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Nonprofit Radio for February 5, 2024: Zombie Loyalists

 

Peter ShankmanZombie Loyalists

Peter Shankman is a 5x best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker. His book “Zombie Loyalists” focuses on customer service; creating rabid fans who do your social media, marketing and PR for you. Peter’s book isn’t new, but his strategies and tactics are timeless. This originally aired 12/19/14.

 

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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the effects of brom hydros if I had to walk through the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate to introduce this week’s show. Hey, Tony now I’m on it. It’s zombie loyalists. Peter Shankman is a five time best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker. His book, Zombie Loyalists focuses on customer service creating rabid fans who dear social media marketing and pr for you. Peter’s book isn’t new, but his strategies and tactics are timeless. This originally aired December 19th 2014 on Tony’s Take Two. How’s your endowment were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org here is zombie loyalists. Peter Shankman is a well known and often quoted social media marketing and public relations strategist. His latest book is zombie loyalists. He wants you to create rabid fans who do your social media marketing and pr for you. He’s got super ideas and very valuable stories. I’m very glad Peter Shankman is with me in the studio. He’s the founder of Harrow, help a reporter out connecting journalists with sources in under two years from starting it in his apartment, Harrow was sending out 1500 media queries a week to more than 200,000 sources worldwide. It was acquired by Vocus in 2010. He’s the founder and CEO of the geek factory, a boutique social media marketing and pr strategy firm in New York City. Peter is on nasa’s civilian advisory council. You’ll find him at shankman.com and he’s at Peter Shankman on Twitter. His latest book is Zombie Loyalists using great service to create rabid fans. I’m very glad his book brings him to nonprofit radio and the studio. Welcome Peter. Good to be here, honey. Thanks. Pleasure you um live on the uh on the west side of Manhattan. I do. And you, there’s a, there’s a pretty well known five star steakhouse. Uh I’ll get Wolfgang’s not far from you, but you pass it to go to a different steakhouse. Morton’s correct. Why is that? I am a zombie loyalist to Morton’s. What does that mean? I uh love the service, the attention to detail, the quality, the, the sort of where everyone knows my name mentality. When I walk into that Mortons or any Mortons around the world, they have a tremendous uh custom relationship management system uh when I call one number uh in New York or anywhere in the world, it, it, they know who I am by my cell phone and uh I’m treated with uh just, you know, phenomenal uh uh happiness to, to hear from me and, and my wishes are granted as it were. I, we have a happy hour uh holiday party coming up at Morton’s next couple of days. And uh you know, as always, I forgot to call and make a reservation and, you know, I called yesterday and said, hey, I need a, uh, any chance I get a reservation for seven people, um, you know, Thursday night at, uh, 7 p.m. which is, you know, the, the week of the holiday party. And, uh, they looked and they said, oh, well, and then I guess their computer system kicked in, of course, Mr Shankman. Not a problem at all. We’ll get that for you right away. You know, we’ll have, we’ll have a great booth for you. Um, you know, and we’ll, we’ll, uh, tell us the names of the people attending, you know, you know, you know, they’re gonna have specialized menus for them and with their names on them. So they really, they have a really high level of service that, uh, that they provide. Not just to me that’s the beauty of it. I mean, you know, it’s one thing, yeah, it’s one thing if they just provide it to me, but they they do that for everyone. And, um, that is huge because, you know, being able to call when a normal person makes a reservation and, and not that I’m special, I’m actually rather abnormal. But, um, when a normal person makes a reservation and says, uh, you know, Morton says, ok, great. Are you celebrating anything? Oh, yeah, it’s my wife’s birthday. They always ask anyone who calls. I said, oh, you know what, it’s my wife’s birthday. Great. What’s her name? Her name is Megan or whatever. And you go in and they um and you sit down on the, on the, on the uh menu, it says Happy Birthday, Megan and then Megan, whoever she happens to be will spend the next 45 minutes, you know, taking 50 selfies with her menu and, and, and that’ll go online and then when her friends, you know, want that same experience, they’re gonna go Morton’s. You say uh in, in the book you get the customers you want by being beyond awesome to the customers you have. And that’s why I want to start with that Morton story which is in the middle of the book, but they do it for everybody and then they have the VIP S as well. And there’s the terrific story of you tweeting. Go tell that story. That’s a good story. It’s a good story. I love stories. I, I was flying home from a day trip to Florida and was exhausted and starving and, um, day trip mean you’re flying down, I flew down at 6 a.m. at a lunch meeting, flew back the same day. You know, one of those, one of those days. And, uh, I jokingly said the tweet, hey Mortons, why don’t you meet me at Newark Airport when I land with a poer house in two hours? Ha ha ha, ha, ha. Um, you know, I said it the same way you’d say, hey, winter, please stop snowing things like that. And I landed, uh, find my driver and sit next to my driver is a, uh, is a, a waiter in a tuxedo with a Morton’s bag. Uh, they saw my Tweet, they, they put it together, they managed to bring me a, uh, a, uh, steak and, and, you know, as great of a story as it