Getting the Word Out: It's Not What it Used to Be
According to the great American existentialist Rollo May, "Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing." Communication is one of the most critical activities of any organization. Effectively delivering key messages to and obtaining feedback/input from all stakeholders is a constant challenge.
Technology has dramatically changed the way people communicate and it is important for organizations to adapt communications strategies to meet these changes. "New media" approaches are playing a vital role in effective business communications.
A Wikipedia search on new media yields the following: "While the expression "New Media" may be applied to a large spectrum of media, it is generally used to describe interactive creative expression in multimedia, computers or communications technologies." The most salient components of this definition are interactive, creative and multimedia.
When we look at the communications (r)evolution from v 1.0 to v 2.0, the most important difference is that version 1.0 was about publishing, whereas version 2.0 is about engaging. When GivingNet first started working with community foundations on their communications strategies over six years ago, the challenge was to convince folks that they needed websites at all. The next challenge was to convince them that their websites should not just be online brochures, but needed to have content that was evolving and changing regularly. Now we are up to daily updating of content via RSS feeds. (64 community foundation websites now carry daily feeds from Philanthromedia.org.)
V 2.0 is much more difficult because we don’t control it. It is about engagement, and it is about interaction. The approach is no longer a top-down dissemination of information from those "in the know" to those "not in the know." The new paradigm is one in which everyone is a publisher, everyone has a voice, everyone has knowledge to share.
New Media Principles
New media communications has resulted in a vastly broader marketplace of ideas. It used to be that news came from ABC, NBC, and CBS. Then a huge proliferation of media outlets came into being. In philanthropy, a similar shift occurred with the entrance of donor advised funds, giving individuals a stake in grantmaking—a task formerly controlled strictly at the board level. Now in philanthropy there are a number of blogs that are regularly commenting on what is happening in the space, and being picked up by mainstream media.
- Multi-media is the emerging norm
In today’s communications world, it is imperative to package information in a variety of ways to reach very diverse audiences. Not everyone wants to read a white paper, so we need to offer information in audio, video, podcast, and with first-personalization.
- Subjectivity is valued and authentic voices resonate ("first personalization")
It used to be absolutely forbidden for reporters to interject their feelings or opinions into the articles they wrote for mainstream publication. Now, such "first personalization" is what sets some media sources apart and makes them successful. People have started to look to folks like Ariana Huffington for their news (The Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com) and Michael Arrington for their technology advice (TechCrunch, http://www.techcrunch.com).
Likewise, leading influencers within philanthropy and beyond are participating in new media. Great examples are the MacArthur Foundation which now has a solid presence in Second Life, where actual grantmaking will ultimately be carried out by avatars, and TED Talks (http://www.ted.com/talks?gclid=CKPAkcXq444CFQRuZQodTlhERQ), where videos featuring folks like Jacqueline Novogratz, Jeff Skoll and Richard Dawkins abound. If your CEO is passionate about certain issues, don’t extract his or her voice from your communications efforts; rather, leverage that passion by sharing it broadly with your constituents. Blogs and videocasts are great ways to do this.
Today’s media audiences have very short attention spans. Therefore, all communications should be short and sweet. Our first audiocasts were 8 minutes and we found that is too long. Audiocasts and videocasts need to be 5 minutes or less. This forces the producer to boil content down to the most essential elements. A good model for this is NPR. Therefore, it is important when producing your media pieces that you work with people who understand your business and can cull out the important message points for your audiences.
Syndication is the way that content is shared on the Web. In order to reach the widest range of people with your ideas, you want to syndicate your content to as many channels as possible. GivingNet currently syndicates Philanthromedia.org content to 64 community foundation sites. In addition, other sites link to Philanthromedia and often feature blog entries from Philanthromedia on their sites.
Blogs
The Chronicle of Philanthropy has a daily online service called Philanthropy Today that has a section called "Give and Take" that is a great place to get a sense of the blogs in the philanthropic space (see their "blogroll" at http://philanthropy.com/giveandtake).
You may be familiar with the Philanthromedia.org blog site, but less aware that community foundation leaders have their own blogs. Diane Sieger at Grand Rapids Community Foundation was one of the first CF presidents to do a blog (http://www.grfoundation.org/blog/). She’s been doing this for 1-2 years, and occasionally gets picked up by Chronicle.
At the Community Foundation Serving Richmond and Central Virginia, Bobby Thalheimer produces "Bobby’s Blog" (http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-gBnSmJQjdKRLH4WyNEGEnZpq) Philanthromedia.org takes a feed from this blog twice a month and puts it on Philanthromedia. Susan Herr, founder of Philanthromedia, recently asked Bobby to recount his "lessons learned" from his blogging experience. He has found blogging to be low maintenance, low cost, and easy. He only does 2-3 entries a month, and uses software that is simple to use and only costs $10/month. Unfortunately, the platform (Yahoo 360) only allows comments from people who have a Yahoo account. He wanted the blog to sit on different platform and be totally separate from the Foundation’s website, so that it would be clear that the ideas and opinions forwarded on the blog were his, and did not necessarily reflect the policies of the Foundation.
Blog Lessons Learning
- Comments don’t seem to be a problem. PhilanthroMedia has been very careful to filter comments, and does not publish comments without editorial review. This is very important because of our syndication to foundation websites. So, the good news is that the software allows for editorial control over things like comments. On the other hand, commenting is really what makes blogging a dialogue and not a one-way conversation, so we encourage comments and welcome them. One important rule of blogging is that every time someone comments on your blog, you have to comment on their comment. This keeps the interaction going.
- Custom platforms vs. out of box. There are several free platforms available on the Internet, as well as many "out of the box" solutions that are very inexpensive and easy to use. PhilanthroMedia uses a customized platform (MoveableType) (cost ~$6,000). The customized platform was important to us because we wanted to have multiple authors publishing from different locations, and we needed pretty robust archiving functionality, things we couldn’t really get with off the shelf platforms. The downside of this is that we still need to use a programmer when we need changes made to the platform.
- Syndication fuels impact. As stated above, syndication and cross-posting are key to visibility and impact. Strategies for getting other organizations to feature your blog on their sites are key.
- Analytics are tricky. It is difficult to track the success of your blog, as different sources yield widely differing reports. Google reports vs. others may yield different numbers so it’s really hard to tell. One new resource for measuring the "value" of your blog is a site called whatismyblogworth.com. Using similar algorithm as Technorati, the site places a dollar value on your site.
- Leverage your opportunities. Take audio or video into your meetings, events, conferences and gatherings and ask people there to comment on an issue that is important to the community. This is a fantastic way to get indigenous voices into your content.
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