Strategic Communications for

Public Administrators

Dr. Alicia Schatteman Department of Public Administration School of Public and Global Affairs

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Agenda

• 1:30-1:45: Introductions and review learning objectives

• 1:45-2:15 Stakeholder identification • 2:15-2:45 Internal communications • BREAK 2:45-3:00 • 3:00–3:45 External communications • 3:45-4:15 Measuring your success • 4:15-4:30 Conclusions, Q&Q

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Who am I?

• Born in a small town in Ontario, Canada • Worked in tourism and economic development for

County of Renfrew and County of Victoria in Ontario, Canada

• Moved to the US and worked for Cultural Heritage Commission, Middlesex County in NJ

• Then arts and culture nonprofit organizations in Communications, then Executive Director

• Have a Master’s degree in Communications Management from Syracuse University

• Ph.D. from Rutgers University in January 2009 • Began at NIU in fall 2010

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• Experience: media relations, primary data collection (qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods), digital communications strategies including social media, communications planning, volunteer relations, crisis communications

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Introductions

– Name – Experience in communications

• Photography • Digital media/websites/social media • Interviewing, conducting focus groups, doing surveys • Media relations • Community relations • Crisis communications • Giving speeches, presentations

– Areas for development (things you want to learn)

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• According to Herbert A. Simon, “without communication there can be no organization”.

• It is a process that takes place upward, downward, and laterally throughout the organization.

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Why this workshop?

• “Fake Mayor Dust Up Stupid”, Chicago Tribune April 26, 2014, Peoria Mayor Twitter parody

• “Limited Resources make it difficult for Malta to spread word of boil order”, DeKalb Chronicle

• Pittsburgh City Council gives early OK to publicizing wealth of government data, TribLive

• Your examples?

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Jon Stewart show Jimmy Kimmel show

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Strategic communications is the management

function that involves building and maintaining

positive relationships between an organization

and the publics on whom it depends through

strategic two-way symmetrical communication.

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6 Competencies of Public Service Managers

1. Being familiar with the data sources in your line of work

2. Being able to collect your own data

2. Being able to analyze data and draw relevant and defensible conclusions

3. Communicating results to different audiences (e.g., experts, citizens, elected officials, funding agencies)

5. Informing and guiding analysis by theory and practice of management and analysis

6. Guiding analysis by a strong sense of ethics

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Why bother to engage the public?

• Accountability • Transparency • Improve quality of policy-making • Increased trust in government

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Government Public Relations

• Media Relations: journalism has to be independent from government to act as a check against government policy, necessarily full of conflict

• Public reporting: conveying information to the public directly such as performance reports, budgets

• Public outreach: increasing use of public services and products, public education and public service campaigns, seeking voluntary compliance with the laws and regulations, listening to the public

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Forms of Public Engagement

• Communication: lowest level of engagement, 1 way flow of information from government to the public, telling the public what we want them to know

• Consultation: two-way communication, public gets to decide among predefined options, government remains in control of the process

• Co-Production: highest level of public engagement, shared responsibility for results, aim is to empower citizens to take greater control over, and responsibility for, their lives

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Who participates now?

• Higher than average income earners • Higher than average education (education is the

number 1 predictor of who participates), however American’s overall level of education is rising, but no similar rise in participation, why?

• They have the money, time and civic skills (all three are needed to participate)

• They have jobs that allow them flexibility to participate • They tend to join nonprofit organizations or social

groups to improve their civic skills • Citizenship takes practice • We need to trust the system to participate

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Work helps us understand citizen participation

• Professional work lends itself to building skills in project management

• If we can take of individual basic needs (Maslow) then we can move on to higher goal attainment such as self-actualization

• Need to provide employment where workers can hone their civic engagement skills

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Who’s missing?

• “Those who would be in most need of government response because they are dependent on government programs [means-tested benefits such as Medicaid, food stamps, subsidized housing] are the least likely to make themselves visible to the government through their activity” (Verba et al 1993: 304).

