Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Hiring a Communications Consultant? What to Look For

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At your nonprofit, you’re good at what you do, but talking about it is a different story.  Writing, producing video, creating content for websites and blogs, building relationships on social media…this is a specific skill set. Not everyone has it.  Not everyone has time to learn it.

Communications consultant

What should you look for in a communications consultant?

You decide to hire a communications consultant. What should you be looking for?

Robert J. Holland gave us a list of seven tips for businesses that I think will work just as well for nonprofits, with a little translation.

  1. Be clear about why you are hiring a consultant.  Are you looking for a strategist to guide your communications, a writer to spruce up your content, or a social media manager? Or all of the above?
  2. Hire a consultant who has worked in nonprofits.  Your consultant need to understand the way that nonprofits work and the demands we face.
  3. Hire a consultant with practical communication experience.
    Look not only at the resume and writing samples they give you but at the website and social media they use for their own business.
  4. Hire a consultant who asks a lot of questions.  If the person comes to you with ready-made answers, they’re not going to be much help.  Hire someone who asks more questions than you think are necessary.
  5. Hire a consultant with an affable personality and straightforward delivery.  If people at your agency don’t like the consultant, they won’t listen to the advice.  If they listen but don’t understand it, what good is it?
  6. Hire a consultant who will tell you when the emperor has no clothes.  Something you’re doing isn’t working as well as it should, or you wouldn’t hire a consultant in the first place.  You need a truth-teller: someone who will look you in the eye and tell you what needs to change.
  7. Hire a consultant who will work for a project fee rather than an hourly rate.  As Robert Holland says, “If you hire a consultant by the hour, you are paying only for his time, which is a commodity. Instead, the focus should be on the value the consultant provides in terms of experience and knowledge. Settle on a project fee and then you won’t be watching the clock all the time. At the very least, arrange a fee for a limited but specific period of time and agree to revisit it at some point in time when you can assess how the project is going.”

From my point of view as a communications consultant, I love it when a nonprofit or small business approaches me with these seven points in mind.  I know we’ll reach an agreement and work together well.

What else would you look for when hiring a communications consultant?

How Your Nonprofit Can Use Twitter–Even If You Don’t Tweet

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What are people saying about your nonprofit?  Who lives in your area and cares about your cause?  Who’s looking for your help right now?

You can find out.  You won’t have to hire a private investigator or ask the NSA to give you secret data.  What you need is Twitter search.

Is Your Constituency on Twitter?

You may be surprised at who’s using Twitter these days.  “For Black Americans, the social network of choice may very well be Twitter, as 25% of Twitter users are African Americans (approximately double the U.S. population),” says marketing expert Jay Baer.

In fact, a Pew study reveals, “The typical Twitter user is an 18-29 year-old educated minority with a well-paying job, and slightly more likely to be male than female…Use of Twitter across all age demographics is on the rise.”

Listening In to Conversations

Twitter offers you the chance to be a fly on the wall when the people you care about are talking.  As Tao of Twitter author Mark Schaefer points out, “If you search Google, Bing or Yahoo, your results will be articles, videos, and websites. But if you search Twitter, the results are real-time conversations.”

What could your nonprofit find out by listening in to conversations on Twitter?  Let’s say your mission is to create affordable housing.  You could find:

  • People living in your town who have expressed positive sentiments about affordable housing
  • Tweets that mention your agency by name
  • Elected officials who have (or noticeably have not) addressed the issue
  • Media personalities who take an interest in the issue
  • Donors to your organization and what’s on their minds

Getting In On the Conversation

Even if you never send a tweet yourself, this information could be highly valuable to you.  You could add like-minded people to your mailing list, or recruit a public figure to speak at your next event.  You could find out how you look to your community.  You could do donor and prospect research that produces more gifts.

But if you tweet, you make yourself part of the conversation.  Imagine:

  1. Building a relationship with that high-powered donor who’s too busy to have a meeting, but always answers his tweets.
  2. Answering questions about affordable housing so that people know you’re the thought leader in the field.
  3. Lobbying a public official and having many of your supporters join in.
  4. Finding someone who needs housing right now, helping them obtain it, and watching them sing your praises online.
  5. Getting on the radar screen of people who might never have seen your name any other way.

Whether you use Twitter search to gather information or also tweet to take part in a conversation, it could be a powerful tool for your nonprofit.

Are you already using Twitter at your nonprofit?  What advice would you give an agency that wants to start using Twitter?

Did Your Nonprofit Just Hang Up on Me?

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I’ve told you before about bad marketing aimed at my dear wife, Rona Fischman.  Let me tell you a story about a telemarketer who called for me.

“Is this Dennis Fischman?” she said.  “I’m calling to help enroll you in some courses for your GED.  Let’s start by…”

“Whoa, hold on there,” I said.  “I have a Ph.D., and I got my high school diploma in the 1970’s.  You are calling the wrong person.”

Click.

That’s right.  Not only did the telemarketing company completely mistake their audience.  They didn’t train their callers well enough to keep them from hanging up.

I would shake my head and leave it at that…except I’m worried that too many nonprofit organizations are doing the same thing.

How good is your database?  Have you taken the time to get to know your donor as a person, or is she just an address on a list and a check in the mail?

How well have you trained your staff and volunteers?  Do they realize that every time they speak to the public, they are putting your nonprofit agency’s reputation on the line?  When they get flustered, will the donor hear, “I’m sorry, let me fix that for you”?

Or will your (former) donor hear, “Click”?

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