Session 4: Tactics
Transcript
Robert Hornsby:
Welcome to Strategic Communications Planning. Today is the tactics class. I'm your host Robert Hornsby, and I'm joined by Associate Director Cassandra Nathan. I'll go to screen share for just a moment, and we'll come back to the general view and have some discussion.
[Screen share begins]
[First slide: title slide]
[Second slide: Review of Session 3—Strategy]
So, quick review as we had before. Cassandra, will you take us through this?
Cassandra Nathan:
Sure. All right, so you guys, we're going to do some housekeeping and hear from you all personally to see how strategy went for you guys. So who wants to explain what they found was the easiest to define or explain in your strategy piece?
[Screen share stops]
We'll go with Brandon. Where's Brandon?
Robert:
I think we called on Brandon last time.
Cassandra:
Did I?
Robert:
I think Jamie was waving her hand.
Cassandra:
Okay.
Jamie Nash:
Yeah, I think I'll start. I accidentally put a lot of my strategies into my communications goals, so the easiest part was literally just reading your guys's comments and being like “That's a strategy” and then copy and pasting it into my strategy stock. But I guess that's a benefit that came from confusing the terms. My brain tends to think in action items like “What are we going to actually do?” rather than like “What is the outcome or like the goal?” which this class is helping me with. So it's helpful to kind of differentiate between those in my mind.
Cassandra:
Awesome. And anyone want to share what was difficult if there was anything difficult for them?
Katie?
Katie McCluskey:
When I was working this, I actually went back and rewrote my communications goals because I think I made them so narrow that I couldn't come up with any strategy that really seemed to fit. And so I actually went back and I think I changed—I had maybe three or four from the previous class assignment—and I think I went back and rewrote almost all of them to make more sense and to really fit better into that table you shared.
Robert:
That is excellent. Any other general comments or questions?
Brandon Alexander:
I think the part that I was struggling with is, “Is it a strategy or a tactic?” I mean, I figured we'd go over in this class anyway, so I just wanted to make sure that–
Robert:
Sure.
Brandon:
–when you digest it, I kind of too.
Robert:
I mean, those distinctions between goals, strategy, and tactics is 90% of what this course is about. Hoping to give some clarity to that because—as we talked last time in goals and strategy—a lot of people will talk to you in terms of strategy when it's really something that they're trying to accomplish. Like, goals, strategy, and tactics can all be accomplished. So you can complete a tactic, you can fulfill a strategy, and you can reach a goal, and those are all accomplishments.
So, just because something is to be “accomplished” doesn't mean it's one or the other. You have to decide from those things what’s– And one way to think about it is goals are sort of more ten thousand foot, and strategy is five thousand foot, and then tactics are on the ground—the actual thing that you do. We're going to dive right into that now.
Any other comments or questions? Ramona, did you want to jump in?
Ramona King:
I totally agree with that, Brandon. I think I'm, like, clear on goals and then, like, relatively clear on tactics, but it's that sort of middle section that I had to do some real thinking about.
Robert:
Okay. So I'm gonna go back to the PowerPoint for a moment, and then we'll continue on. Cassandra, you wanna explain how we're gonna do chat today?
Cassandra:
All right. When Robert goes through the section—through tactics—you might have some questions, or he might be going a little too quick, or something may stand out. So feel free to use the chat box to have your clarifying questions or if there's any needs. And because it's a little bit difficult for Robert to manage reading the PowerPoint slides and go through examples, I'll field those questions or field those concerns throughout the presentation when necessary.
If you have anything else, if we have some questions that we notice, we might wait till Q&A at the end. But if it fits in the moment, we can ask on spot.
Robert:
So today's presentation runs about 25, 30 minutes. So, what I'm going to try to do is pause as we go along, have a little bit of discussion back and forth, and then maybe we can devote the second portion of, you know, 30 minutes to a general discussion. I think we have enough people in the session now we could do two breakout rooms. So Cassandra, can you help manage that–
Cassandra:
Sure.
Robert:
–when the time comes? So let me go back to the PowerPoint, and I'll start my presentation.
[Screen share begins]
[Second slide: Review of Session 3—Strategy]
Okay.
[Third slide: Refresher: Elements of a Communications Plan]
So today is tactics. So as a repeat after me, goals are the “why,” strategy is the “what,” tactics are the “how.”
[Fourth slide: Understanding Tactics]
Trying to make a distinction between goals, strategy, and tactics. So when I'm talking about tactics, I'm really talking about the platforms for delivery of content. If you think of it another way, your tactics are your toolkit. Content is what you produce, sometimes known as a deliverable. Audiences are the recipients of content, and engagement is an action prompted by content.
So what do tactics need? Tactics need a target audience. They need a delivery system. It needs to be a demonstrable product, and that's how we refer to them in my unit now. Instead of saying “this piece of content,” “that piece of content,” “the other piece of content,” we talk about products. And then tactics need a timeline—when you're going to deliver your product. And the product could be a news story; it could be a video; it could be a podcast; and your product is whatever you produce.
[Fifth slide: Tactics & Story: Not the same things]
A word about tactics and story: So these are not the same things. So, a tactic is the method that you present or deliver your content. A story, for the purposes of our discussion, is the substance or subject of the content. You could have a story that presents itself or is delivered on multiple platforms. So a story about the vaccine breakthrough could be a web page post on your home page. It could be a podcast interview with a professor. It could be a photo gallery. It could be a video. And it's all about the same thing. So a single story can be represented in multiple examples.
And to clarify with another basic example: Publishing a series of podcasts is a tactic. The podcast itself is the content. In your plan, if you've got a strategy to reach audiences in the world of audio, producing a series of podcasts is your tactic.
So let me pause for a moment here. Stop share.
[Screen share stops]
So, we've got this podcast. We got a series of podcasts—that's our tactic. So, what is our strategy? So if our goal is to expand our communications offerings into the world of podcasts, and create new audiences or reach new audiences in a way we haven't before, that would be our goal. So our strategy would be to develop a series of compelling podcasts. So the production of the podcast themselves is the tactic that fulfills that strategy.
Any questions?
Angela Slagle:
Could you just repeat that again?
Robert:
So a communications goal related to this idea is to reach audiences that you haven't reached before—to reach new audiences. So your strategy is to develop podcasts or to explore the world of audio media to reach new audiences because you haven't done that before. So then your tactic is “produce a series of podcasts.” So, the podcasts themselves are the execution of the strategy, which is geared toward the goal of reaching new audiences.
Last time we talked about reverse engineering strategy based on your tactics. So if you have tactics that are new and different and you're doing things you haven't done before, then “I haven't done this before” works back toward your strategy and your goals. You're trying to reach audiences you haven't reached before or reach them in a new and different way.
So if you're trying to reach new audiences, a strategy could be “Reach them in different ways that we haven't done before,” which could include audio, video, you know, social media. So then, that's your strategy. So then the tactics that go with that are “create a series of podcasts,” “create videos,” “develop social media for a particular school or department or professor.” Okay?
So let's move on.
[Screen share begins]
[Sixth slide: About Tactics & Audiences]
So going back to our original discussions about audience, purpose, and outcomes. One of the reasons that I talk about platforms in relationship to audience is because the demographics of the platforms are very different.
And everybody knows—I would hope everybody knows—that look, you know, quote unquote “Liberals watch MSNBC, and they love Rachel Maddow. Older white Republicans don't watch that; they watch Fox TV news, and they love Lou Dobbs.” There are very few common platforms now that reach broad audiences. Probably the most broad platforms are, you know, ABC, CBS, NBC nightly news, which still reaches a broad cross-section of people. But increasingly, people are in silos. I think all of us intuitively know this.
One of the things to consider about audience is how receptive they are to your tactic. And this is about sentiment. In the first class, I talked about, you know, setting the dial on broadcast and walking away is not good enough anymore because if you don't have any backend way to collect data about sentiment, you don't know if you're reaching supporters, people who are ambivalent, or skeptics or “non-receptives.”