is. That’s, that’s, it’s a great stunt and it’s a great story and it wasn’t a stage and it was completely amazing. But, you know, that’s not what they’re about. They’re not about delivering steaks to airports. They’re about making a great meal for you and treating you like royalty when you come in. And, you know, I, I, if they just did that, if they just delivered the steak at the airport, but their quality and service sucked. You know, it wouldn’t be a story. He said, oh, you know, look what they did for Peter, but I, you know, my steaks cold, you know, so what it really comes down to is the fact they do treat everyone like kings and that’s, that’s really, really important because what winds up happening is you have a great experience at Morton’s and then you tell the world, you know. Oh, yeah, great dinner last night. That was amazing. I would totally eat there again. And as we move to this new world where, you know, review sites are going away and I don’t, I don’t need to go to Yelp to read reviews from people. I don’t know, you know, if they’re shills or whatever the case may be, I don’t know, or tripadvisor, same thing. I want people in my network who I trust and, and people in their network who they trust and then by default I trust. So that’s gonna be, that’s already happening automatically. You know, when I, when I land in L A and I type in steakhouse, uh, you know, not me. I know, I know where the steakhouse are in L A but if someone types into Google Maps or Facebook steakhouse in Los Angeles, you know, they’ll see all the steakhouses on a Google map. But if any of their friends have been to any of them, they’ll see those first. And if they had a good experience, only if the sentiment was positive, will they see those first? And that’s pretty amazing because if you think about that, the simple act of tweeting out a photo. Oh, my God. Thanks so much, Mortons love this. That’s positive sentiment. The network knows that. And so if you’re looking for a steakhouse, you know, and your friend six months ago had that experience. Oh my God, amazing steak. This is a great place there. The sentiment is gonna be there and, and, and the network will know that the network will show you that steakhouse because you trust your friend. And this is where we start to cultivate zombie loyalists through this, through this awesome customer service of the customers. You, you have, uh say more about zombies. I mean, you have so many companies out there who are trying to get the next greatest customer. You know, you see all the ads, um, you know, the, the, the, the, the Facebook post, you know, we’re at 990 followers, our 10, our 1/1000 follower gets a free gift. Well, that’s kind of saying screw you to the original 990 followers who you had, who were there since the beginning? We don’t care about you. We want that 1000. You know, that’s not cool. Um, the, the, the companies who see their numbers rise and who see their fans increase and their, their, um, um, revenues go up are the ones who are nice to the customers. They have, hey, you know, customer 852 it was really nice of you to join us a couple of months ago. How, you know how are you, we, we noticed that you posted on something about a, uh, you know, your car broke down. Well, you know, we’re not in the car business but, you know, you’re, you’re two blocks from our, our closest, uh, outlet or whatever and, you know, once you, if you, if you need to come in, have a free cup of coffee, we’ll use the phone, whatever. You know, those little things that you can do that, that, that really focus on the customers you have and make the customers, you have the ones who are the zombies who tell other customers how great you are. And this all applies to nonprofits certainly as well. I mean, the, the, but even more so, I mean, if you, you know, nonprofits are constantly worried about how to, how to make the most value out of their dollar and how to keep the dollar stretching further and further. And, uh, you know, you have this massive audience who, who has come to you, who’s a nonprofit and who said to you, you know, we wanna help here, we are volunteering our help and just simply treating them with the thanks that they deserve. Not just a simple, hey, thanks for joining car, but actually reaching out asking what they want, asking how they like to get their information, things like that will greatly increase, um, your donations as well as, um, making them go out and tell everyone how awesome you are. And letting them do your pr for you. And that’s what a zombie loyalist does. And, and this is for, this could be, donors could be volunteers to the organization who aren’t able to give a lot. But giving time is enormous. And if, you know, if they have such a great time doing it, they’ll bring friends as, as zombies. Do you know, zombies have one purpose in life. Real zombies have one purpose in life that’s to feed. It doesn’t matter how the Mets are doing. It doesn’t matter, you know, because a chance that they lost anyway. But it doesn’t matter how, uh how anyone’s doing, you know, or what’s going on in the world economy. It doesn’t matter what matters with a zombie. Where are they gonna get their next meal? Because they feed and they have to infect more people otherwise they will die. Zombie loyalists are the same thing. All they have to do is make sure that their custom, they, they tell the world and we all have that friend who does it. You know, that one friend who eats, eats nothing but the Olive Garden because, oh my God, it’s greatest breadsticks everywhere. You know, and they will drag your ass to the Olive Garden every single time they get that chance. That’s a zombie loyalist. And you want them to do that for your nonprofit. And there’s, there’s a big advantage to being a smaller, a smaller organization. You could be so much more high touch and we’re gonna talk about all that. We got the full hour with Peter Shankman. We gotta go away for a couple of minutes. Stay with