A strategically executed PR campaign can help non-profits achieve national and international attention for their causes. It can also help attract well known personalities to become fundraising champions, exceed fundraising goals, increase event attendance and create more volunteer opportunities. Working in conjunction with a social media content strategy, PR has the ability to help a campaign go viral, consistently growing the number of donations, year after year.
So how do you get started? Part of being sufficiently prepared for a media campaign and establishing positive relationships with the media, is making sure that you have all the proper materials in a centralized location for each campaign. Directing media to a centralized hub for information will make it easier to handle media requests and make the story pitching process move more seamlessly.
Building a media kit doesn’t have to be extremely expensive or time-consuming. Before you spend a lot of time and energy creating news releases for each campaign, let me show you how to put together an effective media kit and how to put it to good use.
Pay Attention to Where Your Network of Supporters Congregate
Today, many journalists, bloggers and other media members will undoubtedly have a social media network on various channels. Chances are your network of supporters have their own audiences through social media as well, so why not tap into that? If you give your donors, volunteers and the media the right tools, they’ll relay your news for you to their Facebook fans, LinkedIn connections, Instagram followers and YouTube subscribers.
Rather than creating bland blocks of text with quotes from key personnel, give journalists the key points, visuals and ideas in highly shareable formats such as infographics, videos and slideshows. It’s a great way to extend the life of re-useable organic content that focuses on your cause. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for your network and journalists to share news of a campaign or event, so here are some pieces to share with them to make it as easy as possible.
Jazz Up the Executive Bios
Instead of creating bullet point bios for key personnel in your non-profit, why not feature some short video clips where the key team members introduce themselves and talk about what inspires them about your cause? Post the videos (and high resolution head shots, just in case) in a centralized location. It could be on your website’s media page or a separate mini-site just for your exclusive media kit.
Share a Timeline of Your Non-Profit’s Highlights
Instead of writing a drawn-out executive summary of your non-profit’s history, why not turn that timeline into a more interactive slideshow or infographic? You can showcase highlights in your history such as your first fundraising event or the largest donation you’ve ever received-with eye-catching designs-and track how many people view your slideshow/infographic. So not only do you have a visually interactive piece for your media kit, the built-in analytics will also show you how journalists and your supporters interact with it.
Make Sure High-Resolution Logos & Branded Materials are Easily Accessible
Any high resolution versions of your logo and other branded materials such as posters & mobile optimized images should be easily accessible for downloading and sharing purposes online.
Videos & Photos Are Essential to Letting People See How Your Cause Works
Photos and videos that focus on your fundraising events as well as press interviews can really give your supporters and journalists a great sense of how your organization works and how passionate you are. You can include easy-to-share buttons as well as branded hashtags for your supporters, making it easy for them to share them via Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn as well as YouTube. Journalists will get an idea of the kind of press you’ve received and what stories about your cause are the most popular.
Sample Social Media Posts
Provide supporters with sample social media posts for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or YouTube about your latest campaign or initiative. Include easy-to-understand prompts for sharing, provide a branded hashtag with each post and encourage supporters to share it in their own personal style. Use one of the social listening tools (mentioned in a previous post) to track how the hashtag is being used and thank those who share the posts.
Create Infographics
If you’re sharing new research or releasing new information (ie. increase in donations, number of volunteers etc.) consider using one of the infographic tools (mentioned in a previous post) to create eye-catching and easy to read infographics for your supporters to share via their own networks. Infographics make research much more compelling to read and journalists can pull statistics from them to use in tweets, status updates and posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Share Blog Posts
If any of your supporters have blogs, you might want to consider giving them a list of ideas for sample posts about your organization or providing a select few with a guest post that they can share with their audiences. Even better, you can share the links to your blog posts as part of your sample social media posts, making it even easier for your network of supporters to share posts.
Make sure you display all these important elements of your media kit on a prominent page on your website-and keep the prompts for sharing the content easy to find, read and understand.
Subscribe here for more great insights on non-profit social media marketing, public relations, content curation and fundraising ideas!
Lilian Sue is a marketing communications professional with over 10 years of experience developing integrated multi-channel marketing campaigns (copywriting, social media & PR/media relations) for lifestyle brands, indie film & television projects, B2B companies, tourism/hospitality & food/beverage brands. Learn more about her work at In Retrospect Writing Services.
