Should the media be an audience for your brand?

​​Ally Dommu: Hello and welcome to the Smart Communications podcast. I’m Ally Dommu, director of service development and worker-owner at Big Duck. I’m excited to be here today with my colleague, Michelle Behar, to talk about media outreach with nonprofit organizations. So before we start chatting, a little bit more about my lovely colleague Michelle. As a senior strategist at Big Duck, Michelle brings more than a decade of experience crafting communications and marketing programs for organizations, executive leaders, and nonprofits. She enjoys helping nonprofits best communicate their work and engage new audiences. And prior to joining the Big Duck team a little over a year ago, Michelle served as the director of programs for Close the Gap California, where she oversaw strategic communications and external programming. Welcome to the show, Michelle. Thanks for being with me today.

Michelle Behar: Thanks, Ally. It’s great to be here.

Ally Dommu: And I think this is your first time on the Big Duck podcast, is that right?

Michelle Behar: That’s correct. This is my first time.

Ally Dommu: All right. Just to kind of let our listeners know a little bit more about you, can you start with sharing a little bit more about your past work leading public relations campaigns?

Michelle Behar: Yeah, so I spent the majority of my career on both the agency and client sides in public relations, and I’ve done PR for both, for-profit and nonprofit sectors. I’ve worked with a lot of orgs across the advocacy spaces, tech, health and wellness, and automotive even. So, quite a lot of different types of organizations that I’ve had the pleasure to really work closely with on comms and PR.

Ally Dommu: Nice. Well, we’re excited to kind of use your background and your insights here to talk about PR specifically for nonprofits. And a few months ago you wrote a blog post on Big Duck’s blog, which we’ll link to in the show notes titled, Should the media be an audience for your brand? And it was really helpful in guiding nonprofit communications teams to consider how media outreach can be a part of their broader strategy. For some organizations, media outreach and PR is a really critical part of how they get the word out. For others, it’s maybe more emergent or not really significant. So let’s just kind of start with the big picture as it relates to media outreach and PR for nonprofits. One of the things you mentioned in the post that you wrote was that media coverage can be a great way to broaden a nonprofit’s reach, but with limited capacity, it could also be tricky. So what is your take? What’s your perspective on how nonprofits can figure out if media outreach is really worth the investment for them, if it’s something that they should consider taking on?

Michelle Behar: This is a question I get a lot and have had to answer quite a bit throughout my career. In general, when we think about communications, PR is really one piece of that, right? And overall, what we want to do is make sure that any communications activities that we’re doing and our org is doing supports our organizational goals. Because at the end of the day, our teams have limited capacity, limited bandwidth, and resources. So it really makes sense to be strategic about where you’re putting that effort. So ultimately, you should start with your organizational goals. Your goals will determine the extent to which media coverage can be valuable for you.

Michelle Behar: And that also starts with understanding what do you want to get out of media outreach? Do you wanna build credibility for your organization, especially, for example, for orgs that are seeking to target like members of Congress. That can be incredibly helpful to build credibility with publications that reach those audiences. Are you trying to raise awareness for a cause? That can be also very helpful just to kind of broaden understanding to get media coverage around. Do you want to increase program signups, for example? Do you have an after-school program that you want students to know about and potentially sign up for? Fundraising: by selling tickets to an event, if you want promotion around an event, and it’s something that the media might be interested in talking about. Ultimately they’re not gonna just promote your event or your product or your brand itself, but there’s always a way to be able to hook a journalist and make them interested and think that this might be something that they would be open to sharing with their readers.

Michelle Behar: It’s really important to identify and prioritize your audiences. So, starting ultimately with your organizational goals, but then going into who are your actual audiences? An audience, as we would define it at Big Duck, is any group of people you wanna reach with your communications. So whether that’s within your organization or externally. If it’s internal, you’re probably not gonna do media outreach most likely because it doesn’t quite make sense for your particular teams. There are other ways to go about that, but external audiences in particular can be really helpful to reach with media coverage. When we think about prioritizing our audiences, you really wanna consider whom it’s crucial for your organization to reach. So if your team has the capacity and resources, you can absolutely expand your list of comms activities to reach your secondary or even tertiary audiences. But ultimately, really keeping in mind again, who are your priority audiences? Who do you absolutely need to reach? And thinking of the media as a way to amplify toward your primary audiences depending on whom they are.

Ally Dommu: That’s really helpful. And also just kind of reinforces any kind of communication strategy that a nonprofit might be considering. We’re always starting with the goals and the audiences and thinking, Okay, is this strategy going to be relevant? And related to that, you mentioned some examples of when media outreach might be helpful and those helpful examples. Is there a time or a circumstance in which you think it’s not worth the investment for an organization to invest in?

Michelle Behar: Yeah, I think ultimately if your audiences, for example, are not necessarily consuming the news in the way that you are trying to go after them, right? Or let’s say for example, your audience might be teens and maybe they’re consuming very specific outlets, but social media actually in that case might be a better channel for your organization to go with their communications activities and be able to get to that audience.