us. It’s time for a break. Open up new cashless in person donation opportunities with donor box live kiosk. The smart way to accept cashless donations anywhere, anytime picture this a cash free on site giving solution that effortlessly collects donations from credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets. No team member required. Thus, your donation data is automatically synced with your donor box account. No manual data entry or errors make giving a breeze and focus on what matters your costs. Try donor box live kiosk and revolutionize the way you collect donations in 2024 visit donor box.org to learn more. Now back to zombie loyalists, Peter, it doesn’t take much to uh stand out in the customer service world does it, it really doesn’t, you know, and the reason for that is because we expect to be treated like crap. You know, if you think that III I love this example. Whenever I give speeches, I ask, I ask everyone in the audience, I’m like, who here has had a great flight recently? At least one person will raise their hand. I’m like, ok, what made it great? And without fail, their answer said, well, we took off on time and, and I had the seat I was assigned and we landed on time and like, so you paid for a service, they delivered that service and you’re over the freaking moon about it. Like, that’s the state that we’ve become. You know, that’s how bad customer service has been that you are just beyond thrilled that they did exactly what they said they were gonna do with nothing more, less than 20 minutes in the post office line. And I’m ecstatic. Exactly. You know, it’s, it’s so, we really are at a point where we only have to be one level above crap. I, I’m not even asking my clients to be good. Just one level of crap. You know, if everyone else is crap and you’re one level above that, you’re gonna win. It’s my favorite, one of my favorite jokes. Um, the, uh, the two guys are out in the woods, hunting out in the woods and the, or just jogging out in the woods. The first one sees a, a bear and they see this bear and the bear is raised up and he’s about to strike. And the first one, you know, reaches down and tightens up his, his laces on his running shoes. And the second one says, dude, don’t be, don’t be, don’t be an idiot. You can’t run a bear. And he says, I don’t need to, I just need to outrun you. You know, I love that joke because it’s, it’s so true. That’s the concept. You know, all you have to do is be just a little bit better than everyone else and, and you’ll win the whole ball game. Now, we have to set some things up internally in order to have the, the structure in place to create these, the zombie loyalists. Yeah. I mean, you have a, you have a company where the majority of people in your company are afraid to do anything outside the norm. You know, I mean, look at, look at a cell phone company, you know, they, you call them because you have a problem right AT&T or T Mobile, you call them, you have a problem. They are actually the customer service people that handle your call are actually judged and rewarded based on how quickly they can get you off the phone. You know, not on whether or not they fix your problem, but how fast they can get you off the phone, which means how many more calls they get. I remember I worked, uh, when I worked in America online, we all had to do a day of customer service every month just to see what it was like, which I thought was a brilliant idea. But, you know, again, it’s this, it’s, it was a system called V I where you’d sign on and as soon as you signed on, if you weren’t in a call, you know, that was tacked against you. And if you were in a call and, and it went over a certain amount of time, that was tacked against you. So the decks were stacked not in the favor of the customer. There are some companies out there who allow their customer service employees to simply be smarter about what they do and do whatever it is they need to do to fix the problem. Um You know, my favorite story about this is Verizon Wireless. I, I went overseas, I was in Dubai and I landed in Dubai and I turned on my phone, I had gotten global roaming on my phone which, you know, 20 bucks for every 100 megabytes. Ok. So I land and I turn on my phone and it says, um, uh, like before I’m even off the plane, I get a text that you’ve used $200 in roaming charges. I’m like, what the hell, you know, $300 by the time I get off the plane, I’m like, something’s up here. So I call Verizon and a nice guy answered the phone and, oh, yes, I mean, you know, the first thing is it was, yes. So you do have global roaming but it, it doesn’t work in Dubai. So I’m like, ok, well, that’s not really global, that’s more hemispherical roaming I think is, is the issue. And um, so he, uh I said, well, look, I’m gonna be here for a week. I said, you know what? You have my credit card on file bill me like, I don’t know. Can you bill me like 1000 bucks and just let me have the phone for like the week and you know, that, you know, or 500 bucks, I won’t go over two gigs. Well, just do something for me. Sorry, sir. I’m not authorized to do that. Um, you can, I’m like, so what do I have? He’s like, well, you can pay, uh, $20.48 a megabyte. I’m like, I’m sorry, seriously, which equates essentially to, I would be charged $20.48 seconds, $20.48 for every, I think at the time for every four seconds of the video, Gangnam style if I decided to watch it on my phone, like this is pretty ridiculous. So I simply hung up, hung up on Verizon. I went down the street to the Dubai, the mall of the Emirates, which is the largest mall in the world. Has a freaking ski slope in it. And I’m not joking. It has a ski slope in this mall and uh went to one of like the 86 different electronic stores in this mall. Uh bought an international unlocked version of the same exact cellphone. I have went next door to the local uh SIM card store, bought a SIM card that gave me 20 gigabytes of data and 1000 minutes of talk for $40. I then