3 Things You Can Do Now Right Now to Boost Your Comms
As anyone who has worked in communications knows, despite having the power of communications at our literal fingertips, keeping up a consistent strategy can be overwhelming. Unexpected things get in the way. Priorities change. And all of a sudden, it’s been several weeks since you last posted about your organization’s amazing work.
Fortunately, there are things you can do right now to set yourself up for success. From building easy but impactful tools to laying a foundation for long-term planning, these steps will get your assets working for you, and make it easier to implement communications strategies day-to-day. Try one out this week, or this month. When you’re ready, reach out and let me know how you did!
1. Build a Small Press Kit
You’ve likely heard of a press or media kit, but may have thought they were highly curated, in-depth pieces of collateral. They can be. But they can also be a collection of assets and owned media that anyone can pull from when needed.
Press kits can be as small or as large as you like. To form your first one, think of the most important (and most accessible) things you’d like to include—your organization’s mission statement, your social media and website links, leadership bios and headshots, and your main logos/marks. Most likely these items are already living somewhere on your organization’s main intranet, in your email files, or on your computer desktop. Find them all, and you’ve accomplished your first step.
Next, decide where you want your press kit to live. Many organization’s already operate on Google Drive, and you can easily create a public Drive folder for this need. Otherwise, you can look into other free file hosting platforms, like Dropbox. Or, you can see if your website CMS has the capacity for hosting these files. Once you’ve decided, upload your assets to your chosen platform.
Finally, share the link to your press kit. Ideally, this would be on the news section of your organization’s website, but it can also be shared in your social profiles. Additionally, now that you have the link you can share it on demand—whether you’re reaching out to a media outlet, prospective donor, or partner, or they’re making an inquiry of you, you now have the press kit to share so they can access all of your most important assets.
Set a reminder to review the press kit each quarter to make sure it’s still relevant, and see if there is anything else you’d like to add, like a new piece of collateral, some of your best images from the past few months, or a great quote that highlights the impact of your org.
2. Ask Your Partners for a Collab Post
Working in nonprofit communications, we are fortunate that social media platforms continue to find ways for friends and partners to amplify each other. At no cost, anyone can reach a new audience by combining forces on a post or piece of content.
Your organization likely works with many partners, whether they be major donors, program facilitators, local businesses, or community leaders. It’s also likely that both of you could benefit from collaborating on a shared social post.
The easiest platform to do this on is Instagram, where posters can invite other accounts to collaborate, and therefore appear jointly at the top of each post (you’re also more likely to appear in the feeds of your partners’ followers). Take a look at your partners’ Instagram accounts and consider: Which account has the largest following? Which has an audience that you’d most benefit from targeting? Which account is the most brand-aligned? Consider all these factors when deciding which partner you’d like to work with.
Once you’ve decided, reach out with a plan. You can ask the partner if they’d like to collaborate on a post that you will create, or you can let them know you’re interested in collaborating on one of their future posts. Share the timing that works best for you, and what you think the content should focus on. It’s likely your partner will be excited to join forces—it amplifies both of you in a truly organic way.
3. Identify Your Thought Leaders
Thought leadership is one of the toughest communications areas to develop—it requires a lot of time and planning, both of which are at a premium working in the nonprofit space. But that’s why it’s best to lay the groundwork before the opportunities arise, and identify the members of your organization that will be the best candidates for this work.
Ideally, your thought leaders will come from the C-Suite. They should be the most visible leaders within your organization, and the spokespeople for their particular areas of work. Have 1:1 conversations with each of them—what is their capacity for thought leadership over the next quarter or year? What are they most interested in speaking about? What is their comfort level with the work? These conversations should give you a good sense of who to keep developing.
Once you’ve worked through the C-Suite, think of your organization’s mission and priority issue areas. Do you focus heavily on afterschool programming? Community building? A particular sport? Who are the on-the-ground practitioners leading this work for your org? These are the subject-matter experts who can also be molded into thought leaders for your organization.
Finally, don’t forget about the community you serve. Thought leaders do not have to be chosen solely from your staff, but can also include your participants and their families. Do you have a parent that has been working with your organization for a long time who would be willing to speak on behalf of your organization? Or a participant who would love to give a speech or a media interview about their experiences with your org? These are the people closest to the impact of your work, and could be the most engaging thought leaders, should the opportunity arise.
Kelly Carroll Communications is committed to helping nonprofits find the most achievable ways to enhance their communications strategies. These are just a few things that you can do right now to give your org a boost for the rest of the year. If you’re interested in discussing more strategies, please reach out via the form below or email Kelly at kellyanncarroll@gmail.com.
