Pass the WD-40: Running your communications program l ike a well -oiled machine

Ruth Patton & Jenna Hartwig Wade, Fresh EnergyMCN 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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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/analyt ics)

• 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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• 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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