put that in my phone because it’s an Android phone. I simply typed in my user name. And password for Google and everything imported. And Verizon did not get a penny on that trip. Um, how easy would have been for Verizon to say, ok, you know what, we’ll cut your break. Uh, they’d still make a lot of money off me and I would tell the world how great Verizon was to work with and how wonderful they, how helpful they were. Instead, they guaranteed that I will never, that they will never make a penny for me on any international trip. And I take what, 15 of them a year because now my cell phone, um my international cell phone that I bought, all I do is pop out the SIM card and I land wherever I am put in a new SIM card. So, and you’re speaking and writing and telling bad stories and every time I tell the story about Verizon, I make it a little worse. Apparently, Verizon uh tests out the durability of their phone by throwing them at kittens. I read this on the internet. It must be true, but, you know, not necessarily, but you know, the concept that, that all they had to do, all they had to do was empower Mark customer service and it wasn’t Mark’s fault. Mark was a really nice guy, but he was not allowed to do that. He would have gotten fired if he tried to do a deal like that for me. And so it’s this concept, you know, and the funny thing is, is it comes down to, if you really wanna go, go down the road in terms of a public company like Verizon of, of, of where the issue is, you could even trace it to fiduciary responsibility because the fiduciary responsibility of any company CEO all the way down to the employee is to make money for the shareholders. Ok. That’s what fiti responsibility means by not allowing me by not allowing mark the customer service agent to, to help me and, and take a different tack. He’s actually losing money too many CEO S think about the next quarter. Oh, we have to make our numbers next quarter. I’m fired. Companies in other countries tend to think about the next quarter century and they make a much bigger difference because they think, ok, what can we do now that will have impact in the next 5, 1015 years, you know, and really implement the revenue that we have and, and augment and companies in America. Don’t, don’t tend to think about that and that’s a big problem. Um, I, I buy a product line, uh, that has a lot of natural and recycled materials in the seventh generation. And their, um, their tagline is that in, in, in our every decision, we must consider the impact on the next seven generations. It comes from an American Indian. It’s a great, it’s a great line. I mean, just think about how much money Verizon would have made for me in the past three years. Just, just in my overseas, you’d be telling a story about like them, about Morton’s like the one about MS, you know, look, a lot of people listen to me and they went for a time when you googled roaming charges. When you Google Verizon roaming charges. My story about how I saved all this money came up first because I did the math. And if I had not called Mark and bought my own cell phone and done this, I would have come home to a $31,000 cell phone bill and you know, damn well, Verizon wouldn’t know anything about that. They’d be like, oh, too bad, sorry about the fine print. And plus the, the employee who sold you the international plan. I’m sure you told her where you going, I’m going to Canada and I’m going to Dubai. I’m assuming she didn’t know where Dubai was. She probably thought it was near Canada. But uh long story short, I couldn’t use it. All right. So employees have to be empowered. There has to be, we have to be but changing AAA thinking too. I mean, the customer has to come first. The donor of the volunteer donor, the teer you get at the end of the day. Where’s your money coming from? I don’t care if you’re a nonprofit or fortune 100. Where’s your money coming from? You know, and if you, we see it happening over and over again. We see it. Right. You’re seeing it right now. Play out every single day with the company, Uber. Um, and Uber, it’s so funny because Uber makes, uh, you know, they’re valued at $40 billion right now. But that doesn’t mean anything, that doesn’t mean anything if people are running away in droves which people are, there’s a whole delete your Uber app movement. Oh God. Yeah, people are leaving. Uh Well, it’s several. Number one that Uber is run by a bunch of guys who honor the bro code. The company was actually started by a guy who on business in business insider said he started the company to get laid. Um His goal was to always have a black car when he was leaving a restaurant uh to impress the girl he was with. That’s he came out and said that and you see that culture run rampant throughout Uber um from their God mode where they can see they actually created. There was a uh uh I don’t know where I read this. It might have been Business Insider as well. There was a, they created a hookup page that showed or, or, or, or a walk of shame page that showed where uh women were leaving certain apartments like on weekends and going or leaving certain place on weekends, going back to their home. Um It was obvious that they, you know, met some guy and they did that and then, of course, just their, their whole surge pricing mentality, which is, you know, two days ago there was a, uh, a couple of days ago there was a, uh, the terrorist, uh, I think it was a terrorist attack in Sydney, uh, at that, at that bakery and Sydney, uh, Uber in Sydney instituted surge pricing for people trying to get out of harm’s way. You know? And, and they, they later refunded it. Oh, it was a computer glitch. I’m like, you know, I’m sorry, you, you have a stop button and you can, when you see something happening like that, there has to be someone in the office who can say, you know what? Not cool. We’re gonna take care of that and then hit the stop button and it was, yeah, bad, tons and tons and tons of bad publicity. And, you know, I