And here are some thoughts from Steve Heye about tools that small nonprofits can use, that larger ones can’t: http://steveheye.blogspot.com/2014/06/small-org-tech-setup-example.html
What Nonprofits Can Learn from Scott Brown–How NOT to Do It
Sooner or later, someone will accuse your organization of wrongdoing. When that happens, don’t act like Scott Brown.
Brown is the former U.S. Senator from Massachusetts whom Elizabeth Warren turned out of office. He moved over the state line, and now he’s running for the Senate from New Hampshire. He started out with great name recognition.
But now, his campaign is in trouble because he accepted stock worth $1.3 million to advise a Florida company, GDSI, originally founded to sell beauty products on its merger with a bankrupt firearms company.
Brown initially denied that there was anything wrong with GDSI or his role there. Then on Wednesday, June 4, he resigned from the company. On Friday, June 6, the Boston Globe reported the company had lied about the value of the company it was acquiring.
Where Brown Went Wrong
I’m not a fan of Brown’s. I don’t know anything about corporate mergers. But I can tell you that from a public relations perspective, everything Brown did was wrong: both before and after he resigned from GDSI.
If you ever face a possible scandal, do the opposite.
Before: No one at the Brown campaign seems to have understood that the GDSI connection would destroy Brown’s brand.
- Brown portrays himself as a good old boy who wears a barn jacket and drives a pickup truck. Somebody should have asked: How does that jibe with being a high-paid corporate advisor?
- Brown claims to be a truth-teller and a straight shooter. Dodging questions about GDSI for days and then resigning because “it had become a distraction” looks like being just another politician. Did nobody realize that?
What you should do instead:
- Get an outsider’s perspective. Find out how you look to people who don’t know as much, or care as much about your organization as you do.
- Reinforce people’s sense of what’s right about you and act decisively to address what’s wrong.
After: In his Massachusetts race and his time as Senator, Brown started to acquire a reputation for being thin-skinned. The way his office responded to the news of GDSI’s allegedly fraudulent press release reinforced that damaging perception.
“Your conspiracy theories and assumptions are completely wrong,” Brown’s communications director, Elizabeth Guyton, said in response to [Boston Globe] queries. She did not elaborate, and Brown would not agree to an interview.
Even allowing for the Globe’s “gotcha” journalism, that was a poor response.
What you should do instead:
- Sound concerned.
- Get the whole story, and put it out first.
- Give the media what they need, so they’ll move on.
- Remember that people will find out how you speak to the media. Be unfailingly polite and patient, and never defensive.
- Rally your allies. Prominent people outside your organization and clients of your organization can help you restore your reputation…and change the subject.
Youtility: Creating Marketing that People Actually Want
Jay Baer has some bad news for us…and some good news.
Bad news: In the age of information overload, you’re not going to keep your company at the top of people’s minds by constant advertising.
Good news: You don’t have to. Getting the ear of the right audience is better than paying for name recognition by the masses.
Bad news: Just because people can find you online, it doesn’t mean they’ll become your customers.
Good news: Recommendations from their friends influence people’s decisions. Word of mouth has always been important, and today, it has a new address: on social media.
Bad news: Getting people’s attention is hard. You’re competing with their friends, the latest cute cat video, and photos of their grandchildren (who are probably a lot cuter than you!)
Good news: People will pay attention when you solve problems for them or provide them with information they need. That’s what Baer calls “Youtility.”
Help, Not Hype
If you have the resources, you can help people exactly when they need it. Baer talks about the @HiltonSuggests program, where Hilton employees who really know the city they work in will go on Twitter looking for questions they can answer or recommendations they can make…for free.
They are not trying to make a customer today. They are trying to win a customer for life. The return on investment is huge.
Not all of us can be Hilton, but could you be Taxi Mike? This Canadian cab driver personally creates a “Where to Eat in Banff” brochure with his personal recommendations and delivers them to hotels, bars, and tourist traps all around his city. When visitors need a taxi and they have this guide in their pockets, who do you think they’ll call?
What Does It Take to be Useful?
I hope you’re thinking just about now, “What about me? How can I help the people who I want to be calling me?” Baer suggests three ways you can make yourself useful to your audience.
- Self-serve information. Be like Angie’s List. Put the information out there in a ways that’s easy for people to find and use for themselves.
- Radical transparency. Be like Holiday World. Answer every question people ask. Answer questions they haven’t thought yet of asking. Answer the tough questions. Do it where everyone can see it.
- Real-time relevancy. Be like Scotts Miracle-Gro. Provide information that’s keyed to the location or the situation of the customer or what’s going on at that season.
How Do I Start?
Read Baer’s book for details about the six blueprints you can use to build Youtility.
- Identify customer needs.
- Map customer needs to useful marketing.
- Market your marketing.
- “Insource” Youtility.
- Make Youtility a process, not a project.
- Keep score.
The Value of this Book
My take: this is a great book because it pulls together a lot of lessons learned over the past few years. If you are not getting what you want out of your marketing or communications, read the book, and think about how to give others what they want.
Two reservations: Baer doesn’t often address nonprofit organizations. His idea of a small organization is still a lot larger than many community-based businesses and nonprofits I know. I’ll try to translate Youtility for these audiences in other posts.
Have you read Youtility? Do you plan on reading it? What do you think of Jay Baer’s approach?
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