How To Get Your Nonprofit Noticed
How To Get Your Nonprofit Noticed
When you do great work and make amazing things happen in your community, it’s only natural to want everyone to hear about it. But for many growing nonprofits and mission-driven small businesses— newsletters, social media posts, and website traffic aren’t enough to reach everyone who needs to know. Earned media coverage is the way to amplify your message and connect with more supporters.
Earning coverage in local media and industry or issue-specific publications is a great way to get your nonprofit noticed. Getting the coverage takes work. But when you invest the time to plan the work and put in the effort to work the plan, you get to reach audiences beyond your own network. Start building the relationships and processes it takes to earn media coverage before you need them.
The reason marketers call a write-up in local media or an industry publication “earned media” is that you (usually) have to do something to get it. Maybe you were involved in an event that got so much attention that local media approached you proactively. Maybe you had to pitch the story and work to make it hard for local media to turn you down. A plan and a process help you take control.
The Building Blocks of Your Nonprofit’s PR Program
Don’t just sit around and wait to get noticed. That will work against you in at least two ways. First, you’ll be missing out on all the opportunities that could be yours with just a bit of proactive work. On top of that, even when you do catch the local media’s eye—you probably won’t be ready to deliver what you need to make it easy for them to cover your organization’s latest news.
By following a few simple steps, you can set up a process that will help you earn more coverage and make the most of it when it happens.
The 6 Steps To Earning Media Coverage
Getting your nonprofit noticed is a process of turning the work you do into stories worth telling, building relationships with the people who make editorial decisions about what gets covered, and bringing the two together.
Before you ever pitch a story to local media, you need to make sure your organization is ready for prime time. Once you set your PR program in motion, you’ll need to be ready to deliver on promises and honor commitments. These six steps will guide your organization from zero to sixty and make sure you don’t grind any gears.
Craft Your Story—Plan to Tell Stories About Your Story
You know that your organization is doing important work. You know that your story is worth telling. But would a stranger know what your story is and why the world needs your organization to exist? Before you ask for more attention, make sure your site, social media profiles, and other publicly visible collateral are ready for it. To do that, you need to craft your organization’s brand story.
Neil Patel points out that “the best way for your startup to get into the press is by having an amazing company story, one that will help you stand out from the crowd”.
We talked about the blueprints and building blocks of Brand Storytelling in a previous post.
Your organization’s brand story should “Start With Why”. Have the leadership team work on crafting their individual leadership stories at the same time you build and refine your brand story. Think ahead to how you will turn programs, events, and other stories worth telling about your organization into extensions of your brand story.
Put Processes In Place-Put The Process In Motion
Once your organization’s house is in order and you’re ready for Prime Time, you need to build workflow processes that will take you from passively waiting for coverage to actively promoting it. Do this by:
Creating content worth covering
Building a network of relationships
Leveraging each success to do more and better
There are some basic steps that you need to take to lay the foundations of your PR Process. One of the most important is your media kit. In addition to your kit, you’ll need to assign responsibility for outreach, relationship building, and story pitching.
Set reasonable goals for your earned media program and get to work on achieving them. When you’re starting out, the goal of finding a few journalists or reporters you can build relationships with should be at the top of your list.
Build Relationships
If you wait until you have news worth covering to begin contacting reporters and journalists at local media outlets, you’ll be asking a favor from a stranger. It’s been reported that nearly half of journalists receive more than twenty pitches each day. Other studies show that 64% of reporters think that it’s important to establish a personal connection before you start pitching.
“Local” is a relative term. It all depends on where you are, what you do, and who is impacted by your programming. Any media outlet that covers the areas your organization works in is local to you. In addition to local media, you should identify national and international publications – both print and online – that cover topics relevant to the work that you do.
Once you’ve identified the media outlets that you need to connect with, look for journalists and reporters who cover beats that overlap with your organization’s work. Send them a brief email to introduce your organization or connect with them in person at an event. Follow them on Twitter. Connect with them on LinkedIn. Get to know them before you make your first pitch.
Build Your Pitch
One benefit of building a relationship with a reporter is that it will take the guesswork out of crafting a pitch that will result in press coverage. A journalist for local newspapers, radio, or television news programming can give you the feedback and insights that you need to spark interest, gain access, and build the future of a long-term relationship.
A press release should be a part of your pitch process. But it doesn’t end there. If you want coverage that tells a story about your story, you’ll have to craft something that fits the journalist and publication you’re pitching. If the story is worth telling, it’s worth doing the extra work that it takes to get it the coverage it deserves.
When it comes to making a pitch that gets results, remember the following tips:
Why: Before a journalist will cover a story, they need to know why it is important and what makes it compelling.
Timing is everything: Before a reporter decides to cover a story, they need to know the answer to the question—“Why Now?”.
Location, Location, Location: Before a reporter decides to cover a story, they need to know the answer to the question—“Why Here?”. That question addresses both their coverage area and their audience.
Give Them Something to Work With: Including photos, videos, and other ephemera that a journalist can use in their print or online coverage makes it easier for them to say “Yes”. Just don’t overload their inbox with huge files.