was having an argument with someone on my Facebook page at facebook.com/peter Shankman because they said, oh, you know, um, so what they don’t, they don’t turn on surge pricing. They don’t have enough cabs there and, you know, people can’t get home. I said I’m pretty sure that the only company I’m sure that no one had cab companies there. I’m sure that there wasn’t anyone who had enough cars there, private cabs, Ubers, whatever yet. The only stories I read about companies screwing up during that event were Uber, not Joe’s Sydney cab company. You know, I didn’t see him screwing it up because he didn’t turn on surge pricing. You gotta, you gotta respect your customer. You have to, as we’re uh training for that, then not only uh trying to change that mindset, well, in, in trying to change that mindset rewards for, for customer, for employees that, that do take go do go the extra mile. Well, first of all, if you give the employees the ability to do it to go the extra mile and understand they won’t get fired. You’re not gonna get in trouble. I I always tell, tell every one of my employees, you’re never gonna get in trouble for spending a little extra money to try and keep a customer happy. You’ll get fired for not doing it. You know, you get fired for not for seeing an opportunity to fix someone and not taking it, not doing everything that you know, Ritz Carlton is famous for that. Ritz Carlton hires people not because whether they could fold the bed sheet but for how well they understand people because in Ritz Carlton’s mind, it’s much more important to be a people person and be able to be empathetic and that is such a key word. Empathy is just so so sorely lacking. You know how many you’ve called customer service? Yeah. You know, I have to, I have to change my flight. My, my, my aunt just died. I really need to get home. Ok, great. That’s $300. I just wanna go an hour earlier, you know, you show up at the airport, your bag is overweight by half a pound. That’s $75. I just, I can, you can, you just cut me some slack. Nope, you know, so empathy and giving the cust, giving the employee the ability to understand that the customer that sometimes you can make exceptions and it is ok to make changes and, and this is where a smaller organization has huge advantage and it’s easier to change. That’s what kills me. You know, I go to these, I, I try to frequent small businesses when I can, I go to some of these small businesses and they won’t, they, they act like large businesses, you know, in the respect that, that they don’t have a, like, they wanna be respected almost. They don’t have like a six, a 6000 page code that they have to adhere to. They can simply, uh, do something on the fly and yet for whatever reason they won’t do it. And, and it’s the most frustrating thing is like, guys, you, you’re acting like a big, you’re acting like mega Laar here, you know, and you’re not Mega Lamar and you’re just Joe’s House of stationery, whatever it is and, you know, not being able to help me, you’re pretty much killing yourself because you don’t have 85 billion customers that have come through the door after me, you know. But I have a pretty big network and for a small business to get killed socially as social becomes more and more what, how we communicate. You know, it’s just craziness. It’s, you know, we’re, we’re pretty much in a world, I think where something almost hasn’t happened to you. Unless, unless you share it. I joked that, uh, you know, if I can’t take a selfie was I really there. Um, but it’s true, you know, we, we do live in a world where, you know, I, I remember God 10 years ago, maybe not even, not even 10 years ago. I was one of the first people to have a phone in my camera, you know, and it was like a new phone. That’s what I said, yeah, camera in my phone, right? And it was like a uh I think it was like a 0.8 megapixel. You know, it looked like I was taking a picture with a potato but it was, um it was this, I remember it was 2002 and I was in Chase Bank and there was a woman arguing with the teller and I pulled out my video, you know, it was, I mean, it was the crappiest video you’ve ever seen. But I pulled it out and I said, you know, II I started recording and the, the woman behind the woman behind the counter was going, the woman behind the counter was talking to the customer saying you do not speak to me that way. You get out of this bank right now. And the customer was saying I just wanted my balance and you and the manager comes over and I get this whole thing on my little crappy three G uh Motorola phone phone. And I, I remember I posted online and gawker picks it up and II I gave him, I, I emailed it, you know, I, my, the headline I put on my blog was, you know, Chase where the right relationship is at. Go after yourself, you know, and it was, and it just got tons of play and then gawker picked it up. It went everywhere, totally viral. So it’s one of those things you’re just like, you know, this is in 2002. It’s 12 years later. How the hell can you assume that nothing is being that you’re not being recorded? You know, I, I, I remember blowing, I, I sneezed a couple of weeks ago and, and, uh, uh not to get too graphic here, but it was, I, I needed a tissue big time after I was done sneezing. And I remember going through my pockets looking for desperately looking for tissue and like looking around making sure I wasn’t on camera somewhere that someone didn’t grab that and it was give me the next viral sensation, you know, I mean, I wait, God, I went to high school with eight blocks from here, right? If the amount of cameras that are in Lincoln Center today. Were there in 1989 1990. I’d be having this conversation entirely. I’d be having this conversation behind bulletproof for myself. And you’d be, yeah. So, you know, you’d be, you’d be talking to me, you’d have to get special clearance to visit me. Probably be at the, the Super Max in Colorado or something. So, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s