• They are the most underrepresented among voters, getting in touch with local officials, attending protests and being active in the community

• The ones government hears more from, are those that are more advantaged and not recipients of need-based government programs

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Strategic Communication Planning

• Strategic communications goals should come from the strategic plan – Mission – Vision – Goals: three main aims for

communications • reputation management (issues of

trust, efficiency etc.) • relationship management (media

relations, employees) • task management (increase voter

turnout, get more attendees at a public meeting)

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• Research: – Who is this an issue for, who will be affected,

when, how etc. – SWOT analysis of the agency’s ability to

address this problem

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STAKEHOLDER

IDENTIFICATION

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• Target Constituents: – Each affected or targeted

audience should be defined – Who can influence this audience,

who do they trust or respect? – May need to conduct research

about this population (secondary data, primary data, anecdotal etc.)

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Identifying publics is not easy

• Can be identified by geographic location (neighborhoods), demographics, psychographics, power, position, reputation, organizational membership, role in decision making, and behavior (latent, aware or active)

• Can also be mixed and matched • Identifying the appropriate publics for an

organization is a key goal and first step in creating a communications strategy

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• Environmental scan OR environmental analysis OR situation analysis

• “help key players within your organization define the playing field”

• internal and external analysis

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Stakeholder Analysis

• “A stakeholder is any person, group or organization that can place a claim on an organization’s attention, resources, or output, or is affected by that output.”

-- John M. Bryson, Strategic Planning for Public

and Nonprofit Organizations, Revised Edition (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2005, p. 35)

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Stakeholder Map of Government

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The Key to Success

• “The key to success for public and nonprofit organizations (and for communities) is the satisfaction of key stakeholders.” – John M. Bryson, 2004

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Target Audience Identification

Within the process of communication, it is important to answer the following questions:

Who is the recipient of my information? What information does this recipient demand? What

information may I / do I have to give him. Which way of the transmission does he or she prefer? What do I want to achieve by providing the recipient with

the information?

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Desired Outcomes

• SWOT will produce information that is vital to the organization’s survival and prosperity

• Need to see the organization in relation to the environment

• Every organization needs to manage the tensions that exist between its capacities and opportunities and challenges

• Need to formalize environmental scanning and effective management information systems

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Strength’s Assessment

• Strength’s – Those things that you do well, the high value or performance points • Strengths can be tangible: Loyal customers, efficient distribution channels, very high quality products, excellent financial condition • Strengths can be intangible: Good leadership, strategic insights, customer intelligence, solid reputation, high skilled workforce • Often considered “Core Competencies” – Best leverage points for growth without draining your resources

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Weaknesses Assessment

• Weaknesses – Those things that prevent you from doing what you really need to do • Since weaknesses are internal, they are within your control • Weaknesses include: Bad leadership, unskilled workforce, insufficient resources, poor product quality, slow distribution and delivery channels, outdated technologies, lack of planning, . . .

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External Analysis

• The world in which the organization operates • Looking for new opportunities or problems

that may arise over time • To take advantage of opportunities and

prepare for possible threats

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5 outside forces

• Demographic: impact on organization demand, mission

• Economic: unemployment, incomes, funding • Political: policy initiatives at all levels • Technological: efficiencies, impact on services • Social: quality of life, social agenda

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Opportunities Assessment

• Opportunities – Potential areas for growth and higher performance • External in nature – marketplace, unhappy customers with competitor’s, better economic conditions, more open trading policies, . . • Internal opportunities should be classified as Strength’s • Timing may be important for capitalizing on opportunities

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Threats Assessment

• Threats – Challenges confronting the organization, external in nature • Threats can take a wide range – bad press coverage, shifts in consumer behavior, substitute products, new regulations, . . . • May be useful to classify or assign probabilities to threats • The more accurate you are in identifying threats, the better position you are for dealing with the “sudden ripples” of change

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INTERNAL

COMMUNICATIONS

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Internal Stakeholders

• Who are they?

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Stakeholder Map of Government

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Types of Communication

Communication can be two types: 1. Formal (written): letters, memos, reports, any document in

organization 2. Informal: unwritten, word of mouth, gossip, exchange of

information in the informal groups etc. Other Types 1. Verbal: Instructions, discussions etc. 2. Non-verbal: gestures, dress, body language, a frown, smile,

twitch nose etc.

