your reprint.
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© 2002-2008, Nancy Schwartz & Company
Revised April 12, 2008
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