I’m co-facilitating today a lunch workshop with this title at the Entrepreneurs Foundation of the Northwest. The event description continues:
Come join this round-table discussion about how to make sure your employees, your clients and the public know about the wonderful work you are doing in the community. Learn the best ways you can receive recognition for your community efforts while garnering PR for your company at the same time. Be sure to bring your Marketing/PR Manager and members of your community involvement team.
The Entrepreneurs Foundation of the Northwest helps companies “develop community involvement and philanthropic programs to benefit their business and their community.” The challenge is for these companies to use that involvement in their marketing.
My co-facilitator Renee Spears will present the example of her company, Rose City Mortgage Specialists, which has made the list of Oregon’s 100 Best Small Companies to Work For as well as 100 Best Green Companies.
We’re approaching the task in a seemingly roundabout way. In essence we’re putting both “public” and “relations” back into public relations. Internal PR is just as important, if not more important, in fact, as external PR. For us, PR for community involvement is a three-step process, answering a number of questions:
Step 1: Revise your brand
What is your purpose? Why are you in business? What is your story – founding myth? What are your vision and mission? What is your marketing/communication strategy? Who are your target audiences? What are your marketing channels? How are you involved in the community? What are your accomplishments?
Know why you exist, why you’re in business. Be prepared to share your story with your audiences through your channels.
Renee will share the founding myth of her company, outline her marketing strategy, and summarize the company’s community involvement, which includes volunteering and donations.
Step 2: Strengthen your internal communication
Who are your employees? How do you hire them? Are your employees aligned behind the company’s purpose, vision, and mission? How do you manifest your brand among your staff? What channels do you use to communicate with staff?
Hire on values and for community involvement. Engage staff around your purpose and community involvement.
Renee will talk about her employees and hiring practices and go through the company’s channels for communicating community involvement throughout the company, which include meetings, social media, and monitoring/tracking.
Step 3: Use your external communication channels
What marketing channels do you utilize to communicate with your stakeholders? Do your marketing tools communicate your community involvement? Do your employees share your story and talk about your community involvement?
Share the story of your community involvement through your channels. Encourage your employees to share your story wherever they go (they will do that on their own if you get Steps 1 and 2 right).
Renee will outline Rose City’s marketing/PR channels and employee engagement in external communication, using the examples of networking, holiday cards, advertisements, awards, newsletters, press and broadcast media, and social media.
Maximizing community involvement
It’s deceptively simple. For your company’s community involvement to find its way into the media, your company needs to share a single story with a single voice. You must have a purpose to rally your staff around. Everyone in your company must be involved, and thus invested, in the community. Your employees should be your primary channel for communicating your – their – community involvement; after all, they’re the ones doing it. Forget your “mission statement” or “talking points”. Let your employees speak for themselves, and the media attention will come, though some of it you’ll have to work for.
How have you or your company used public relations to communicate community involvement?
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