Ally Dommu: We’re using a few different terms, and I was wondering if you could define a few things for our audiences because these terms, kind of, get mixed up a little bit. First media outreach versus public relation. Is that the same thing? Are those slightly different things?

Michelle Behar: Public relations is essentially what you’re putting out publicly, right? It is your relationship with the public so that on some level can incorporate branding because it’s really what your audiences are thinking about you, but it’s also how you are speaking and how others are talking about you. That is ultimately what public relations is. Media outreach is what we define as specifically reaching out to journalists or a publication that can be in multiple different forms because especially with the explosion of digital media, there’s any number of ways to gain media outreach. But ultimately it’s getting to know and work with journalists to have them either interview you or feature your organization or raise awareness about an issue.

Ally Dommu: That’s really helpful. Thank you for that. Okay, so let’s talk about strategy for a minute. You suggest that nonprofits need a clear strategy to guide media outreach, a clear roadmap. So what are some of the first steps an organization should really take to build their game plan, to build their strategy for reaching the media?

Michelle Behar: Once you’ve already established what your organizational goals ultimately are, your communications goals as a whole, and the audiences you’re trying to reach that are most important for you to reach, you wanna think about what your goals for media coverage are. Essentially, it’s not helpful, and to be honest, most journalists are not gonna cover you just because that’s something you want, right? There has to be something of interest to them, what we call a news hook or something of that nature that can be really interesting that they wanna share with their audiences. Ultimately, I recommend doing an initial just Google search and figuring out what publications make the most sense for your organization. There are numerous media outlets that have a particular voice, audience, and areas that they cover for the news, so it’s really important to understand the publications you’re seeking to be featured in, but also why you wanna be featured there. Not that you’re gonna necessarily share that externally, but it’s important to help in guiding your team, especially as you’re starting with media coverage and media outreach if you’ve never worked on that before.

Michelle Behar: It’s also really common, I’ve seen many nonprofits and for-profit organizations where someone on the board or maybe an executive director or someone in senior leadership is really excited by the idea of your organization being featured in Forbes or The Wall Street Journal or these kind of major publications, right? But it may not really make sense if your audience doesn’t spend their time there. And ultimately, spending your efforts on trying to get into publications like that may be really challenging and time-consuming when there are other outlets that may make more sense for your audience.

Ally Dommu: I’m interested in that piece that you said about knowing if your content or your story is newsworthy and having the hook. Sometimes when you work really closely with an issue or you’re working at a nonprofit organization and something is really significant or major internally at the organization that you wanna share, it might feel like something is newsworthy, and maybe it is. Can you give some guidance to nonprofit communicators about how they can assess whether or not there’s something there that’s newsworthy, that has a hook that the media might be interested in covering?

Michelle Behar: What they’re thinking of as timely and newsworthy is not necessarily what’s timely and newsworthy to our organization. It’s helpful to take a step back and think, Is this something that would be of interest to others? If it’s something that is already in the news, that can be really valuable and helpful. For example, I’ve seen a lot of organizations really successfully offer up someone on their team as an expert to the topic that’s happening currently. We see that a lot in the political space as well as things happening environmentally. That can be really valuable to be able to just offer up expertise as an additional resource for a journalist. And that’s helpful because they’re getting additional credibility even on their own end by going to outside experts and being able to add to their story. Another newsworthy hook, for example, might be, Do you have data on a particular topic that’s new and interesting? especially if you have research or can comment on research that’s available that’s new. That can be something that journalists find really valuable.

Michelle Behar: If it’s an event that’s happening locally, let’s say you are having a pet adoption event that’s happening in San Diego, which is where I’m from, that would be really valuable to San Diego local media outlets, right? And they would want to include those events ultimately, but it’s a matter of making sure you have enough time and have sent them that information well ahead of time. A lot of times I see orgs that have something really fascinating and interesting happening, or something that will be valuable to readers for a publication, but they’re not giving themselves enough lead time to be able to reach out to the journalists, wait for a response, (which, honestly, can take quite a while, especially if you have not built up a relationship yet). But ultimately, that can be mitigated by just having your communications plan, trying to plan as far ahead, especially where you know that these things will be coming out if you’re able to. For example, if you have an annual report and there’s data in there or insights that can be really valuable, we know that those things are happening. So where––to the extent possible––you can plan ahead in your communications plans and your roadmap for activities. It can be very helpful to get a jump on media outreach well in advance of when you want to be featured.

Ally Dommu: That’s awesome. Really helpful. The timing is important. It does take time to cultivate relationships with media, and I’m sure some nonprofits have years of established relationships with media, whether that’s local media or like niche media tied to their issues, or even national media. But if an organization is sort of newer to media outreach, maybe it’s a younger organization, or it just hasn’t been a strategy that an organization has invested in, what are some practical ways that nonprofits can start building relationships with journalists, especially if they don’t have any major news or events to share right away? What does that process entail?

Michelle Behar: Doing a quick search online just to see who’s already talking about the topics and space that you occupy with your organization. M aybe even some sister or peer organizations, seeing where they’re being featured can be really helpful. Again, going back to your audiences, which outlets are focused on teens? What about state politics? Which ones cover health? Those can be really helpful to understand and keep track of just to see what they’re covering. What are the different topics that are being published day-to-day? Ultimately, just like your audiences, these will be your primary targets for media outreach, and they’re the ones you should spend most of your energy on.