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Internal Communication

• Interpersonal communication is the communication that takes place between and amongst individuals.

• The process of communication in interpersonal communication is same i.e. sender, transmission, receiver, feedback etc.

• The message must be understood clearly and without any misunderstanding.

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How do you communicate internally?

• Culture of communications in your organization? Hierarchical?

• Email/internal listservs/bulletin boards etc. • What is the look and feel of your

communication efforts internally and does it match the overall branding strategy of the organization? The external communication efforts?

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Internal Communications

• Think of one internal communication issue, how you handled it, and how you or your organization could have handled it better?

• How has your internal communication with fellow staff and volunteers changed in your position? Why?

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EXTERNAL

COMMUNICATIONS

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Cities for Sale

• Modern Reinvention Models: – Government to governance – Reinventing Government:

Osborne and Gaebler (1992): remove hierarchy and bureaucracy, focus on quality, customer service, entrepreneurship

– New Public Management: focus on accountability and results, performance measurement

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• Citizens to customers to clients • Government relies on markets to fulfill its

responsibilities through privatization, contracting or outsourcing with private and nonprofit sector

• Customer service city hotlines, 311 systems • Critics: “customer satisfaction puts citizens in

a passive instead of an active role”

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• “Customer construction introduces selling rather than telling, as customers need to be sold goods” like cities

• “Selling is inherently one-way” (like advertising)

• Market models where citizens are viewed as customers, do not engage citizens, do not promote citizen participation

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Market Models affect how we communicate

• “strips away emotional connection to a government entity”…”customers are out for only what will benefit them”

• Government can’t satisfy all “customers” • Government is not public service but rather a

provider of a commodity • Accountability to citizens shifts to “market-

minded administrators”

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Salesforce.com

• Used in Elgin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb7jl6H11Cs

• Customer focused

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PR and Marketing

• Marketing public relations (MPR) brings these together; tailor programs to stakeholders

• Competition is a reality for cities (residents, businesses and tourists)

• Do you see competition (maybe not called that) in any communities you work in?

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• Marketing and public relations is relationship management.

• Agree or disagree and why?

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• “When executed correctly, by which I mean with a balance between information and persuasion achieved through education…the two-way model (of communication) can work to engender both meaningful public participation and mutual behavioral changes”. P. 37

• Can anyone think of examples where this has occurred or could occur?

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Branding

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Branding

• Designed visual identity • Focus on images • Differentiation from competitors

1

2 3

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Place Branding

• Beyond symbols and logos • Vision and strategy • Internal culture • Local communities • Infrastructure • Cityscape • “Places brand themselves for two reasons:

citizen identity and competition with other location” p. 40

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• Community branding • Video: New York • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O_aNC

Mrgx0

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• Write down some words that come to mind about the community you live (or come from) not what services they offer but makes your community unique, interesting, different, special etc.

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Communicative Cities

• “A community whose environment facilitates development of a communication system that integrates its residents into a dynamic whole, that enables its citizens to get involved in civic activities and participate in a variety of roles, and makes possible a balance between mobility and stability”. P. 43

• An open network

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6 promotional tactics

1. Branding 2. In-house publications 3. Media relations 4. Use of volunteers or outside organizations as

PR contractors 5. Aesthetic and affective appeal 6. Build environment via sustainability

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#1 Branding

• Top 100 Places to Live in the US • Ranking criteria:

http://livability.com/best-places-to-live-ranking-criteria

• Top 10: http://livability.com/top-100-best-places-to-live

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#2 Media Relations

• To link the organization to the right media outlet

• Includes press releases, press kits, searchable news archives, biographies of key staff/leaders, policy papers, newsletters etc.