You could be, you know, broadcasting a message saying, “What we need is 100% vaccination across the whole world in order to beat coronavirus.” And you may have 20% of people that agree with that, 60% of people that don't care, and then you know 20 or 30% of people that reject your notion. So you can't say, “Hey, I've been a big success,” because all you've done is broadcast. If you don't have any way to capture sentiment, you don't know if people are being persuaded that what you're telling them is good or not.
For example, everyone in the whole world watched the insurrection coverage broadcast on January 6th. So the way the audiences break out now—about 50% of people thought that was horrible. Another 50% of people just thought it was entertaining. Right?
So how people receive your message and what they do with it and how they react to your communication varies a lot. And this is where—in the next two classes metrics and evaluation—you'll think about gathering data and judging the success of what you're doing.
[Seventh slide: About Content]
Another word about content: I can't stress this enough—just publishing information is not good enough anymore. It doesn't create engagement. Populating a website with a bunch of data, or stories that are sort of generic or impenetrable or oblique—you know, publishing a dry academic paper in its entirety on a website—that's just like filler. It's not really effective content. So we're going to talk about good content versus great content.
So good content just says, “This thing happened.” So what would be– I'm going to stop share for a minute.
[Screen share stops]
What would be some attributes of great content? Think about things that you've done or things that you've seen that you said, “Wow.” You know, they had the wow factor and you thought that was really excellent—maybe something that you shared with a friend or that you sent to your boss saying, “Hey, I want you to take notice of this.” Any examples?
Go ahead, Carol.
Carol Cotterill:
The rover landing on Mars that NASA streamed live because you kind of felt involved and you could see people's reactions, and–
Robert:
Yes, right. What about other areas? I want each of you to try to think of one—in the last month or so, some piece of news that you just thought, “Wow, that was great.”
Maddie Henry:
I have one.
Robert:
Go ahead.
Maddie:
There was a video that circulated from the New York Times, and it's called “Death, Through the Eyes of a Nurse.”
Robert:
Oh yeah.
Maddie:
That was so compelling. But we had, you know, all of our leadership see it, and they were like, “Everyone needs to see this and share with students.”
Robert:
It's called “76 days,” and I would highly recommend it.
Maddie:
Yeah, yeah, it was great.
Cassandra:
I think Ramona had something; she wanted to chime in.
Ramona:
Yeah, I was gonna say that the New York Times has this, like, interactive quiz where you talk about, like, different words that you use for different things, and then it identifies where you're from regionally. It's from, like, 2016 or something, but it pops up every couple years on my feed, and I always take it again and I, like, always send it to someone new. [Laughs slightly.] I think because it's both, like, kind of scientifically interesting and it's really like personally involving, and it kind of teaches you something about yourself. And it's interactive.
Robert:
Let's do two more. We're going to call on somebody if you don't volunteer. You tell me that you've been watching the TV and going online and listening to the radio and going on podcasts for several months and you haven't found anything compelling?
Katie:
I can just share something. Although I feel like we're all doing the New York Times related, but someone said it, so that's what made me think of this. There was this article about how people who live in—I think it was Norway, but I can't remember. It was a Scandinavian country—how they approached the winter season and why seasonal affect disorder is a lot less common there. And it had to do with the fact that they have a very different approach and mindset when it comes to winter.
Like Americans, especially those who live in climates like New York, winter comes around and we all dread the fact there's no sun, it's really cold, and we can never go outside, and it's just a miserable time of year. Whereas the people in those countries have a mindset of like, “There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.”
And I've tried to apply that to my own approach to winter because I don't like being cold, and I never go outside. And I shared that with a bunch of people because it felt like a solution to a problem that I know I experience and I think others experience as well.
Robert:
Sure. Anybody else here live in a really cold climate for more than a year? Right? So I lived in Chicago for 10 years before moving here where winter lasts nine months, so it starts in October. And I was a graduate student in the early 80s. And, like, one year it snowed on May 26th. That was shocking to me; I was from Texas. You know, I saw snow three times in my previous life. [Laughs a little.]
Cassandra:
Wow.
Robert:
I'm gonna go back to the PowerPoint, and I think you're gonna find some of this relevant and helpful.
[Screen share begins]
[Seventh slide: About Content]
So great content. So think about the examples that we just talked about. A lot of them had emotional appeal. They demonstrated impact or effect on a particular person or people that live in an area, sort of the common experience. Great content that you produce embodies your key messages. So if your key message is “We have the smartest professors,” you need to create content that conveys that.
Great content is revelatory, provocative, or surprising, and sometimes it's contrarian. So the prevailing wisdom may be “Oh let's all panic about the variants,” but the contrarian view is “The variants aren't a big deal. Don't worry about it.” And we have several professors that are doing this right now.
Importantly, great content connects to a person, so it either tells the story or it or you relate to it on a personal level. And there are other things, and we can talk about what else down the road.
[Eighth slide: Tactics class exercise]
So here's an exercise. Name some of the mediums or formats that we typically use for communications.
[Screen share stops]
I'm going to call on a couple of people. So just run down the list of the stuff, basically the tactics and the products that you're producing now. Let's start with you, Angela.
Angela:
I think we've got a pretty broad selection. In terms of tactics, we use social media, email, web resources like websites, video content, I guess things like blog postings. We have print media, educational resources. I feel like I could go on. I'm not sure. They might just be more specific.
Robert:
So of the things that Angela listed, if someone's producing something that is different from her list, speak up. So are you producing something that Angela isn't producing?
Cassandra:
Can we–
Seden Gürlek:
I have a question. I'm sorry.
Robert:
Go ahead.
Seden:
Can we count WhatsApp groups with, for example, students. Can we count it as well? Okay.
Robert:
Say that again, Seden.
Seden:
Sorry. Creating WhatsApp groups with students or our target audiences.
Robert:
Okay. What about newsletters? People producing newsletters?
Brandon:
We do a lot of live streams.
Robert:
Live streams.
Brandon:
And video content in general.
Robert:
Video content in general.
Katie:
We also produce, sometimes, series for the digital screens that are across campus.
Robert:
Oh yeah, good. Sure. Anybody producing other kind of print collateral?
Maddie:
We produce brochures for our nurse practitioner group as well.
Robert:
Okay.
Maddie:
Physical brochures still.
Robert:
Sure. Sure.
Seden:
Annual reports.
[Screen share begins]
[Eighth slide: Tactics class exercise]
Robert:
Yes. So here we go.
So here's some breakouts. I won't read all of this but, you know, if you think about the three big categories: owned media that's what you own, what you produce yourself, often distributed by you. Then there's in the world of external communications, earned media is how you describe news articles and op-eds that you pitch to reporters. Sometimes they'll run exactly what you send them. Other times they're going to write something based on an interview that they conduct. Then there's paid media, which is advertising and advertorials produced by you, paid for by you. And then there are all levels of different kind of digital media: social media, audio media, video media.
And then again—so that's why I asked about print collateral—there's physical media. This often gets overlooked now because of, you know, digital first, but physical collateral is still important at some level. And then there's also experiential media, and that's the world of events, lectures, panels, and conferences.
Are there other things? Sure. We have a lot of options here, and you may find that some of these mediums or formats don't fit with your program. But I would encourage people to try and expand their tactics if possible.
[Ninth slide: About Tactics: What is News, and what gives an idea “news value”?]
So that leads me to another discussion: What is news, and what gives an idea news value? So name some of the typical newsworthy subjects or types of content that have inherent news value.
[Screen share stops]
Katie:
Politics.
Robert:
Politics.
Maddie:
Nowadays, healthcare.
Robert:
Okay. So think about the stuff that you're producing now or pushing out or things that you read in the news that are compelling to you. What are the attributes of those?
Ramona:
Like changes in policy or in circumstances that affect behavior, like that would immediately affect my behavior or other people's behavior.
Robert:
What's the most common thing we're producing in academia?
Maddie:
Research papers.
Robert:
Research papers.