one of those things that you’re just like my kid who’s, who’s almost two years old now is gonna grow up with absolutely no expectation of privacy the same way that we grew up with an expectation of privacy. And I’m thankful for that because she will make a lot less stupid moves. You know, I mean, God, the things that I thought, you know, in, in, in, in high school, I thought the stupidest thing in the world. Thank God. There wasn’t a way for me to broadcast that to the world in real time. Jeez. Thank God creating these uh zombie loyalists. And you know, we’ve got to change some, we’ve got to change culture and thinking and reward systems. Let’s go back to the, the cost of all this. Why is this a better investment than trying to just focus on new donors? I, I love, I love this analogy and I’ll give you a fun analogy. Let’s, I’m in a bar and there’s a very cute girl across the, across the bar and she catches my eye catch her, I go up to her and I go, you know, you don’t know me. I am amazing in bed. You should finish your drink right now. Come home. Let’s get it on. I’m, I’m gonna impress I’m that good chances are she’s gonna throw a drink in my face. Go back talking to her friends. I’ve done a lot of research on this. That’s probably something I was gonna do now. Let’s assume, let’s assume an alternate world. I’m sitting there on my phone, I’m just playing like, you know, some, you know, words with friends or something like that. And, uh, she’s over there talking to her friends and one of her friends look up said, holy crap. That’s Peter. I think that’s Peter Shankman. I’ve heard him speak. I, he’s in this fantasy world. I’m single too today. He, I think he’s single and he’s having this amazing guy. I, I know he has a cat. You have a cat. You should totally go talk to him at the very least. I’m getting this girl’s number. That’s pr ok. And what do we trust more? Me with my, you know, fancy suit collar going over there in my seventies, leisure suit. Hi. I’m amazing. Or the girl saying, hey, we’ve been friends since third grade. I’m recommending that guy. You should trust me on this. You know, obviously that, that’s where, uh, good customer service comes into play and that’s where corporate culture comes into play because if I have a great experience with you and at your company, I’m gonna tell my friend when they’re looking and I will stake my personal reputation on it and there’s nothing stronger than that. And these are the people who want to breed as Zz Willis that’s stronger than advertising, stronger than marketing. And they’re gonna share, people wanna share that. Think about the, the internet runs on two things. It runs on drama, drama, and bragging or bragging and drama. And if you, if you need uh any proof of that, you know, go and look at all the hashtags with crap that’s happened, you know, bad customer service, bad whatever. But then look at all the good hashtags you know it when our flights delayed for three hours and we lose our seat. Oh my God, I hate this airline, you know, worst airline ever but when we get upgraded, right? Hashtag first class bitches or whatever it is, you know, something stupid like that and the whole because we love to share. It’s, it’s only a great experience if we could tell the world and it’s only a bad experience if we can make everyone else miserable about it as well. Its time for Tonys take two. Thank you, Kate. How’s your endowment endowment? That savings account that your nonprofit has that you only spend the interest of each year and maybe sometimes you don’t even spend that much from year to year planned giving. Can help you either launch your endowment if you don’t have one or grow your endowment if it needs to be bigger. And I don’t know many nonprofits that think uh we have enough, our endowment is big enough. We don’t need any more and giving accelerator. I will help you in the accelerator to launch planned giving so that you can start your endowment or grow your endowment throughout the three months of the course, We go March to May done by Memorial Day. So there’s no impinging on your summer plans. We’ll spend an hour a week together on Zoom over those 12 weeks and I will guide you step by step. Had a launch Planned Giving at your nonprofit. I set those weekly meetings up as meetings in Zoom. So there’s lots of cross talk between the members. People are helping each other. There’s a lot of peer support. Uh Aside from the teaching that I’m doing uh each week, if thats of interest to you, please check out Planned Giving accelerator.com promoting the course in uh the rest of this month. And then it starts in early March. That is Tony’s take two Kate. It sounds like a very valuable course. We hope people join. Yes, we do. You’re right about that. We’ve got Buku but loads more time. Let’s go back to zombie loyalists with Peter Shankman. Peter. You have a uh golden rule of social media that a good number of customers like to share and people are gonna keep doing it. People will always share. Um, again, it goes back to the concept that if you create great stuff, people wanna share it because people like to be associated with good things. If you create bad stuff and by stuff, I can mean, I mean, anything from like a bad experience to bad content, people not only won’t share that, but we go out of their way to tell people how terrible you are. Um, you know, how many times have you seen companies fail horribly, uh, you know, after major disasters when companies are tweeting, um, you know, completely unrelated things. Uh, uh, after, after a random school shooting. Uh, no, it was after the, uh, the, the shooting at the, the theater in Aurora, Colorado at the Dark Knight. Um, the Nr A tweets, hey, shooters, what’s your plans for this weekend? You know, and I’m just sitting there going really, you know, but, and of course, the thing was, the thing was retweeted millions of times, you know, with a sort of shame on the NR A. So we, we’re a society