Michelle Behar: You want to go to the publications, skim their About Us page on the website, go to their masthead or a staff page if they have one, and it can be really helpful to identify whom on their staff, maybe focused on a particular topic, because health, of course, is a huge, huge area to cover. So journalists will end up covering very specific or niche area generally, and it’s valuable to know that if you’re reaching out to someone, it’s in fact the person that covers the topic that you are sending to them, right? That your interests ultimately align in that way. If you send a pitch to a journalist that it’s not in an area they cover, it’s pretty rare. I would say that they’ll forward it to a colleague. Sometimes they will, but oftentimes it’s helpful just to know in advance or ask if you have built at least some semblance of a relationship with a journalist, you can also ask them, What stories are you working on? Is there anything that my organization can be helpful with? Whether that’s with data or giving a helpful point of view.

Ally Dommu: Right. So finally, let’s talk about measuring impact of media outreach, and I think this is one that it’s a little harder to quantify. Let’s say an organization is successful, they’ve secured some media coverage, maybe there’s an article or there’s a feature published about an event or something that’s going on in their organization. How should they measure the impact of that outreach effort and make sure that the effort is worth the investment and it’s advancing the goals of the organization?

Michelle Behar: There are a number of ways to measure impact. Back in the day, when it was just print media, we definitely had the ability to see circulation numbers and readership and understand more from that perspective. There’s absolutely still print publications, but we do also have a lot of digital media, which means we translate that to impressions. How many people have actually seen your story or the story you’re featured in? And how many of them may have acted on it? It can be tricky to measure media coverage in a way that we would typically understand how we measure any of our other communications activities because we usually have hard numbers that we can assign to things. Like a tweet, for example, or a LinkedIn post, or an email, and how many folks saw our email. We can’t necessarily do that as easily with media coverage, but there are a number of different ways that we can still understand where the value lies ultimately, and how we feel it’s advancing our comms and marketing goals.

Michelle Behar: So one way is tone and sentiment, analyzing the article, understanding if it’s positive or neutral coverage. If it’s really negative coverage, which we hope didn’t happen, then that’s absolutely something to consider as well. But generally speaking, especially if you are offering up an expert to speak on a topic, that sentiment and tone is usually gonna be neutral. We consider that neutral coverage. It’s still positive for the organization, the person being featured as a representative of your org, but ultimately it’s just valuable to see. A one-sentence mention versus a feature also is a way to kind of categorize media coverage. If your organization is just really briefly mentioned, or maybe they’re not mentioned specifically, maybe your executive director is mentioned by name, but not the organization. That’s also something to consider. And those types of things can also help with powerful lessons, I think going forward about how to kind of reemphasize the connection between representatives that are going to these publications to speak to them and strengthening that connection with the organization and its mission.

Michelle Behar: Another way that you can measure impact from media outreach and coverage is what’s the outlet tier or type. For example, we refer in the public relations world to some coverage as tier-one media coverage. Those are the Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, these really massive publications that have large followings. But even though we consider it tier-one media coverage, that doesn’t mean that it’s any less valuable to be featured in a blog, for example, that has a large following or a publication that again, is focused very specifically on your primary audiences that you’re trying to reach.

Ally Dommu: Well, those are really, really helpful. Thank you. Just as a final wrap-up, if you could just share one tip as it relates to media outreach for nonprofits, especially thinking about those folks, those communicators that aren’t really deep into this world, what’s one tip that you would like to give them in terms of how they should approach media coverage and outreach?

Michelle Behar: Make sure to try to get to know––as much as possible––your journalists that you are pitching. Following them on social media can be really helpful, ideally from your organization’s account or handle, but also from your professional account or handle if that’s available. Just so they start to also put a face to a name. If they’re gonna be receiving emails from you, you can also just send them a note to introduce yourself and let them know about your organization, even if you don’t have anything newsworthy or timely to send to them. Just again, to start building the relationship slowly. It will take time. I think media coverage, oftentimes, organizations think it happens overnight. It does not. It is a slow but steady drumbeat. And ultimately––this is probably a secondary tip––but make sure once you do get media coverage, make sure that you are sharing it across all of your channels because those pieces of media coverage can be so incredibly valuable to extend past even the audience that is reading that publication.

Michelle Behar: I’ve seen so many organizations that will get a really wonderful piece of media coverage and then just share it once on their social media or never use it again. But there’s any number of ways that you can plug it into the rest of your communications activities: put it on your website; you know, tag the journalist to thank them on social media, and also give them additional visibility from your networks; share it in a fundraising email; and you can also revive media coverage later for use in your annual report or in other emails where it makes sense.

Ally Dommu: Those are great tips. Well, Michelle, this has been lovely. Thank you so much for sharing your experience with our listeners today. We’re definitely gonna link to your blog, which has a lot of what we covered today and more, and that will all be available in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining us.

Michelle Behar: Thanks, Ally.