What about when something happens in the news and you see a bunch of professors discussing it on TV or in the news? Do you guys do that kind of thing, or is this not something that you do? No? Yes? We end up placing a lot of stories, and professors are giving a lot of commentary all the time. So what they're doing is reacting to stuff that's happening in the world and then doing some analysis about it.
Any other things that stand out to you?
Jamie:
Sometimes, just something that's, like, more light-hearted or fun because there's so much that gets you down in the news that something can go viral just because it's nice.
Robert:
Yeah. Entertaining. Or it has cats or baby. [Laughs slightly.]
Brandon:
Guess it also depends on who your audience is. Like if they’re doing something that may not matter to one audience, may be very important to another one.
Robert:
Yes. Indeed. Something I'm saying is sinking in here.
[Screen share begins]
[Ninth slide: About Tactics: What is News?]
So let's look at this list. So analysis, genuine breakthroughs, startling observations, new reports, new products, sometimes new hires, and calendar-driven timing—things that revolve around elections or holidays, Valentine's Day, something like that. Those have inherent news value. There are other things that provide news value, but this is sort of a short list of things that news outlets are looking for or are interested in.
So I underscored the word “genuine” because this is something you'll encounter—those of you that work with researchers. Many times you'll get people coming to you saying, “Here, take my research paper and push this out.” And often they, you know, would love to see their research paper presented on the front page of a journal or a magazine that they read or the New York Times. But for you to have that kind of exposure, it needs to be a genuine breakthrough.
And this is what I call the sliced white bread test. So people will come to you, professors who are excited about something they've produced, and they all believe that they've invented sliced white bread. Okay. Where the rubber meets the road is very seldom is that true. And one of the things that you have to do as a communications expert is make a judgment about what is a genuine breakthrough or what is an incremental improvement on something that has come before.
So something that really makes news has the potential for transformation. But if you're just sort of moving along: If this research paper is just advancing the thought incrementally, and isn't really something that has a serious impact that's measurable, no one's going to take it seriously. One way to judge that is to try to—when you encounter a professor that pushes one of these research papers on you—ask for two other people outside of that group to validate it. So you asked the professor, “Okay, this is really interesting. Can you recommend two people I could talk to who are not at Columbia who could give me some context?”
Or you go looking for context yourself, and then you can look at, you know,
the breakthrough. And if it's just sort of putting a coat of paint on something that already exists, it's not really a breakthrough.
[Tenth slide: About Storytelling Five elements to consider about storytelling]
So storytelling: This is one of my favorite parts of this course. I've taught this for a long time—elements of storytelling. So I'll break this out into five areas: news value, audience, author, imperative, time and resources. So news value is the most important, and the question you ask is “What are the elements that give this news value?” And we just reviewed some of them in your own examples: Something that touched you personally, something that surprised you, something that was contrarian, something that was just fun and entertaining, something that you didn't know before.
As you're moving along, Why should an audience care about your story? How valuable is that audience to your program? How will you reach them?
So you could push out your news—you could push out a research paper about nanotechnology—to USA Today. It might be interesting enough that USA Today will publish a story about your nanotechnology. If people in St. Louis, if, you know, middle America Joe in St. Louis is reading your news article in USA today in St. Louis, like do you even care about that? Does that advance your goals in any way?
Mass audiences aren't always important. Reaching the right audience is important. So if a technical journal reaches the people that you need to persuade to feel good about your program and to influence– If one of your goals is to maintain the level of new faculty, how do you reach those people? Who is the audience for the story?
Number three is the author. Is that you or somebody else? Do you have to write it, or can you get somebody else to write it? So this is where external media comes into play. So it's much easier to write a 50-word pitch and get a reporter from the Associated Press to write your story than it is for you to spend 20 or 30 hours crafting a story and publishing it. Sometimes you have to do that anyway. But you need to figure out who has to be the author, and if it has to be you, then that connects directly to the time and resources part.
Another thing to consider is your imperative. Who or what is motivating the story? Are you doing this because something important has happened? Because your dean wants it? I mean, if President Bollinger comes and says, “Let's do a story about free speech,” we're probably going to do a story about free speech because that's a very high imperative.
But just because some adjunct professor, you know, throws a research paper at you and says, “Publish this, and get this published in the New York Times,” that may not be aligned with your communications goals of your area. So you have to figure out, does that create an imperative for you? Then of course you have to determine how much of your time is going to be required to produce the content. And do you have to do other things like hire a photographer or videographer?
So one way to look at this—and this is an exercise you can do among your own tactics—given these five elements, take one of your tactics and rate each of these five dimensions on a one to five basis. So five is the best. And then you average the score. So you've got something that has tremendous news value, you give it a five. But it has a small audience, so it gets a two. The author is you, so maybe that's a three—sort of in between. The imperative is not very high, so it gets a two. And then it's going to take a lot of time and resources, so then it also gets a two. And you average it out, and it's like a 3.0.
Like, is it worth it to continue with this, or is it not? Do you want to put a bunch of resources into something that's marginal, that has marginal value, that has low imperative? Or are you going to put your time and effort into something that your boss thinks is really important? Are you going to put your time and resources into something that's a real breakthrough as opposed to something that's an incremental breakthrough? So this is just a yardstick to determine how to proceed with a tactic.
[Eleventh slide: More about Storytelling]
One last slide about storytelling. Let me pause this for a minute. Are there questions?
[Screen share stops]
No? Okay, you asked for it.
Carol:
Yeah, sorry.
Robert:
Go ahead.
Carol:
I'm just seconding something that Angela put in the chat because I just started doing that whole ranking one to five for something that we produce. And it's the whole question of whether you go print media or digital. And yeah, Angela was deciding how much print needed to use these days versus digital media.
And it's something that we keep coming up against because some people feel very strongly that it's not environmentally friendly to do print media anymore. So a lot of the stuff that we take to conferences to promote ourselves, are people actually going to read it or are they just going to throw it in a bin? Or do you just rely on everything to go digital? And how do you work out which way you should go?
Robert:
Okay, so I'm going to throw this open to the class for opinions and reactions. So first off let me ask, how many of you are still producing print media? Okay. Okay. Seden, why are you producing print media?
Seden:
The only thing we print actually is the annual report, and we don't print a lot of copies. In a limited number we print them and send them out to– Most of them are sent to the donors or people who might have an interest in our organization, Columbia Global Centers in Istanbul. That's it, actually.
Robert:
Right. Well, that's a very common strategy. Why would print media be important to this audience group, Seden?
Seden:
First of all, they like reading something in print. The second point would be they feel like– I mean, we send them specifically. We don't share it online, so they feel like they are special to this organization.
Robert:
Right. What about other people? Maddie, what print media are you producing?
Maddie:
So we produce brochures for our admissions and also for our nurse practitioner group. And admissions, actually we decided to not do any print for this upcoming cycle because, you know, students aren't coming to the school and also they're digitally savvy. But for our nurse practitioner group, we are doing a reprint of our brochures this year because a lot of our patients are elderly and so maybe not as digitally savvy as a younger person may be. And also because we share the brochures with other departments within the school and the Medical Center. So it's important for, you know, other practitioners to have physical brochures to hand to patients. But you know, to be able to give to patients one off for referrals and so on.
Robert:
Okay. Yeah, very common. So the key here is what's the print media doing for you? How are you using it? Why is it important? And is it the appropriate tool for the audience? So in both those examples, for the annual report it's a “limited edition” for a special audience, and they feel honored to get it because they know that it's not out there, like, being printed en masse. On the other hand, the brochures that Maddie's group is presenting—they are printed en masse, but it's because the audience for them, the audience that needs this information, isn't an online audience. And also you need to hit them in the moment when they're in the clinic and give them something they can take home. They can always look up stuff online later, but you need to, like, put something in their hand.
So it's “Does it accomplish what you need it to do?” and “Is it worth the expense?” I don't know if that helps you, Angela.