Where’s the Proof: Make it easy for a journalist to fact-check your story. This can include contact information for sources that can back your story and data from your programs that prove impact.
Make Commitments and Honor Them
Getting a yes from a media outlet that you’ve been building a relationship with is a big win for your organization. It’s important to remember that your long-term goal is continual coverage—not just a one-time feature. Don’t coast across the finish line when you should be doing the work that will secure the future of your relationship with that reporter and their publication.
Make sure you’re available to give a journalist everything they need to turn the story you pitch into the story they will tell. If they ask for an interview, make yourself available. If they ask for bios, photos, or videos—have them ready to go.
A yes is great, but it’s just as important to treat every no as though it will be a yes in the future. Be polite and professional in all of your communications with journalists. Show appreciation for their time and attention by doing whatever they need you to do to help them get your story out there.
Support and Promote Your Earned Media Coverage
After all of the work that you put into getting your story in print (or online), it’s important to do what you can to support and promote it. That’s the difference between “taking what you get” and “getting what you can”.
The first thing you need to do when your story goes live is say thank you to the journalist or reporter that wrote the story and the media outlet that ran it. Use social media and other platforms to let your supporters know the story is out there and give them links to follow. Share the story with potential donors, volunteers, and your staff.
Media coverage is something that can build its own momentum. But sometimes it needs a little help to get going. Coordinate with the journalists and reporters in your network to find ways to turn local coverage into a pitch for a regional or national media outlet. Broader coverage benefits everybody.
Beyond The Building Blocks: Tips For Optimizing The Results of Your PR Program
It shouldn’t take you long to set up the processes that we outlined in the six steps to getting your nonprofit noticed. Once they’re in place, you should start to see results. But it’s never too early to start thinking about how you can refine what you’ve built to get more and better results.
We’ve put together some tips to help you turn your PR program into an attention-generating machine that will help you amplify your organization’s mission.
Create Content Worth Covering
When you invest the time and effort to craft your brand story, you get the benefit of having an anchor for every story that you tell. Everything your organization does is an extension of that story. Writing up program achievements, promoting partnerships and events, and speaking up as subject-matter experts on current events are all ways to get your nonprofit’s name in the news.
Keeping on top of current events and thinking ahead about your own calendar is essential to planning for successful story pitches. It gives you the time to get to yes and collaborate on a quality story before deadlines creep up on you.
Making your team, volunteers, and constituents part of your storytelling process is important too. Program work and special events are great opportunities to supplement your stories with photos and video.
Don’t Network Needy
It’s important to build relationships over the long term. Nobody likes to feel like they’re being used or abused. Journalists and reporters are no different. Every time you submit a pitch, you’ll be asking for a favor. Don’t set yourself up by making it a last-minute ask or a purely transactional request.
Building relationships is about finding ways to do mutually beneficial things. Reporters need stories to cover and your organization needs coverage to reach a broader audience. There’s something in it for both parties, but you still need to find a way to stand out from everyone else making an ask.
By giving a reporter a great story to cover and making their job easier, you’ll build a reputation as an organization that respects the media and appreciates the coverage you receive. By supporting their coverage with your own social media posts and website promotions, you’ll sweeten the deal for them.
Support Media Outlets on Social Media
Don’t make the mistake of taking from your media relationships without giving back. When you connect with media outlets, reporters, and journalists on social media—it shouldn’t be all about getting your stories covered.
Share stories from the media outlets that cover your organization—even when the story isn’t about you. Retweet the journalist or reporter that takes care of you to help them get social traffic. Be sure to tag media outlets and journalists when you post their stories on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram.
If your organization hosts live events, be sure to send invitations to the reporters in your network. As you get to know journalists, look for ways to help them out by forwarding stories they might want to cover or making yourself available as a subject-matter expert. But don’t be a pest. There’s a line between being friendly and being needy. Don’t cross it.
Make Local Your Own
The key to getting free coverage that will get your nonprofit noticed is becoming a part of the conversation that takes place in the media outlets that reach audiences you want to reach. So, while your geographic area is an important way of defining what “local” means to you—it isn’t the only way.
As a nonprofit organization, you need to get to know the national publications that are interested in news that is relevant to the nonprofit world. These topics include fundraising, marketing, partnerships with a foundation or a company, and anything else that other nonprofits might want to learn about.
Some publications target the nonprofit sector in general. But there are also industry publications that focus specifically on the work that your organization does. Search google to find out who you need to know beyond your local community. Use your pitch process and press release program to strategically expand what local means to you.
It All Starts With Your Story and Argonaut Productions Helps You Tell It
If you want coverage in local news, you need to catch the eye of reporters and journalists at organizations that are interested in your story. The first step in getting them to cover your news-worthy stories for free is making sure your brand story is putting your organization’s best foot forward.
Let Argonaut Productions help get your marketing program ready for prime time so that you can generate interest and offer something in return when it comes time to support and promote newspaper articles, radio segments, and television broadcasts that share your story.
It all begins with a no-cost, no-obligation initial consultation. From there, we’ll help you plan and schedule a discovery session that will lead to the design and delivery of a compelling brand story.