What resources have you come across in your work that you have found helpful? Resources could include: guides, case studies, tips, video, websites, articles, etc. Share these resources by adding a comment below or replying to existing comments!
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How to Give a Great Media Interview - Friends of the Earth
How to Write a Killer Press Release - Friends of the Earth
Echoing Justice, Communications Strategies for Community Organizing in the 21st Century - Center for Media Justice
Communicate Justice 101 - Need to challenge racist bias, develop media materials, or run a media campaign from start to finish? Communicate Justice 101 shows you how, with straightforward tips and easy-to-use tools.
Communicating for Health Justice - A Communications Strategy Curriculum for Advancing Health Issues
12 Basic Guidelines on campaigning by Chris Rose - and many other articles on this website, as well as Rose's How to Win Campaigns and What Makes People Tick.
Beautiful Trouble - Toolbox for Revolution
Holly,
I second your recommendation of Chris Rose. He has published great resources on how to win campaigns! From my understanding he cut his teeth doing campaigns with Greenpeace. They have embraced creative approaches to getting attention in a very competitive media environment. Often, you have to be different to stand out from the crowd!
Liz
Thanks for sharing these super practical resources, Holly!
I wonder if any of the participants have examples of creative, engaging and successful media interviews and/or press releases. It would be great to see these tactics in action!
- Kristin Antin, New Tactics Online Community Builder
Hi everyone,
You are welcome to download campaign strategy/planning tipsheets (short and sweet!) from our website: http://www.resource-media.org/toolbox/
We are a nonprofit communications firm and our free tip sheets are aimed at other NGO's working to change the world.
Liz
For those of you who are really,really new to social media, I recommend that you check out Common Craft explainer videos on different social media as a starting point.
For those of you who are already pros, you'll find that Common Craft videos are great templates for how to effectively explain complex issues and get people interested enough to want to learn more -- that's our dream, right?! When you watch a typical video by Common Craft you'll see the break down the topic by starting at the highest level: essentially, they are establishing common ground with their audience, answering the question of why you should care about X, not what it is or how it works. Then, you have your audience's attention - ah, by knowing this I can do that. Then, they offer analogies that their audience might understand, if the concept you are introducing is foreign to them. Only a baseball-sized amount of nuclear waste? Well, a nuclear bomb the size of a baseball decimated Hiroshima (I'm making this up to give you a sense of how to give people a sense of scale or scope.
Lee LeFever, the co-founder of Common Craft videos just wrote the book, The Art of Explanation, where he has broken down into easy to digest parts how one can successfully package ideas. I found it an easy read and a great explanation of how to explain!
To all those who participated in this conversation,
Thank you so much for contributing to this thoughtful, insightful and useful discussion! I especially want to thank Holly Hammond, our fantastic facilitator for this conversation, and our conversation leaders: Heather Box, Kathy Bonk, Holly Mink, Liz Banse and Holly Ziemer. I hope it's been helpful to explore the components of an effective communications strategy, to share and learn effective media tactics, and to reflect on your work and share the lessons you've learned. I hope you are taking away new ideas, resources, perspectives and allies!
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Kristin Antin - New Tactics Online Community Builder