Angela:
No, it's a helpful discussion point. I think certainly last year was a big changer for us—because as Carol mentioned—a fair bit of our print media would be brochures that we would give out at conferences or meetings where we're there to inform people, and you try to make it eye-catching and informational, and you hope that they walk away and they think about it later. But you worry that it ends up in the conference garbage can, you know, before they leave or before they travel it gets thrown away in their hotel room.
But last year with no physical conferences or meetings, everything went digital. It was kind of an awakening. We don't really know whether we'll go back to print media. I think the circumstances of maybe different audiences being more engaged by print material versus other audiences who really don't want print media. So I think that's just something we have to tackle, and I'm interested to hear other people's kind of how and why about what they print and what they choose not to. So that's all, thanks.
Robert:
So that's the calculation. Is it doing what you need it to do? If it's not, it's not worth the expense. In our own department, we used to produce 30,000 plus copies of this “newspaper” The Record. You may remember it. It made a very nice lunch placemat, often used as an umbrella. For Commencement, we would produce 20,000 copies and put it on all the chairs, and then we would throw away about 18,000 copies that people wouldn't take. So that's your corollary to your conference brochure dump.
So some people were very attached to it, but when we had a change in leadership, Shailagh Murray basically said we're going digital first, and we're gonna stop producing The Record. It saved us a really lot of money in the course of the year, which we can put into things like video, new digital tools, and other things. And we found that our audience actually has grown. And some people, you know, grumbled about missing their print version of it, but we felt like those numbers weren't significant to justify the expense of it.
But other parts of the university are now struggling with this now. Columbia Magazine, for example, is debating on whether they will continue as a print edition and not how often they will continue as a print edition. Maybe they don't need to exist as a print edition.
So other parts of the university are struggling with this too because we have this long history of sort of respect for and revering print media and books and magazines and all of that. You know, on the one hand we're a cutting edge, progressive institution. On the other hand, we're a very conservative, history-minded institution. So this is the sort of modern library debate that's playing out in our world.
I have a couple of other points to make.
Go ahead, Angela.
Angela:
Katie also had a comment.
Robert:
Go ahead, Katie.
Katie:
I'll be quick. It's something that I think might work for your situation. If you're printing multiple brochures at your events or conferences, it might be helpful to instead just print one piece, like a postcard, that has maybe QR codes on it and your attendees can just scan the QR codes and pull up the digital versions of those brochures.
The nice thing is I think you can use your QR codes—make them trackable—and so you can see how many people are actually opening them. And at least then you can decide, like I don't know, this one brochure had 200% more hits. Maybe next year we should print this one. And this one was not popular, so we don't need to print this one. Things like that.
Robert:
Sure.
Angela:
That's a fantastic idea.
Robert:
I come from the world of print on demand, and I worked on this kind of thing for insurance agents—life insurance agents—years ago where they did a similar thing. There were a menu of brochures that were available to them, and they would select and do print-on-demand based upon their local market so the corporate office didn't have to print 100,000 brochures and send them out. The local agents only printed the things that they really felt they wanted and needed and could use. So it cut costs across the board. So that's an excellent suggestion.
I'm going to go back to screen share for a minute, just have a couple more points to make. I don't think we're going to do breakouts today. We've had a pretty good class discussion, and I want to get through this last bit and send you on your way.
[Screen share begins]
[Twelfth slide: About Campaigns]
So another thing to think about—producing campaigns. So a great tactic is producing a collection of content around a theme or subject, and often it can be a sequence of tactics over time. So how do campaigns work? So audiences benefit from multiple touch points. So if you can repeat– And this is something that, you know, Jimmy will know from the sustainable world—that you can't just tell people stuff one time. You have to tell them over and over and over with new and different ways in order for it to sink in.
Attributes of campaign: They service the themes by unpacking linked concepts. So you can create a theme such as, you know, water conservation, and you can have four pieces of content that talk about water conservation in different ways that are all linked to that same idea. You can repeat and reinforce your key messages in different formats. You can produce social media around a key message like, you know, go back to water conference conservation. You could have a key message that talks about, you know, not letting the water run while you brush your teeth, and you could produce an Instagram post, a video, and a podcast that all talk about how much water is wasted if you let the water run while you brush your teeth. Right?
And you can help move an audience from information to action, which in the marketing world we call conversion, because you're starting by informing them, and then you're giving them a reason to stop running the water. The idea is that you're giving them enough ammunition—both data, emotional appeal—to persuade them to take an action, and that's what we call conversion.
[Thirteenth slide: Tactical tips]
A couple of tactical tips: Tactics can be repeated. Be wary of tactics that are “We've always done it this way.” You know, previous tactic—make sure it works before cloning it. Another great tactical tip is to engage with journalists across the board. For example, they're great as moderators and panelists, and they also have a ready-made audience that you can pick up on because they have followers. They are the prime influencers in the world of communications.
[Fourteenth slide: Tactics—Study questions]
So here's some study questions. As you're approaching your tactics, is your tactic mission-congruent with your goal? Is it compelling? What's the hook? Is it urgent? What's the call to action? Is it clear? Is it persuasive? And then ask yourself, How does this tactic create engagement?
Remember, we talked about engagement before? We'll talk about it more in next class. Engagement is getting past just broadcasting information to creating a sense of urgency and action on the part of your audience or a next step. So it's, “Hey, I like this. I'll sign up for the newsletter.” “Hey, I like this. I'll write a check.” “Hey, I like this. I'm going to apply to this department because I could work there.” And you ask yourself, how do you want the audiences to respond?
Obviously we want audience to like us, but beyond liking us, what do we want them to do? Do we want them to recommend the article to a friend? Do we want them to share a piece of social media? Do we want them to, you know, contact the department or the professor for more information? Do we want them to sign up and join a webinar?
What do you want them to do? You need to convey that in your tactic, and it could be as simple as adding a line at the bottom: you know, “For more information,” or “To learn about our events,” or “To sign up for our newsletter, click x.” You just slap that at the bottom of everything you produce, no matter what you produce.
[Fifteenth slide: Breakout session]
So we're going to skip breakout.
[Sixteenth slide: Homework]
And quick review: homework. So make comments on the master plan documents and especially about the strategies that your teammates have submitted in this last week. Write up your tactics, and then begin to review the documents—the tactic folders. Cassandra, you want to talk about what's in the Google folders now?
[Screen share stops]
Cassandra:
Sure. So in the Google folder drive, you guys now have reference materials. And you'll notice that there's a folder for strategy, tactics, metrics, and evaluation resources, and even master plan samples. Which I will say you guys are lucky because in previous classes we didn't tend to share this because we wanted everyone to kind of, like, organically come up with their own plans. But we've since learned that some people just like to see some variety. So you have a lot of variety and a lot of different tools that you can defer to to inspire you, and also to take with you, sort of as a parting gift, when you go so that you can continue to build upon either this plan or future plans.
Robert:
So in particular from last class, we didn't really spend a lot of time on it, but I saw that some of you picked up on it. The strategy matrix tool is a great one. There's also a tactical tool, which is a similar—like a spreadsheet—kind of layout where you can connect goals, strategy, and tactics and then, you know, think about audience and outcomes and sort of give you some grounding that expresses the continuum so that nothing stands alone. Goals don't stand alone, strategy doesn't stand alone, and tactics don't stand alone.
And this is a hard mindset to break sometimes your leadership out of. Nothing is a one-off in this world, and for things to be effective, they really need to be more than a one-off. So they need to be connected to other things that are happening, they need to be justified by good reasons, they need to have a purpose. And then you need to think about—like on the backend—what kind of outcomes you're looking for, something that's measurable.
We'll talk more about that at next class, which is metrics. That's going to be chock-full of other materials, and there's a lot of stuff in the Google folder about that.
We're coming up on three o'clock. Are there any final questions or thoughts? You guys have been great. Thanks so much. Good luck on your plans and evaluations, and I will see you next week.
Brandon:
Thank you.
Unidentified attendee #1:
Thank you.
