Notes from presentation at February 23, 2011 MCN Communications and Technology conference.

1. Pass the WD-40: Running your communications program like a well-oiled
machine
Ruth Patton & Jenna Hartwig Wade, Fresh Energy
MCN 2011 Technology and Communications Conference, February 23
Quick and dirty notes
The editorial calendar: what it is, what it can do for you
An editorial calendar is a tool that helps you plan what content you’re going to publish, when, and how.
• Integrated campaigns
• Consistent content
• Support/leverage for work plans, budget battles
• Future content planning
The groundwork: research
• Who are your target audiences?
• What are your goals for those audiences?
• Audiences, goals, and channels work together to make great content
• Having your audiences and goals (and the right channels) identified helps narrow your focus
The big picture
• Create content and deliver it in ways that appeal to your audiences and help you fulfill your org goals.
• To find the sweet spot between content/audiences/goals/channels…
o What kinds of content are people looking for?
o What kinds of conversation around your issues already exist?
• Find a conversation rather than create a need
Why research?
• Help guide what words and messages you use in your content.
• Using a couple different tools, find words/phrases most commonly used: searches, online
conversations, social media
What you can find:
• What people are searching for
• What conversations are happening online and in social media
• What’s going on with your own online content
• What your supporters want
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2. Google alerts (google.com/alerts)
• Google alerts track web and social media content
• Good “cover your bases” method
Google Insights for Search (google.com/insights/search)
• What words and topics people are looking for right now (or over the long term)
• Shows you top searches, rising searches (and how fast those new searches are rising)
• You can compare geography, time frames, specific terms
Social media
• Different animal
• Look for type of conversations that dominates, topics driving engagement, questions being asked
• Make sure you’re in the middle
Socialmention (socialmention.com)
• Big picture trends, specifically in social media
• Real-time results on the conversations that are happening in the world on your topic
Facebook
• Faking a Facebook ad
• Find everyone who has those terms on their profile
Twitter search (search.twitter.com)
• What are people tweeting about?
• Search by keyword, limit by geography, time frame, language, tone, or whether the tweet was asking a
question
Hashtag.org
• What hashtags are people using
• Be part of the “right” conversations, the ones that revolve around your issues
Google analytics (google.com/analytics)
• What do people gravitate toward on your website or blog?
• Need a google account of course (use any email) and free
• Page views, unique visitors, time spent on particular pages, etc.
Analyze your own social media
• What tweets/FB posts/entries get the best results, think about producing more of those
• Facebook Insights, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Sprout Social, Spredfast
General principles
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3. • Ensure consistent branding
• Ensure consistent voice and tone
• Keep it all connected: make it easy for people to find your social media pages from your website and
emails (and from each other)
• Integrate your messages, keeping in mind which channel is best for what message
• Leave a trail: make sure people won’t get lost as they navigate your message channels
• Create great content: staff work plans, occasions of note in your industry (Earth Day, Black History
Month, National Poetry Month), seasons, holidays
Creating an editorial calendar
• Now that you’ve got your research and your content, how do you keep it all organized?
• Pieces of paper and a file folder, paper or online calendar, excel or google docs, fancy software
• Follow the KISS rule
What can your editorial calendar keep track of?
• Channels, deadlines, themes, authors, assignments, story ideas, published content, retweets, clicks,
page views, goals
Choose your level…
• Oily: If you don’t have a lot of channels, aren’t producing a lot of content, you’re a one-person shop
• Oilier: A few more channels, month by month view, optional ingredients
• Even oilier: A yearly calendar with multiple channels and a monthly breakdown
• Oiliest (or crazy oily): Metrics, images you’ll use, links you’ll include, comments and page views
afterwards
Our experience
• Never had a calendar before
• Day-long communications retreat, outside of the office
• Big ol’ piece of paper, lots of coffee, and different colored markers
• Brainstormed every channel we could think of, and lots of other things
• Months along the top – an entire year’s worth
• Started with the solid due dates, the things we knew for sure
• Filled in the holes with the goal of having multiple interesting things going on every month
• Plugged it into one big excel spreadsheet with a monthly view
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