• The public information model of communication

• Organization and the media need each other • One small part of a communications plan

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#3 In-house Publications

• Any media produced by the organization for either internal or external use such as magazines, newsletters, annual reports, websites, brochures, signage

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Implications for Citizen Participation

• Potential negative outcomes: – Overreliance on image and forsaking substance – Stunted organization learning: talking to yourself,

self-fulfilling so not listening to feedback – “The appearance of openness and access could

trump transparency itself” – needs to be genuine – Social media does shape the brand

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• Potential positive outcomes: – Build strong brand identity rooted in local identity

with input from relevant stakeholders – Can foster a positive, organization-public

relationship, mutually beneficial – Balance promotion and information in the form of

education – Creating meaningful social media campaigns

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Crisis Communications

• “A crisis is a major occurrence with a potentially negative outcome affecting the organization, company or industry as well as its publics, products, services, or good name”

• No community and no organization, public or private, is immune from crises

• Need for crisis communications strategies as part of a communications plan

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Crisis Examples

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Characteristics

• Surprise – Events exceed planning

• Threat – Beyond the typical scope

• Short response time – Need to act quickly

= URGENCY

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Types

• Intentional: terrorism, sabotage, workplace violence, poor employee relationships/strikes, poor risk management, hostile takeovers, unethical leadership (puts people at risk)

• Unintentional: natural disasters, disease outbreaks, unforeseeable technical interactions, product failure, downtowns in the economy

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Crisis Communications Strategies

1. Managing uncertainty: consistent voice, identifying the cause, contacting everyone, determine future risk

2. Responding to the crisis: reduce uncertainty, coordinate activities, disseminate information

3. Resolving the crisis: compensating victims, rebuild reputation, grieve and memorialize events

4. Learning from the crisis: enhance safety, review standards, enhance community dialogue

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Effective Crisis Leadership

• Leaders help reduce the turmoil of a crisis • They reassert order and control • Over the response and help other

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What makes a leader?

• Open, honest and forthright in their responses to crises

• Reflect the values that most stakeholders admire

• Communicate lessons learned

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Crisis Response Strategies

• Deny: confront the person making the claim, state the crisis does not exist, someone else is responsible, ignore

• Diminish: minimize responsibility, disconnect organization from crisis

• Rebuild: financially support victims, apologize, take corrective action

• Reinforce: highlight past good deeds, thank stakeholders for support

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Communication Effectiveness

1. Determine your goals for crisis communications

2. Before a crisis, develop true equal partnerships with organizations and groups that are important to the organization

3. Acknowledge your stakeholders, including the media, as partners when managing a crisis

4. Leaders must be visible during the crisis

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5. Listen to your stakeholders 6. Communicate early about the crisis,

acknowledge uncertainty, and assure the public that you will maintain contact with them on a consistent basis about current and future risk

7. Avoid certain answers to the public and the media until sufficient information is available

8. Do not over-reassure the impact the crisis will have on stakeholders

9. Provide useful and practical suggestions how the public can react to the crisis

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• In a crisis, quick decisions must be made under extraordinary emotional and physical stress

• Communications professionals work to obtain and release information without causing unwarranted panic

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• Explaining highly technical information can be very difficult but necessary

• The nature and severity of a crisis influence decisions about how much information to communicate and to whom

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Crisis Councils

• Ad hoc group to advise the leader and assists in implementation during the crisis, can be a permanent team but most are temporary

• Members: specific knowledge of the situation or the subject of the crisis; provide direct links to partners, financial authority; public information specialists; not based on rank or hierarchy

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Controlling Rumors

• Important to control rumors during a crisis

• Prevalent in the absence of information

• Spread quickly • Either exaggeration OR

distortion • As official information

comes out, grapevine information demand is lessened

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Delivering Bad News

• Assess the audience; bad news even if delivered sensitively can still be difficult to accept

• Need respect and sensitivity • Determine the likely impact of

the message on the audience • Choose the appropriate sender

(the person who has the most credibility and rapport with the receiver)

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• Choose an appropriate location for the message: neutral, nonthreatening

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Other Resources

• “Effective Crisis Communication: Moving From Crisis to Opportunity” by Robert Ulmer, Timothy Sellnow and Matthew Seeger

• “The Practice of Government Public Relations” edited by Mordecai Lee, Grant Neeley, Kendra Stewart 2012

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“Listening, Engaging and Building Relationships”

• Building relationships online: – Website: make information easy to find (people

have to find you), organization controls the content

– You find people online: go where they are, social media, two-way communication, build trust and relationships

– Need to monitor and measure results (quality over quantity)

– Relationship building takes time and patience

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• The key to any relationship is listening (not talking)

• Listening for organizations means sifting through online conservations on multiple channels (what are people saying about you?)