Unidentified attendee #2:
Thanks.
Welcome to Strategic Communications Planning. Today is the tactics class. I'm your host Robert Hornsby, and I'm joined by Associate Director Cassandra Nathan. I'll go to screen share for just a moment, and we'll come back to the general view and have some discussion.
[Screen share begins]
[First slide: title slide]
[Second slide: Review of Session 3—Strategy]
So, quick review as we had before. Cassandra, will you take us through this?
Cassandra Nathan:
Sure. All right, so you guys, we're going to do some housekeeping and hear from you all personally to see how strategy went for you guys. So who wants to explain what they found was the easiest to define or explain in your strategy piece?
[Screen share stops]
We'll go with Brandon. Where's Brandon?
Robert:
I think we called on Brandon last time.
Cassandra:
Did I?
Robert:
I think Jamie was waving her hand.
Cassandra:
Okay.
Jamie Nash:
Yeah, I think I'll start. I accidentally put a lot of my strategies into my communications goals, so the easiest part was literally just reading your guys's comments and being like “That's a strategy” and then copy and pasting it into my strategy stock. But I guess that's a benefit that came from confusing the terms. My brain tends to think in action items like “What are we going to actually do?” rather than like “What is the outcome or like the goal?” which this class is helping me with. So it's helpful to kind of differentiate between those in my mind.
Cassandra:
Awesome. And anyone want to share what was difficult if there was anything difficult for them?
Katie?
Katie McCluskey:
When I was working this, I actually went back and rewrote my communications goals because I think I made them so narrow that I couldn't come up with any strategy that really seemed to fit. And so I actually went back and I think I changed—I had maybe three or four from the previous class assignment—and I think I went back and rewrote almost all of them to make more sense and to really fit better into that table you shared.
Robert:
That is excellent. Any other general comments or questions?
Brandon Alexander:
I think the part that I was struggling with is, “Is it a strategy or a tactic?” I mean, I figured we'd go over in this class anyway, so I just wanted to make sure that–
Robert:
Sure.
Brandon:
–when you digest it, I kind of too.
Robert:
I mean, those distinctions between goals, strategy, and tactics is 90% of what this course is about. Hoping to give some clarity to that because—as we talked last time in goals and strategy—a lot of people will talk to you in terms of strategy when it's really something that they're trying to accomplish. Like, goals, strategy, and tactics can all be accomplished. So you can complete a tactic, you can fulfill a strategy, and you can reach a goal, and those are all accomplishments.
So, just because something is to be “accomplished” doesn't mean it's one or the other. You have to decide from those things what’s– And one way to think about it is goals are sort of more ten thousand foot, and strategy is five thousand foot, and then tactics are on the ground—the actual thing that you do. We're going to dive right into that now.
Any other comments or questions? Ramona, did you want to jump in?
Ramona King:
I totally agree with that, Brandon. I think I'm, like, clear on goals and then, like, relatively clear on tactics, but it's that sort of middle section that I had to do some real thinking about.
Robert:
Okay. So I'm gonna go back to the PowerPoint for a moment, and then we'll continue on. Cassandra, you wanna explain how we're gonna do chat today?
Cassandra:
All right. When Robert goes through the section—through tactics—you might have some questions, or he might be going a little too quick, or something may stand out. So feel free to use the chat box to have your clarifying questions or if there's any needs. And because it's a little bit difficult for Robert to manage reading the PowerPoint slides and go through examples, I'll field those questions or field those concerns throughout the presentation when necessary.
If you have anything else, if we have some questions that we notice, we might wait till Q&A at the end. But if it fits in the moment, we can ask on spot.
Robert:
So today's presentation runs about 25, 30 minutes. So, what I'm going to try to do is pause as we go along, have a little bit of discussion back and forth, and then maybe we can devote the second portion of, you know, 30 minutes to a general discussion. I think we have enough people in the session now we could do two breakout rooms. So Cassandra, can you help manage that–
Cassandra:
Sure.
Robert:
–when the time comes? So let me go back to the PowerPoint, and I'll start my presentation.
[Screen share begins]
[Second slide: Review of Session 3—Strategy]
Okay.
[Third slide: Refresher: Elements of a Communications Plan]
So today is tactics. So as a repeat after me, goals are the “why,” strategy is the “what,” tactics are the “how.”
[Fourth slide: Understanding Tactics]
Trying to make a distinction between goals, strategy, and tactics. So when I'm talking about tactics, I'm really talking about the platforms for delivery of content. If you think of it another way, your tactics are your toolkit. Content is what you produce, sometimes known as a deliverable. Audiences are the recipients of content, and engagement is an action prompted by content.
So what do tactics need? Tactics need a target audience. They need a delivery system. It needs to be a demonstrable product, and that's how we refer to them in my unit now. Instead of saying “this piece of content,” “that piece of content,” “the other piece of content,” we talk about products. And then tactics need a timeline—when you're going to deliver your product. And the product could be a news story; it could be a video; it could be a podcast; and your product is whatever you produce.
[Fifth slide: Tactics & Story: Not the same things]
A word about tactics and story: So these are not the same things. So, a tactic is the method that you present or deliver your content. A story, for the purposes of our discussion, is the substance or subject of the content. You could have a story that presents itself or is delivered on multiple platforms. So a story about the vaccine breakthrough could be a web page post on your home page. It could be a podcast interview with a professor. It could be a photo gallery. It could be a video. And it's all about the same thing. So a single story can be represented in multiple examples.
And to clarify with another basic example: Publishing a series of podcasts is a tactic. The podcast itself is the content. In your plan, if you've got a strategy to reach audiences in the world of audio, producing a series of podcasts is your tactic.
So let me pause for a moment here. Stop share.
[Screen share stops]
So, we've got this podcast. We got a series of podcasts—that's our tactic. So, what is our strategy? So if our goal is to expand our communications offerings into the world of podcasts, and create new audiences or reach new audiences in a way we haven't before, that would be our goal. So our strategy would be to develop a series of compelling podcasts. So the production of the podcast themselves is the tactic that fulfills that strategy.
Any questions?
Angela Slagle:
Could you just repeat that again?
Robert:
So a communications goal related to this idea is to reach audiences that you haven't reached before—to reach new audiences. So your strategy is to develop podcasts or to explore the world of audio media to reach new audiences because you haven't done that before. So then your tactic is “produce a series of podcasts.” So, the podcasts themselves are the execution of the strategy, which is geared toward the goal of reaching new audiences.
Last time we talked about reverse engineering strategy based on your tactics. So if you have tactics that are new and different and you're doing things you haven't done before, then “I haven't done this before” works back toward your strategy and your goals. You're trying to reach audiences you haven't reached before or reach them in a new and different way.
So if you're trying to reach new audiences, a strategy could be “Reach them in different ways that we haven't done before,” which could include audio, video, you know, social media. So then, that's your strategy. So then the tactics that go with that are “create a series of podcasts,” “create videos,” “develop social media for a particular school or department or professor.” Okay?
So let's move on.
[Screen share begins]
[Sixth slide: About Tactics & Audiences]
So going back to our original discussions about audience, purpose, and outcomes. One of the reasons that I talk about platforms in relationship to audience is because the demographics of the platforms are very different.
And everybody knows—I would hope everybody knows—that look, you know, quote unquote “Liberals watch MSNBC, and they love Rachel Maddow. Older white Republicans don't watch that; they watch Fox TV news, and they love Lou Dobbs.” There are very few common platforms now that reach broad audiences. Probably the most broad platforms are, you know, ABC, CBS, NBC nightly news, which still reaches a broad cross-section of people. But increasingly, people are in silos. I think all of us intuitively know this.
One of the things to consider about audience is how receptive they are to your tactic. And this is about sentiment. In the first class, I talked about, you know, setting the dial on broadcast and walking away is not good enough anymore because if you don't have any backend way to collect data about sentiment, you don't know if you're reaching supporters, people who are ambivalent, or skeptics or “non-receptives.”