like I said earlier that loves to share when, when great things happen to us, but loves to tell the world when we’re miserable because we’re only truly miserable when we make everyone else miserable around us. Um, it’s funny you mentioned, uh, um, the Generosity series, uh, the, one of my favorite stories which goes to sort of a uh a bigger picture of culture and um somehow when you’re just doing your job because that’s what you’re, you’re supposed to do your job. But you don’t realize there are ways to get around that. I, I listen to your podcast among others uh when I’m running through Central Park. Um and more like if you know, my body type, more like lumbering through Central Park. But I, I get there, I’m an iron man. I have, I have that and um so I go through Central Park and it’s super early in the morning because I usually have meetings and I don’t run fast. Um I run like, I really don’t run fast but, but as I’m running, but let’s give you the credit. You have done a bunch of iron man. I do, I do it. You know, my mother tells me that I just have very poor judgment in terms of what sports I should do. But um on the flip side, I’m also a skydiver, which is with my weight is awesome. I fall better than anyone. Um But uh so I’m running through Central Park last year. It was February, uh February 13 and 14. It was of this year. And um it was probably around 445 in the morning because I had a uh I had an 8 a.m. meeting and I had to do 10 miles. So 445 in the morning, I’m running at around 90 79th 80th street on the east side in the park. And a cop pulls me over and he says, what are you doing? And I look at him, you know, I’m wearing black spandex. I have a hat. It’s five degrees and I’m like, what, what playing checkers? You know what, you know, I’m like, I’m running and he, he’s like, ok, can you stop running? I’m like, ok, he’s like the park’s closed. I’m like, no, it’s not like I’m in it. Look around, there are other people. No park doesn’t open until 6 a.m. I’m like, he’s like, uh, do you have any idea on you? I’m like, no, I’m running. He goes, what’s your name? I’m like, seriously. He said, I’m writing you a summons. I’m like, you’re writing me a summons for exercising for I for ex, I just wanna clarify this. You’re writing music and sure enough, the guy wrote me a summons for exercising in Central Park before it opened. The, the charge was breaking the violating curfew. You know, I’m like, I get the concept of the curfew. It’s to keep people out after 2 a.m. It’s not to prevent them from going in early to exercise, to be healthy. I’m like, I’m not carrying, you know, a six pack. I’m not drinking a big gulp. I’m not smoking. I’m, I’m, you know, I’m, I’m doing something healthy and you’re writing me a summons for it. Um, and I said, you know, I’m gonna have a field day with this. I said iii I kinda have some followers. This is gonna be a lot of fun. I’m not, you know, I know you’re just doing your job, sir, even though you have the discretion not to. But ok, so I go back home, I take a picture of my ticket. I email it to a friend of mine of the New York Post, you know, front page, New York Post next day. No, running from this ticket, you know, front page, of course, that’s great. New York Times covered it. Uh Runners world covered it. I mean, I went everywhere, gawker covered it, you know, and, and my whole thing was, it’s just like, dude, you have discretion. Look at me, you know, I’m not, I’m not even going super fast for God’s sake. I’m just, I’m just trying to exercise here, you know, and of course I went to court and I, I beat it. But how much money did it cost the city for me to go to court? Fight this thing. You know, every employee you have to give your employees the power of discretion, the power of empathy to make their own decisions. If you go by the book, bad things will happen. And again, small shops so much easier to do flat line flat organizations. I, I work with a nonprofit um animal rescue, no profit. Um A friend of mine was a skydiver and uh shout him out. What’s the, I can’t, there’s a reason I can. But, but there’s a friend of mine was a skydiver and she was killed in a base jump several years ago. And her husband asked to donate in her memory to this nonprofit. So I sent him a check. And about three months later I get a coffee table book in the mail. And I was living by myself at the time I didn’t own a coffee table. It was, you know, more money to spend on my flat screen. And um I uh I remember I call, I, I look at this coffee table, I throw, I throw it in the corner, I look at it over the next couple of days. It pisses me off about how much, how much of my donation did it cost to print mail and produce this book to me. And so I, I called them up. Well, sir, we believe most of our donors are older and probably prefer to get a print version as opposed to like digital, you know, where they’d throw it away and like, you don’t throw digital away, but ok. Um I’m like, so, so you’ve asked your, you’ve done surveys and you’ve asked all, no, we just assume that most of them are older. I’m like, ok, so I opened my mouth wound up joining their board and I spent the next year interviewing uh customers interviewing every current and past donor about how they like to get their information and shock of shock, 94% said online. And so over the following year, we launched Facebook page, Twitter page, uh um uh Flickr account, uh youtube everything PS The following year for that donations went up 37% in one year. In that economy. It was right around 0809 donations went up 37% in one year and they saved over $500,000 in printing, mailing and reproduction. Imagine going to your boss, hey, boss, revenue is up 37% and we saved a half million dollars. Your boss is gonna buy you a really good beer. You know, all they had to do was listen to their audience be relevant to the audience you have and they will tell you what they want. We have tons of tools for segmentation. You gotta listen to what