Starting in a medium-sized city (pop. ~ 50,000) as the only Shakespeare theater company around gave me the false impression that everyone would know about us. After all, I had a website, a facebook presence, ads and positive reviews in several local papers, and professionally designed fliers posted in twenty local businesses.Imagine my surprise when nearly every person I spoke to (who wasn’t directly involved in the program or affiliated with our partners) had no idea we existed.
Perhaps when there has never been anything like your theater in town, people have a hard time absorbing the concept. You see, in the next town over, there is a vibrant arts scene and so usually the ads, reviews and fliers are for shows happening in that (much larger) city. It was quite possible we were simply blending in.
On the other hand, I’ve recently taken on the role of helping a much more established organization than my theater with their publicity. The Rocklin Historical Society is very prominently featured in the local media and is in charge of the Rocklin History Museum (which has been in service ten years), owns Old St. Mary’s Chapel (which it finished restoring four years ago) and has been operating as a non-profit unofficially for over fifty years, and as an incorporated non-profit for over twenty years.
With all this in mind, you would assume that everyone in town would know about this fine organization, but according to prominent members of the group, a recent poll showed that nearly 50% of people living in Rocklin had never heard of them.
Sometimes it makes you wonder if people are walking around with earplugs and blindfolds. Here’s what I think may actually be going on:
This is a graph from the 2011 Edelman Trust Barometer Report. Edelman is the largest global Public Relations firm and they have been conducting these studies each year since 2001. What you can see is that the majority of informed people (those who read the paper, watch the news etc) need to hear something about a specific company 3 to 5 times in order to believe it.
Now how can that be? Well for starters, it looks like we’re not so trusting of the media these days:
Another conclusion proposed by Edelman is that with the increase of new technology, Americans receive information differently than before. Rather than only getting the news from the daily paper or nightly news, our sources of media are both separate and overlapping: like a cloverleaf.
This Media Cloverleaf has four overlapping parts, each representing a source where Americans get their news. They include:
Mainstream Media: News and Print Publications like CNN, NY Times and other well-known news sources that have been around for decades.
Tra-digital Media: These are websites that are online versions of traditional media, or those that operate like traditional media but with more of a digital angle (such as the Huffington Post).
Owned Media: includes corporate and company websites that provide users with information on specific products and services.
Social Media: The fastest growing of the pack, encompasses media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and Blogs.
With the need for repetition, and so many sources of media in which people can get their information (the average informed person has eight daily sources of media), it is important to adapt your style of publicity and reporting. So how do you get started?
6 Tips to Conquer the Media Cloverleaf
6 Tips to Conquer the Media Cloverleaf
- Cross-Platform Excellence: make sure you have a strong presence in all four platforms of the cloverleaf. Have a quality website that is mobile optimized, get your press releases in traditional and tradigital media, and pump up your social media presence with excellent blog, twitter and facebook fan page content.
- Engagement 2.0: Make what you communicate with the public about more than just awareness and publicity. Work to create true fans.
- Have a Point of View: The new world of media requires opinion and analysis. A way to do this without alienating followers is to promote a relevant cause that you believe in and on which you are taking a stand. Advocacy will strike a more memorable chord with readers, get them thinking about taking action, and perhaps motivate them to raise awareness for your cause and in turn: you.
- Be Useful and Generous: When the reader is rewarded for reading your content by learning something useful or getting a good deal, they will return for more.
- Keep Content Brief, or at least Scannable: There’s a reason why so many of my blogs have bullet points. The informed public has an average of 8 news sources a day. Readers are not delving deep into stories, they're grazing. Don't give them a lump of text that looks too big for them to digest in the five minutes they planned to click away from their homework/desk work.
Finally, at the most important and all-encompassing number 6 for all of your content: stay true to yourself, your identity and your "why." Here's a post on defining that "why" if you need help. Always be honest. At the very least it will help you with continuity: the truth is the easiest story to keep straight.
Photo credits are labeled in the bottom corner of images. First photo courtesy Getty Images, graphs via the 2011 Edelman Trust Barometer report, Media Cloverleaf Diagram courtesy http://www.edelman.com/speak_up/blog/
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