You could be, you know, broadcasting a message saying, “What we need is 100% vaccination across the whole world in order to beat coronavirus.” And you may have 20% of people that agree with that, 60% of people that don't care, and then you know 20 or 30% of people that reject your notion. So you can't say, “Hey, I've been a big success,” because all you've done is broadcast. If you don't have any way to capture sentiment, you don't know if people are being persuaded that what you're telling them is good or not.
For example, everyone in the whole world watched the insurrection coverage broadcast on January 6th. So the way the audiences break out now—about 50% of people thought that was horrible. Another 50% of people just thought it was entertaining. Right?
So how people receive your message and what they do with it and how they react to your communication varies a lot. And this is where—in the next two classes metrics and evaluation—you'll think about gathering data and judging the success of what you're doing.
[Seventh slide: About Content]
Another word about content: I can't stress this enough—just publishing information is not good enough anymore. It doesn't create engagement. Populating a website with a bunch of data, or stories that are sort of generic or impenetrable or oblique—you know, publishing a dry academic paper in its entirety on a website—that's just like filler. It's not really effective content. So we're going to talk about good content versus great content.
So good content just says, “This thing happened.” So what would be– I'm going to stop share for a minute.
[Screen share stops]
What would be some attributes of great content? Think about things that you've done or things that you've seen that you said, “Wow.” You know, they had the wow factor and you thought that was really excellent—maybe something that you shared with a friend or that you sent to your boss saying, “Hey, I want you to take notice of this.” Any examples?
Go ahead, Carol.
Carol Cotterill:
The rover landing on Mars that NASA streamed live because you kind of felt involved and you could see people's reactions, and–
Robert:
Yes, right. What about other areas? I want each of you to try to think of one—in the last month or so, some piece of news that you just thought, “Wow, that was great.”
Maddie Henry:
I have one.
Robert:
Go ahead.
Maddie:
There was a video that circulated from the New York Times, and it's called “Death, Through the Eyes of a Nurse.”
Robert:
Oh yeah.
Maddie:
That was so compelling. But we had, you know, all of our leadership see it, and they were like, “Everyone needs to see this and share with students.”
Robert:
It's called “76 days,” and I would highly recommend it.
Maddie:
Yeah, yeah, it was great.
Cassandra:
I think Ramona had something; she wanted to chime in.
Ramona:
Yeah, I was gonna say that the New York Times has this, like, interactive quiz where you talk about, like, different words that you use for different things, and then it identifies where you're from regionally. It's from, like, 2016 or something, but it pops up every couple years on my feed, and I always take it again and I, like, always send it to someone new. [Laughs slightly.] I think because it's both, like, kind of scientifically interesting and it's really like personally involving, and it kind of teaches you something about yourself. And it's interactive.
Robert:
Let's do two more. We're going to call on somebody if you don't volunteer. You tell me that you've been watching the TV and going online and listening to the radio and going on podcasts for several months and you haven't found anything compelling?
Katie:
I can just share something. Although I feel like we're all doing the New York Times related, but someone said it, so that's what made me think of this. There was this article about how people who live in—I think it was Norway, but I can't remember. It was a Scandinavian country—how they approached the winter season and why seasonal affect disorder is a lot less common there. And it had to do with the fact that they have a very different approach and mindset when it comes to winter.
Like Americans, especially those who live in climates like New York, winter comes around and we all dread the fact there's no sun, it's really cold, and we can never go outside, and it's just a miserable time of year. Whereas the people in those countries have a mindset of like, “There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.”
And I've tried to apply that to my own approach to winter because I don't like being cold, and I never go outside. And I shared that with a bunch of people because it felt like a solution to a problem that I know I experience and I think others experience as well.
Robert:
Sure. Anybody else here live in a really cold climate for more than a year? Right? So I lived in Chicago for 10 years before moving here where winter lasts nine months, so it starts in October. And I was a graduate student in the early 80s. And, like, one year it snowed on May 26th. That was shocking to me; I was from Texas. You know, I saw snow three times in my previous life. [Laughs a little.]
Cassandra:
Wow.
Robert:
I'm gonna go back to the PowerPoint, and I think you're gonna find some of this relevant and helpful.
[Screen share begins]
[Seventh slide: About Content]
So great content. So think about the examples that we just talked about. A lot of them had emotional appeal. They demonstrated impact or effect on a particular person or people that live in an area, sort of the common experience. Great content that you produce embodies your key messages. So if your key message is “We have the smartest professors,” you need to create content that conveys that.
Great content is revelatory, provocative, or surprising, and sometimes it's contrarian. So the prevailing wisdom may be “Oh let's all panic about the variants,” but the contrarian view is “The variants aren't a big deal. Don't worry about it.” And we have several professors that are doing this right now.
Importantly, great content connects to a person, so it either tells the story or it or you relate to it on a personal level. And there are other things, and we can talk about what else down the road.
[Eighth slide: Tactics class exercise]
So here's an exercise. Name some of the mediums or formats that we typically use for communications.
[Screen share stops]
I'm going to call on a couple of people. So just run down the list of the stuff, basically the tactics and the products that you're producing now. Let's start with you, Angela.
Angela:
I think we've got a pretty broad selection. In terms of tactics, we use social media, email, web resources like websites, video content, I guess things like blog postings. We have print media, educational resources. I feel like I could go on. I'm not sure. They might just be more specific.
Robert:
So of the things that Angela listed, if someone's producing something that is different from her list, speak up. So are you producing something that Angela isn't producing?
Cassandra:
Can we–
Seden Gürlek:
I have a question. I'm sorry.
Robert:
Go ahead.
Seden:
Can we count WhatsApp groups with, for example, students. Can we count it as well? Okay.
Robert:
Say that again, Seden.
Seden:
Sorry. Creating WhatsApp groups with students or our target audiences.
Robert:
Okay. What about newsletters? People producing newsletters?
Brandon:
We do a lot of live streams.
Robert:
Live streams.
Brandon:
And video content in general.
Robert:
Video content in general.
Katie:
We also produce, sometimes, series for the digital screens that are across campus.
Robert:
Oh yeah, good. Sure. Anybody producing other kind of print collateral?
Maddie:
We produce brochures for our nurse practitioner group as well.
Robert:
Okay.
Maddie:
Physical brochures still.
Robert:
Sure. Sure.
Seden:
Annual reports.
[Screen share begins]
[Eighth slide: Tactics class exercise]
Robert:
Yes. So here we go.
So here's some breakouts. I won't read all of this but, you know, if you think about the three big categories: owned media that's what you own, what you produce yourself, often distributed by you. Then there's in the world of external communications, earned media is how you describe news articles and op-eds that you pitch to reporters. Sometimes they'll run exactly what you send them. Other times they're going to write something based on an interview that they conduct. Then there's paid media, which is advertising and advertorials produced by you, paid for by you. And then there are all levels of different kind of digital media: social media, audio media, video media.
And then again—so that's why I asked about print collateral—there's physical media. This often gets overlooked now because of, you know, digital first, but physical collateral is still important at some level. And then there's also experiential media, and that's the world of events, lectures, panels, and conferences.
Are there other things? Sure. We have a lot of options here, and you may find that some of these mediums or formats don't fit with your program. But I would encourage people to try and expand their tactics if possible.
[Ninth slide: About Tactics: What is News, and what gives an idea “news value”?]
So that leads me to another discussion: What is news, and what gives an idea news value? So name some of the typical newsworthy subjects or types of content that have inherent news value.
[Screen share stops]
Katie:
Politics.
Robert:
Politics.
Maddie:
Nowadays, healthcare.
Robert:
Okay. So think about the stuff that you're producing now or pushing out or things that you read in the news that are compelling to you. What are the attributes of those?
Ramona:
Like changes in policy or in circumstances that affect behavior, like that would immediately affect my behavior or other people's behavior.
Robert:
What's the most common thing we're producing in academia?
Maddie:
Research papers.
Robert:
Research papers.
