Grassroots Strategies for Connecting with your Community

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Grassroots Strategies for Connecting with your
Community

• Instructor
• Penny Hummel
• penelope_at_hummelworks.com
• An Infopeople Workshop
• Summer 2004

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This Workshop Is Brought to You By the Infopeople
Project
Infopeople is a federally-funded grant project
supported by the California State Library. It
provides a wide variety of training to California
libraries. Infopeople workshops are offered
around the state and are open registration on a
first-come, first-served basis. For a complet
e list of workshops, and for other information
about the Project, go to the Infopeople Web site
at infopeople.org.
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Todays Agenda

• What is grassroots promotion?
• Identifying audiences
• Developing a message
• Working with internal audiences
• Tools and partners for promotional success
• Implementing your promotional plan

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Who Am I?

• Public Relations Manager at Multnomah County
  Library
  
• Past lives
• Public relations consultant
• Foundation and humanities council staffer
• Library volunteer FOL president, foundation
  trustee, advocate
  
• Passionate promoter of libraries!

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Introductions

• Name
• Library
• Position
• One thing thats happening at your library that
  you feel really good about

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Unleash your ferocity upon an unsuspecting world!
-Bette Midler
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What is Grassroots Promotion?

• Economical
• using the resources you have
• Entrepreneurial
• creative and ingenious
• Engaging
• connecting with people and organizations
• Evangelical
• involving everyone you can think of!

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Why Grassroots Promotion?

• Starts from the ground up
• Emphasis on partnership
• Huge budget not necessary
• Homegrown and practical

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Why is Grassroots Promotion Essential?

• There will never be enough...
• staffing
• funding
• resources
• There will always be too many
• other things going on outside the library
• competing priorities within the library
• Nothings more important than connecting people
  with your library!

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Components of Effective Grassroots Promotion

• Connecting with your audience
• Building relationships with individuals and
  organizations
  
• Small steps (taken by many people) make a big
  difference

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PR and Marketing --Whats the Difference?

• Relatives, not identical twins!
• PR communication designed to deliver a message
  
  
• Marketing activities designed to inspire an
  action
  
• Peter Persic, Melissa Richardson Banks, 2004 PLA
  Presentation

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Questions for the Group

• Why is it important to encourage more people to
  use, attend or support your librarys services,
  activities or events?
  
• What are some of the common pitfalls of promotion
  in Library Land?

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Services and Activities to Promote

• Summer Reading
• Story times
• Book discussions
• Homework help
• Volunteering

• Reference
• Outreach
• Computer classes
• Online databases
• Readers Advisory

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Events to Promote

• Author visits
• Celebrations and anniversaries
• Opening of new/renovated buildings
• Community forums
• National Library Week

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Your Audience

• Who are you trying to reach?
• Finding out about their priorities
• Creating a tailor-made strategy

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Whos Your Audience?

• Age
• Gender
• Race/Ethnicity
• Socioeconomic status

• Neighborhood
• Language
• Interests
• Other characteristics

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Secondary Audiences

• Friends
• Donors
• Trustees
• Staff

• Library users (in general)
• Voters
• News media
• Elected officials
• Volunteers

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How to Find Out Your Audiences Priorities

• Staff reports
• Comments (cards, e-mail, letters)
• Focus groups
• Surveys
• Research and analysis

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Staff The Internal Audience

• Your eyes and ears in the community
• Your mouth in the community
• Ensuring that their contributions are for good
  (not evil)

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Question for the Group

• How have library staff helped or hindered your
  efforts to promote whats happening at your
  library?

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Engaging Library Staff

• Include them in planning
• Keep them informed
• Provide training and tools
• Keep asking for their input
• Encourage those who catch the fire

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Key Messages

• A call to action
• Short, clear and to the point
• Offer what your audience wants
• Library-positive

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Examples of Library Messages

• Have fun playing the Summer Reading game!
• Join the librarys community reading project.
• Learn new computer skills by attending free
  classes at your library.

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Good message or bad?

• With 63 online databases available to its
  customers (some of these can be accessed from a
  computer at home or at work, for others, the
  library user would need to visit a library
  location), the Smith library is ready to serve
  the information needs of the Bedford community

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Promotional Tools

• Newsletter
• E-mail lists
• Checkout receipts
• Displays
• Web site

• Events
• Signs
• Billboards
• Banners
• Advertising
• Publications

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Project-Specific Materials

• Brochures
• Flyers
• Bookmarks
• Graphics

• Stationery
• Pins
• Giveaways
• Web pages

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Tools and How They Complement Each Other

• Print publications
• traditional format that can be distributed where
  the people are
  
• Web pages
• top choice of younger users
• E-mails and listservs
• easy to share the latest developments

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What Makes a Tool Successful?

• Tells people what they need to know
• Easy to figure out
• Uses appropriately clear language
• Visually pleasing
• Consistent with messaging for the project and the
  library
  

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Examine Your Examples

• What works about this promotional piece?
• What doesnt work?
• How would you improve it?

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Community Partners

• Multiply your ability to reach out throughout
  your community
  
• Contribute expertise and tools that focus on
  specific audiences
  
• Leverage support from other partners
• Give credibility to library projects

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How Your Partners Can Help

• Distribution of library materials
• Web site links and articles
• E-mail lists
• Donated programming
• Related materials
• Donate Supplies, food, graphics, exposure

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Engaging Community Partners

• Include them in planning
• Utilize their expertise
• Keep them informed
• Provide tools that work for their needs
• Keep asking for their input
• Encourage those who catch the fire

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What About Sponsors?

• Offer a major cash, media or (major) in-kind
  contribution
  
• Participate to meet their own promotional and
  marketing goals
  
• Need to be acknowledged appropriate to their
  level of support

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Identifying Partners Sponsors

• Brainstorm to identify connections
• Involve other staff, library supporters, existing
  partners
  
• Clarify why their participation is a win/win
• Create a timeline and work plan

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Implementing Your Plan

• Keep listening to your audience, partners and
  staff
  
• Use your tools wherever you can
• Work effectively with the media
• Stay on message
• Evaluate

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The Rules of Engagement

• Communicate frequently and emphasize success
• Make course corrections if needed
• Do what you say youll do
• Move towards the tipping point
• Acknowledge contributions!

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Working With the Media

• Its a reciprocal relationship
• Libraries have an important story to tell
• We need to understand their needs in order to get
  ours met

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The Reporters World

• Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines
• A glut of information about too many things
• Constant shifts to new and unfamiliar topics

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Media Magnets Examples

• Positive
• making a dent in big social problems
• bringing the community together
• an individuals triumph over adversity
• Negative
• conflict
• good guy vs. bad guy
• disaster and destruction

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How to Engage a Reporter

• Be accurate, succinct and clear
• Focus on your key messages
• State conclusion, then demonstrate it
• Tailor your message to the recipient
• Use stories, not statistics
• Avoid library jargon

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Questions to Ask Yourself

• Why should people care about this project?
• What makes it interesting, unique or particularly
  timely?
  
• Do the partnerships youve created make it more
  newsworthy?

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Tools for Media Outreach

• News releases and media kits
• Pitch letters or e-mails
• Phone or personal contact

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Questions for the Group

• Whats been your most challenging experience
  working with the media in the effort to promote a
  library project?
  

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Evaluating Your Success

• Document
• usage
• attendance
• exposure
• Analyze
• what worked
• what didnt
• Emphasize the positive in final report

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Find out who you are anddo it on purpose.
- Dolly Parton