• Who is leading these conversations? • Active listening is not someone’s job

responsibility, it’s everyone’s

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Engaging the Public

• Moving from listening to interacting is the art of engagement

HOW? • Sharing information • Entering or initiating conversations • Thanking people for their efforts • Educating and raising awareness of an issue • Asking people to do something

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Conversing with the Critics

• How do you handle criticism when they hide behind the anonymity of their screens?

• Organizations must engage with critics who have legitimate concerns

• Criticism is to be expected if you engage with the public

• Engagement is sharing and communicating

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Building Strong Relationships

• Organizations need to lose control; wasting time to control what other people do and say

• Authenticity is crucial “no fakeness” • People are good and helpful: organizations

don’t have all the answers • There is no one “one-size-fits all” friendship

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Challenges

• Citizens must be willing to interact with the government online

• Citizens must have the equipment to interact and the skills

• Citizens must have faith in the systems to protect their personal information

• Government cannot ignore those who do not or cannot interact with government this way to address equity questions

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• Social networking is all about mobile • App usage now accounts for more than 1/3 of

social networking time across PCs and mobile devices

• Social Networking: – Mobile Web and Apps much more likely to be

used by Hispanics than any other ethnicity, followed by African American, then Whites

– PC more slightly more likely to be used by African Americans

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Poll

• How many of you have gone to the organization’s (nonprofit or government) Facebook page BEFORE going to their website for information? – Yes – No Why or why not?

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Social Media…Does It Matter?

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Resistance to Social Media

• People say bad things about organization • Need to get over converting social media

efforts to dollars in initial stages • Need to value reflection time to see what has

worked or not worked, then make changes • Who will listen to the social media and how? • How will you monitor?

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Tangible Benefits of Social Media

• Increased email database • Obtained original content • Obtained free public service announcements • Raised money • Recruited new donors • Recruited members, fans, friends

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Intangible Benefits of Social Media

• Raised awareness about issues • Engaged people to participate in the issues • Generated discussions on our issues • Received buy-in from the top • Received recognition and media attention

(online buzz)

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Tips for Social Media

• Be Consistent in posting/tweeting/etc. • Don’t talk at your constituents, start a conversation

(Hunger facts versus Pay It Forward Friday) • Tie engagement to a call to action (Pay It Forward

Fridays- Give Back) • Reciprocal relationship- brand partner organizations

and celebrate birthdays online • Keep your posts in real time, include pictures and

videos when possible. (Dated material is best for the website)

• Social media should eventually directly engage more donors, sponsors, or volunteers. If not, there’s no point to actively investing time.

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Objectives for Social Media

• What do you want to accomplish? – Listening and learning – Build relationships and issues awareness – Reputation management – Content generation and education – Taking action and fundraising – Building a community

• How will you measure this?

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Know your Audience

• Who is using social media and what types? • Who matches the profile of your

stakeholders? • Does social media make sense for your

organization? • Is your website or blog the “home base”? • Track effectiveness to maximize effectiveness

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Content Strategy

• How do you manage all the content on your various communication outlets? – Create editorial calendars for each – Revise, reuse and revamp content for other

content medium – Use content from others like news outlets – Ask for content from your stakeholders

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• Social networks are “simply intuitive structures”

• People or organizations are called nodes and the connections are called ties

• Hubs are the larger nodes within the networks

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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEgfJwe4WGI

• Understand the platforms • Know your social media audience • Have fun!

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Question

• Does your organization have a social media policy?

• An online communication’s policy?

