Having the perfect message is only half the equation for good communication strategy. The other part is making sure your message gets to the right people. The impact of your communications depends on how many people you’re reaching.
It would be like creating the perfect wedding invitation and sending it to the wrong people.
Logically good communication practices make perfect sense, but how exactly do you engage stakeholders?
GovDelivery’s online webinar, Accelerate your Outreach for Maximum Impact, will provide you with best practices and lessons learned to help create good communication strategy.
The webinar takes place on Wednesday, August 28 at 1 pm Eastern. But we’ve got a sneak preview from GovDelivery’s Engagement Consultants Lauren Modeen and John Simpson.
Can you give me an overview of the chat?
- Modeen: Working with hundreds of government organizations and communicators, we’ve found that one of the main challenges to meeting mission goals is building a direct relationship with your audiences – whether that’s a citizen or a specific community or group or internal stakeholders.
- Simpson: Exactly. In the webinar, we’re going to give everyone real tactical tips and tricks to help build outreach to ultimately meet mission goals.
Why is crafting a message only part of your job?
- Simpson: If only half the people who need to see your message receives it and reads it, then you’ve only fulfilled 50% of your mission. That’s where outreach becomes critical.
- Modeen: You want to be sure that you’re reaching as many people as possible with your message to make it impactful. As a government communicator, you have to concerned with both crafting the message and reaching the people you need to.
How do you reach stakeholders?
- Modeen: There are a lot of different ways to reach stakeholders, but a key one is to leverage your digital properties: your website and blog, social media channels, etc. Your stakeholders, the people you want to reach, are going to find their way to your information, and you want to offer them the option to receive proactive information from you on topics they care about. We’ve found this is a critical way to connect and engage with stakeholders.
Can you give me some lessons learned from your experience generating outreach?
- Simpson: One critical lesson that we’ve seen time and again is that, when you really need to reach your stakeholders in an emergency or urgent situation, that’s when you’re concerned about reaching everyone you need to – but that’s not the time to be building outreach. So one of the biggest strategies we tell our public sector clients and partners is to continually and consistently work on building outreach. And when you put in place best practices for building outreach, your stakeholder audience will grow – sometimes by 500%. So when you do have a situation where you need to get out critical information to stakeholders, you’ll be confident you’re reaching the people you need to.
What makes a lasting impact?
- Modeen: This really depends on the organization, which is why communications is so important. If your organization’s mission is focused on public health, then communicating about flu shots and getting the public to get flu shots is a key metric in meeting your mission goal. But the lasting impact is in saving lives and keeping the public healthy.
- Simpson: That’s a great example, Lauren. What we’ve found, too, is that sometimes recognizing the link between mission, impact, and outreach can be very complex. If you don’t have a clear idea of how your organization’s mission can have a lasting impact for your stakeholders or the public, we can help you figure that out.You can always start by asking yourself why your stakeholders are coming to your website. What do they hope to learn? How do you want to keep them engaged and coming back for more? Don’t just communicate for communication’s sake. Keep your stakeholders’ interests in mind, and you’ll more easily reach your project goals.
Give me the details, when, where, how can I sign up for the chat?
- Modeen: The webinar is Wednesday, August 28 at 1 pm Eastern. We’re so excited to share our insights, and we have over 250 Federal government communicators already registered. It’s open and free to everyone, but people need to register. (Click her to register)
Even if you can’t attend, if you register, we’ll send you a recording of the webinar afterwards!