What about when something happens in the news and you see a bunch of professors discussing it on TV or in the news? Do you guys do that kind of thing, or is this not something that you do? No? Yes? We end up placing a lot of stories, and professors are giving a lot of commentary all the time. So what they're doing is reacting to stuff that's happening in the world and then doing some analysis about it.
Any other things that stand out to you?
Jamie:
Sometimes, just something that's, like, more light-hearted or fun because there's so much that gets you down in the news that something can go viral just because it's nice.
Robert:
Yeah. Entertaining. Or it has cats or baby. [Laughs slightly.]
Brandon:
Guess it also depends on who your audience is. Like if they’re doing something that may not matter to one audience, may be very important to another one.
Robert:
Yes. Indeed. Something I'm saying is sinking in here.
[Screen share begins]
[Ninth slide: About Tactics: What is News?]
So let's look at this list. So analysis, genuine breakthroughs, startling observations, new reports, new products, sometimes new hires, and calendar-driven timing—things that revolve around elections or holidays, Valentine's Day, something like that. Those have inherent news value. There are other things that provide news value, but this is sort of a short list of things that news outlets are looking for or are interested in.
So I underscored the word “genuine” because this is something you'll encounter—those of you that work with researchers. Many times you'll get people coming to you saying, “Here, take my research paper and push this out.” And often they, you know, would love to see their research paper presented on the front page of a journal or a magazine that they read or the New York Times. But for you to have that kind of exposure, it needs to be a genuine breakthrough.
And this is what I call the sliced white bread test. So people will come to you, professors who are excited about something they've produced, and they all believe that they've invented sliced white bread. Okay. Where the rubber meets the road is very seldom is that true. And one of the things that you have to do as a communications expert is make a judgment about what is a genuine breakthrough or what is an incremental improvement on something that has come before.
So something that really makes news has the potential for transformation. But if you're just sort of moving along: If this research paper is just advancing the thought incrementally, and isn't really something that has a serious impact that's measurable, no one's going to take it seriously. One way to judge that is to try to—when you encounter a professor that pushes one of these research papers on you—ask for two other people outside of that group to validate it. So you asked the professor, “Okay, this is really interesting. Can you recommend two people I could talk to who are not at Columbia who could give me some context?”
Or you go looking for context yourself, and then you can look at, you know,
the breakthrough. And if it's just sort of putting a coat of paint on something that already exists, it's not really a breakthrough.
[Tenth slide: About Storytelling Five elements to consider about storytelling]
So storytelling: This is one of my favorite parts of this course. I've taught this for a long time—elements of storytelling. So I'll break this out into five areas: news value, audience, author, imperative, time and resources. So news value is the most important, and the question you ask is “What are the elements that give this news value?” And we just reviewed some of them in your own examples: Something that touched you personally, something that surprised you, something that was contrarian, something that was just fun and entertaining, something that you didn't know before.
As you're moving along, Why should an audience care about your story? How valuable is that audience to your program? How will you reach them?
So you could push out your news—you could push out a research paper about nanotechnology—to USA Today. It might be interesting enough that USA Today will publish a story about your nanotechnology. If people in St. Louis, if, you know, middle America Joe in St. Louis is reading your news article in USA today in St. Louis, like do you even care about that? Does that advance your goals in any way?
Mass audiences aren't always important. Reaching the right audience is important. So if a technical journal reaches the people that you need to persuade to feel good about your program and to influence– If one of your goals is to maintain the level of new faculty, how do you reach those people? Who is the audience for the story?
Number three is the author. Is that you or somebody else? Do you have to write it, or can you get somebody else to write it? So this is where external media comes into play. So it's much easier to write a 50-word pitch and get a reporter from the Associated Press to write your story than it is for you to spend 20 or 30 hours crafting a story and publishing it. Sometimes you have to do that anyway. But you need to figure out who has to be the author, and if it has to be you, then that connects directly to the time and resources part.
Another thing to consider is your imperative. Who or what is motivating the story? Are you doing this because something important has happened? Because your dean wants it? I mean, if President Bollinger comes and says, “Let's do a story about free speech,” we're probably going to do a story about free speech because that's a very high imperative.
But just because some adjunct professor, you know, throws a research paper at you and says, “Publish this, and get this published in the New York Times,” that may not be aligned with your communications goals of your area. So you have to figure out, does that create an imperative for you? Then of course you have to determine how much of your time is going to be required to produce the content. And do you have to do other things like hire a photographer or videographer?
So one way to look at this—and this is an exercise you can do among your own tactics—given these five elements, take one of your tactics and rate each of these five dimensions on a one to five basis. So five is the best. And then you average the score. So you've got something that has tremendous news value, you give it a five. But it has a small audience, so it gets a two. The author is you, so maybe that's a three—sort of in between. The imperative is not very high, so it gets a two. And then it's going to take a lot of time and resources, so then it also gets a two. And you average it out, and it's like a 3.0.
Like, is it worth it to continue with this, or is it not? Do you want to put a bunch of resources into something that's marginal, that has marginal value, that has low imperative? Or are you going to put your time and effort into something that your boss thinks is really important? Are you going to put your time and resources into something that's a real breakthrough as opposed to something that's an incremental breakthrough? So this is just a yardstick to determine how to proceed with a tactic.
[Eleventh slide: More about Storytelling]
One last slide about storytelling. Let me pause this for a minute. Are there questions?
[Screen share stops]
No? Okay, you asked for it.
Carol:
Yeah, sorry.
Robert:
Go ahead.
Carol:
I'm just seconding something that Angela put in the chat because I just started doing that whole ranking one to five for something that we produce. And it's the whole question of whether you go print media or digital. And yeah, Angela was deciding how much print needed to use these days versus digital media.
And it's something that we keep coming up against because some people feel very strongly that it's not environmentally friendly to do print media anymore. So a lot of the stuff that we take to conferences to promote ourselves, are people actually going to read it or are they just going to throw it in a bin? Or do you just rely on everything to go digital? And how do you work out which way you should go?
Robert:
Okay, so I'm going to throw this open to the class for opinions and reactions. So first off let me ask, how many of you are still producing print media? Okay. Okay. Seden, why are you producing print media?
Seden:
The only thing we print actually is the annual report, and we don't print a lot of copies. In a limited number we print them and send them out to– Most of them are sent to the donors or people who might have an interest in our organization, Columbia Global Centers in Istanbul. That's it, actually.
Robert:
Right. Well, that's a very common strategy. Why would print media be important to this audience group, Seden?
Seden:
First of all, they like reading something in print. The second point would be they feel like– I mean, we send them specifically. We don't share it online, so they feel like they are special to this organization.
Robert:
Right. What about other people? Maddie, what print media are you producing?
Maddie:
So we produce brochures for our admissions and also for our nurse practitioner group. And admissions, actually we decided to not do any print for this upcoming cycle because, you know, students aren't coming to the school and also they're digitally savvy. But for our nurse practitioner group, we are doing a reprint of our brochures this year because a lot of our patients are elderly and so maybe not as digitally savvy as a younger person may be. And also because we share the brochures with other departments within the school and the Medical Center. So it's important for, you know, other practitioners to have physical brochures to hand to patients. But you know, to be able to give to patients one off for referrals and so on.
Robert:
Okay. Yeah, very common. So the key here is what's the print media doing for you? How are you using it? Why is it important? And is it the appropriate tool for the audience? So in both those examples, for the annual report it's a “limited edition” for a special audience, and they feel honored to get it because they know that it's not out there, like, being printed en masse. On the other hand, the brochures that Maddie's group is presenting—they are printed en masse, but it's because the audience for them, the audience that needs this information, isn't an online audience. And also you need to hit them in the moment when they're in the clinic and give them something they can take home. They can always look up stuff online later, but you need to, like, put something in their hand.
So it's “Does it accomplish what you need it to do?” and “Is it worth the expense?” I don't know if that helps you, Angela.