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Social Media Policy

• Center for Technology in Government • 8 Essential Elements:

– Employee access – Social media account management – Acceptable Use – Employee Conduct – Content – Security – Legal Issues – Citizen Conduct

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Designing a Social Media Policy

• Determine goals and objectives for using social media tools

• Bring together a cross-sectional team to talk about all the issues

• Identify existing policies that apply to the use of social media

• Discuss conflicts or inconsistencies between proposed and existing policies and procedures

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MEASURING YOUR

COMMUNICATIONS

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• Setting Objectives – Realistic, measurable and

deadline-oriented – Specify what you want these

constituents to know, think or do as a result of your communication activities

Fix this: Goal is to improve employee morale.

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Recommendations

• Start somewhere • Connect your goals to your mission to your metrics,

measure what matters (importance of strategic planning)

• Start easy with outputs and activity, then move to outcomes

• Change your culture to value data • Train staff, make sure staff can use the technology you

do have, understand what you are collecting and why, and how it can help them do their job

• Invest in technology and evaluation to build capacity

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Monitoring and Evaluation

• To prove that your increased and enhanced communication has been successful

• Show return on investment of time and money

• “Effective management in any organization comes from regularly collecting information, analyzing the information, and then making changes to help improve a service or product”

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Measuring Impact

• Impact: the change that occurs in others as a result of the work of the organization

• Number of people who: – Receive the messages and invitations – Attend activities or respond to the messages – Learn the message – Change their opinions or attitudes – Behave in the desired fashion or who repeat

desired behaviors

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Evaluation Tools

• Focus groups: – Useful to test messages – Responses can’t be generalizable to a larger

audience

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• Clipping Services (or Google Alerts) – Surveys print and electronic media for keywords – Determines how much was written and how many

minutes of air time – Messages sent versus messages placed (press

releases sent versus stories actually written) – How often the coverage matched the message – By media outlet

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• Sampling Surveys – Online surveys – Quick feedback – However already engaged audiences are

respondents

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• Communications planning requires us to “identify in advance what it is we want to accomplish” p. 217

Examples of Objectives: – “to increase our rankings in the Forbes magazine

ranking of best places to live” which is based on the opinions of travel writers at major newspapers in the US (how can you influence?)

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• Evaluation of your efforts REQUIRES knowing where you are starting from (baseline information)

• Midpoint evaluation: how are we doing and make adjustments

• At the end: evaluate how you did, based on where you started from

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Process Measures (outputs)

• Number of news releases produced • Number of flyers, posters or banners

distributed • Number of interviews • Number of meetings held • Number of visitors to your website

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• Benefits of process or output measures – Easy to calculate – Within your control

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• Outcome measures: – If you only measure process or outputs than you

don’t know if your efforts actually changed anything like attitudes, awareness or behavior that you want to achieve

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• Key Messages: – Must appeal to the audience’s self-interest – Repeat regularly and through multiple media

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Measuring Engagement

• Number of comments • Number of friends over time • Number of new names added to email file • Number of donations/amount • Number of video/photo views • Number of subscribers (RSS, blog) • Number of blog or wall comments • Number of voting participants • Number of blogs linking to us • Content of comments

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From Good To Great….

Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the

teacher is the most important. - Bill Gates

Technology is good….

Engagement is better!

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Reflections

• Constantly evaluate whether your social media is meeting your needs and how it fits into your overall efforts

• Share these thoughts with others via a blog • Determine return on investment

– Website traffic – Donations – Members – Petitions – Calls or emails

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Measuring Your Success

• Blogs: – Number of subscribers – Monthly trends Check out: – Engagement metrics (WordPress blog metrics:

http://yoast.com/wordpress/blog-metrics/ and Google Analytics for WordPress http://yoast.com/wordpress/google-analytics/

– Bookmarking: measure bookmarking using Delicious https://delicious.com/

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Professional Associations and Conferences

• Publicity Club of Chicago

• Philanthropy Networks

• HandsOn Tech Chicago

• BBCON 2013

• Social Media Summit

• Chicago Ideas Week

• Community Media Workshop

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CONCLUSIONS

Q&A

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Contact Information

Alicia Schatteman, Assistant Professor Department of Public Administration

Northern Illinois University IA 205

DeKalb, IL 60115

www.nonprofitscholar.com

815-753-0942 aschatteman@niu.edu

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