Position Your Leader as an Expert

by Nedra Weinreich | Jul 19, 2007 | Blog, Communication

Guest Post from Sandra Beckwith:

I often hear from nonprofits asking how they can position their executive director as the local expert on the organization’s key issue. Here’s what I tell them.
First, make sure that if your leader isn’t already an expert, he or she is taking steps to become one. This is one of those situations where you don’t want to use smoke and mirrors.

Then showcase that expertise using specific steps designed to provide opportunities to share that knowledge and experience freely, which is essential. Start with these steps to develop expert credibility:

• Make your leader the exclusive spokesperson for your organization, whether it’s for media interviews, public service announcements, or advertisements.
• Send your local media a letter listing story or news segment ideas that your leader can contribute to as a resource. Attach your director’s photo and narrative bio, a backgrounder on your issue, and a brief history of your organization.
• Produce a relevant booklet with tips or advice from your leader. Identify your executive director as the author. Send it to the media with a news release announcing the booklet’s availability; distribute it to stakeholders; promote it in your newsletter and on your Web site.
• Continually schedule speaking engagements for your executive director with community groups.
• Write timely op-eds with your leader’s byline for the newspaper as frequently as possible.

These and other steps executed well locally could help your leader become recognized as an expert nationally, as well. While that might not be your goal, it certainly won’t hurt your local efforts.

Got a media relations or publicity topic you’d like to know more about? Drop me a line at sb@sandrabeckwith.com and I’ll try to answer it here.

Tips for Writing Op-Eds That Get Published

by Nedra Weinreich | Jul 16, 2007 | Blog, Communication

Guest Post from Sandra Beckwith:

Op-eds – essays that appear opposite the editorial pages of newspapers – are powerful communications tools for nonprofit organizations working to influence public policy or initiate change. But too many local nonprofits miss some of their best opportunities to inform readers through these opinionated essays.

National headline news stories give nonprofits the hook their opinion pieces need to catch an editorial page editor’s attention, but we don’t always take advantage of this because we can’t react quickly enough to write and place an essay when it’s still timely. That’s why I recommend having at least one op-ed written in advance to use when a news event brings the op-ed’s topic to the public’s attention.

Recent headlines provide examples. Last week’s comments from the director of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, that we are “entering a period of increased risk” for terrorist attacks provided an opportunity for organizations with opinions on this topic to place op-eds about whether we are doing enough to protect Americans at home – or whether we should react to Chertoff’s “gut feeling.”

Here are 10 tips for writing effective op-eds you can update according to the news story for immediate publication:

• Read the publication you’re submitting to. You want to be familiar with its style and tone as well as the types of op-eds it typically runs.

• Introduce yourself to your newspaper’s op-ed page editor by telephone or e-mail and request the publication’s op-ed guidelines. Then follow them.

• Determine your goal. What do you want to achieve through your op-ed? Do you want people to behave differently or take a specific action? Keep this goal in mind as you write.

• Select one message to communicate. Op-eds are short – typically 800 words or less – so you have room to make just one good point.

• Be controversial. Editors like essays with strong opinions that will spark conversation.

• Illustrate how the topic or issue affects readers. Put a face on the issue by starting your essay with the story of somebody who has been affected or begin with an attention-getting statistic.

• Describe the problem and why it exists. This is often where you can address the opposing viewpoint and explain your group’s perspective.

• Offer your solution to the problem and explain why it’s the best option.

• Conclude on a strong note by repeating your message or stating a call to action.

• Add one or two sentences at the end that describe your credentials as they relate to the topic.

With this approach, when your issue is suddenly making headlines, you can write an introduction that connects the news to your essay and e-mail it to the editor quickly.

Questions? Contact me at sb@sandrabeckwith.com.

Messages Matter

by Nedra Weinreich | Jul 12, 2007 | Blog, Communication

Greetings from your guest blogger. I’m Sandy Beckwith, author of Publicity for Nonprofits: Generating Media Exposure That Leads to Awareness, Growth, and Contributions (Kaplan Publishing). Nedra asked me to contribute here while she was moving to the Los Angeles wilderness because she knows that I want to help nonprofit organizations learn how to work with the media in the most productive ways possible.

Today, I’d like to talk about message development because it’s one of the essential early steps of publicity planning – one that I think is frequently overlooked. It’s important to give careful thought to exactly what you want to say to your audiences not only through the media, but in all your organization’s written and spoken communications. What is it, exactly, that you need to get across to people?

Your message could vary, depending on the situation and circumstances. In some cases, your goal might be to communicate a message related to your organization’s mission or reputation. In other situations, you might want to communicate messages related only to a project or program you’re promoting, not the entire organization. Regardless, here’s the bottom line: If you aren’t clear on your message each time you communicate with the media, your publicity efforts will be less effective. Careful attention to messages allows you to get a little more control over the unpredictable – and generally uncontrollable – publicity process. Anything you can do to exert some control is good.

Message development is essentially a six-step process:
1. Defining the issue
2. Creating draft or preliminary messages
3. Testing the draft messages
4. Refining the messages
5. Testing the final messages
6. Adjusting the final messages

Here are a few tips to help prevent some of the more common mistakes in this process:

• Don’t make assumptions about what your constituents do and don’t know or do and don’t care about. Do some research instead. My book includes an anecdote about a foundation that assumed the group it was targeting with a communications campaign was familiar with – and understood – a key medical term. Wrong. Focus group research put a spotlight on this inaccurate assumption, forcing the communicators to change their strategy.
• Don’t get bogged down in the details of the issue. Craft a message that is clear, compelling and direct.
• Include emotion. And that emotion should come from your constituents’ concerns, not yours. Find a way to connect your cause to their feelings, and your message is more likely to resonate with them.
• It doesn’t matter what your colleagues or peers think of the messages you’ve developed. What counts is how the people you want to influence react – so test your messages with them.

Got a publicity question you’d like me to answer? Send a note to sb@sandrabeckwith.com and I’ll do my best to answer here.