Angela:
No, it's a helpful discussion point. I think certainly last year was a big changer for us—because as Carol mentioned—a fair bit of our print media would be brochures that we would give out at conferences or meetings where we're there to inform people, and you try to make it eye-catching and informational, and you hope that they walk away and they think about it later. But you worry that it ends up in the conference garbage can, you know, before they leave or before they travel it gets thrown away in their hotel room.
But last year with no physical conferences or meetings, everything went digital. It was kind of an awakening. We don't really know whether we'll go back to print media. I think the circumstances of maybe different audiences being more engaged by print material versus other audiences who really don't want print media. So I think that's just something we have to tackle, and I'm interested to hear other people's kind of how and why about what they print and what they choose not to. So that's all, thanks.
Robert:
So that's the calculation. Is it doing what you need it to do? If it's not, it's not worth the expense. In our own department, we used to produce 30,000 plus copies of this “newspaper” The Record. You may remember it. It made a very nice lunch placemat, often used as an umbrella. For Commencement, we would produce 20,000 copies and put it on all the chairs, and then we would throw away about 18,000 copies that people wouldn't take. So that's your corollary to your conference brochure dump.
So some people were very attached to it, but when we had a change in leadership, Shailagh Murray basically said we're going digital first, and we're gonna stop producing The Record. It saved us a really lot of money in the course of the year, which we can put into things like video, new digital tools, and other things. And we found that our audience actually has grown. And some people, you know, grumbled about missing their print version of it, but we felt like those numbers weren't significant to justify the expense of it.
But other parts of the university are now struggling with this now. Columbia Magazine, for example, is debating on whether they will continue as a print edition and not how often they will continue as a print edition. Maybe they don't need to exist as a print edition.
So other parts of the university are struggling with this too because we have this long history of sort of respect for and revering print media and books and magazines and all of that. You know, on the one hand we're a cutting edge, progressive institution. On the other hand, we're a very conservative, history-minded institution. So this is the sort of modern library debate that's playing out in our world.
I have a couple of other points to make.
Go ahead, Angela.
Angela:
Katie also had a comment.
Robert:
Go ahead, Katie.
Katie:
I'll be quick. It's something that I think might work for your situation. If you're printing multiple brochures at your events or conferences, it might be helpful to instead just print one piece, like a postcard, that has maybe QR codes on it and your attendees can just scan the QR codes and pull up the digital versions of those brochures.
The nice thing is I think you can use your QR codes—make them trackable—and so you can see how many people are actually opening them. And at least then you can decide, like I don't know, this one brochure had 200% more hits. Maybe next year we should print this one. And this one was not popular, so we don't need to print this one. Things like that.
Robert:
Sure.
Angela:
That's a fantastic idea.
Robert:
I come from the world of print on demand, and I worked on this kind of thing for insurance agents—life insurance agents—years ago where they did a similar thing. There were a menu of brochures that were available to them, and they would select and do print-on-demand based upon their local market so the corporate office didn't have to print 100,000 brochures and send them out. The local agents only printed the things that they really felt they wanted and needed and could use. So it cut costs across the board. So that's an excellent suggestion.
I'm going to go back to screen share for a minute, just have a couple more points to make. I don't think we're going to do breakouts today. We've had a pretty good class discussion, and I want to get through this last bit and send you on your way.
[Screen share begins]
[Twelfth slide: About Campaigns]
So another thing to think about—producing campaigns. So a great tactic is producing a collection of content around a theme or subject, and often it can be a sequence of tactics over time. So how do campaigns work? So audiences benefit from multiple touch points. So if you can repeat– And this is something that, you know, Jimmy will know from the sustainable world—that you can't just tell people stuff one time. You have to tell them over and over and over with new and different ways in order for it to sink in.
Attributes of campaign: They service the themes by unpacking linked concepts. So you can create a theme such as, you know, water conservation, and you can have four pieces of content that talk about water conservation in different ways that are all linked to that same idea. You can repeat and reinforce your key messages in different formats. You can produce social media around a key message like, you know, go back to water conference conservation. You could have a key message that talks about, you know, not letting the water run while you brush your teeth, and you could produce an Instagram post, a video, and a podcast that all talk about how much water is wasted if you let the water run while you brush your teeth. Right?
And you can help move an audience from information to action, which in the marketing world we call conversion, because you're starting by informing them, and then you're giving them a reason to stop running the water. The idea is that you're giving them enough ammunition—both data, emotional appeal—to persuade them to take an action, and that's what we call conversion.
[Thirteenth slide: Tactical tips]
A couple of tactical tips: Tactics can be repeated. Be wary of tactics that are “We've always done it this way.” You know, previous tactic—make sure it works before cloning it. Another great tactical tip is to engage with journalists across the board. For example, they're great as moderators and panelists, and they also have a ready-made audience that you can pick up on because they have followers. They are the prime influencers in the world of communications.
[Fourteenth slide: Tactics—Study questions]
So here's some study questions. As you're approaching your tactics, is your tactic mission-congruent with your goal? Is it compelling? What's the hook? Is it urgent? What's the call to action? Is it clear? Is it persuasive? And then ask yourself, How does this tactic create engagement?
Remember, we talked about engagement before? We'll talk about it more in next class. Engagement is getting past just broadcasting information to creating a sense of urgency and action on the part of your audience or a next step. So it's, “Hey, I like this. I'll sign up for the newsletter.” “Hey, I like this. I'll write a check.” “Hey, I like this. I'm going to apply to this department because I could work there.” And you ask yourself, how do you want the audiences to respond?
Obviously we want audience to like us, but beyond liking us, what do we want them to do? Do we want them to recommend the article to a friend? Do we want them to share a piece of social media? Do we want them to, you know, contact the department or the professor for more information? Do we want them to sign up and join a webinar?
What do you want them to do? You need to convey that in your tactic, and it could be as simple as adding a line at the bottom: you know, “For more information,” or “To learn about our events,” or “To sign up for our newsletter, click x.” You just slap that at the bottom of everything you produce, no matter what you produce.
[Fifteenth slide: Breakout session]
So we're going to skip breakout.
[Sixteenth slide: Homework]
And quick review: homework. So make comments on the master plan documents and especially about the strategies that your teammates have submitted in this last week. Write up your tactics, and then begin to review the documents—the tactic folders. Cassandra, you want to talk about what's in the Google folders now?
[Screen share stops]
Cassandra:
Sure. So in the Google folder drive, you guys now have reference materials. And you'll notice that there's a folder for strategy, tactics, metrics, and evaluation resources, and even master plan samples. Which I will say you guys are lucky because in previous classes we didn't tend to share this because we wanted everyone to kind of, like, organically come up with their own plans. But we've since learned that some people just like to see some variety. So you have a lot of variety and a lot of different tools that you can defer to to inspire you, and also to take with you, sort of as a parting gift, when you go so that you can continue to build upon either this plan or future plans.
Robert:
So in particular from last class, we didn't really spend a lot of time on it, but I saw that some of you picked up on it. The strategy matrix tool is a great one. There's also a tactical tool, which is a similar—like a spreadsheet—kind of layout where you can connect goals, strategy, and tactics and then, you know, think about audience and outcomes and sort of give you some grounding that expresses the continuum so that nothing stands alone. Goals don't stand alone, strategy doesn't stand alone, and tactics don't stand alone.
And this is a hard mindset to break sometimes your leadership out of. Nothing is a one-off in this world, and for things to be effective, they really need to be more than a one-off. So they need to be connected to other things that are happening, they need to be justified by good reasons, they need to have a purpose. And then you need to think about—like on the backend—what kind of outcomes you're looking for, something that's measurable.
We'll talk more about that at next class, which is metrics. That's going to be chock-full of other materials, and there's a lot of stuff in the Google folder about that.
We're coming up on three o'clock. Are there any final questions or thoughts? You guys have been great. Thanks so much. Good luck on your plans and evaluations, and I will see you next week.
Brandon:
Thank you.
Unidentified attendee #1:
Thank you.
Unidentified attendee #2:
Thanks.