segment you wanna, people wanna be in. You know, someone, someone asked me the other day. So what, what’s the best? I, I knew nothing about their company. What’s the best uh social media I left for me to be on, should I be on Twitter or should I be on Facebook? I said, I’ll answer that question if you can answer this, this question, I’m gonna ask you is my favorite type of cheese Gouda or the number six. And they say, I don’t understand. That’s not a real question. I’m like, neither is yours. Like I can’t tell you where the best place to be your audience? Can I said, go ask your audience, believe me, they will tell you there’s a gas station in the Midwest. Come and go. Um, I, I just love the name Kum and go, come and go and you can read more about the, their tagline is always something extra. I mean, come on the jokes, just write them for god’s sake. But, um, and they don’t take themselves too seriously. I love that and knowing the name of the company gas station. And, um, you know, I, I like, I remember they were in Iowa and I went up to visit a friend in Iowa and I was like, you gotta get a photo of me in front of the come and go sign, you know, and, um, the beauty of this is that some of their employees actually look at their customers when they’re on their phones in the stores and go, oh, you know, what do you use Twitter more? Or Facebook? And they say, oh, I use that and they record that information and they know it. God customers will give you so much info if you just ask them because then they feel invested, they feel invested in your company. They feel like they, that you took the time to listen to their nonprofit request or their, their, their questions and they feel like they’re, I did it for Harrow every month. We’d have a one question. Harrow survey, you know, Harrow one question survey. And it was, we get like 1000 people respond and I’d spend the entire weekend emailing everyone who responded and thanking them personally, took my entire weekend. But it was great because what would wind up happening is that, you know, if we took their advice and launched it on Monday with the new thing? They go, oh my God. How did this for me? They took my advice. Well, yeah, it was your advice to 800 other people’s advice. But we took it and they’d be like, oh my God, it’s a good thing. And, and it just, it just made them so much more loyal and they’d tell hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people we’d get, I mean, there were days my God, there were days I remember I was in temple one morning, the garment center synagogue and my phone, I feel my phone getting really hot in my pocket, which is not normal and I was starting to hurt and I look at it, I, it’s, it’s almost on fire. It had frozen because we were mentioned in Seth Godin’s morning blog. And at that time I was getting uh emails every time we get a new subscriber and the phone is actually frozen and was locked and, and was like overheating. I take out the battery and like reset the entire phone because we just got so many new, like 14,000 subscribers in like three hours. It’s obscene, it’s obscene. You say, excuse me, you say uh that customer service is the new advertising. Marketing. N pr It really is. Well, again, you know, if we’re moving into that world where, so imagine a lava lamp. And I love that. I can use this analogy. Imagine a lava lamp. A lava lamp has water, oil and a heat source, right? The heat source heats the oil, the oil flows through the water. It makes pretty colors. I’ve heard it looks really good when you’re high. Now, I’ve heard. Now, imagine if, oh, crystals. Imagine if you’re, uh, everyone you meet in your network. Ok. Is a drop of oil? The water is your network and the water is your world. Everyone you meet in your network. Uh, from, from the guy you’re sitting doing the radio interview with, to the guy who serves you ice cream with local deli to the guy who does your dry cleaning to your girlfriend, to your wife. To not at the same time to your kid’s second grade teacher, to your second grade teacher years ago. Everyone you meet is in your network. You know, right now when Facebook first started, I would see the same weight from a kid. I went to junior high school with, he, his post would have the same weight as like my current girlfriend. Which is ridiculous. I don’t need to know about everything. My friend from junior high school is doing. I haven’t talked to the kid in 15 years. Facebook’s gotten a lot smarter as has Google. Now, I see the people I communicate with the most. Ok. And if I, if I reach out and communicate with new people, they start rising in my feet in my stream. If I don’t they fall, it’s just like a lava lamp. Every person you connect with is a drop of oil. That heat source at the bottom that’s rising, raising or lowering. Those drops of oil is relevance. So if you imagine the heat source is relevance and the more I interact with someone, the more the higher they go in my network and the more I see of them, the more trust level there is when I’m at a bar and I meet someone or at a restaurant or conference, I meet someone. I don’t need to um connect them. I don’t need to go on Facebook and friend request them. You know how awkward friend requesting is when you stop and think that last time my friend requested someone in the real world was second grade. Will you be my friend? My daughter’s doing that now she goes, you know, she goes, it’s like the cat. Will you be my friend? I’m like, honey, the cat doesn’t wanna be your friend. But you know, it’s this awkward thing who the hell friend requests someone anymore. If I’m, if I’m hanging out with you at a bar and we connect again and we talk and we go out to dinner and we’re having a good time. We’re friends. I don’t need to first request that you, you know, so that’s going away. Friending following liking and fanning is all going away. What will interact is the actual connection. So, if I meet with you and I have a good time with you and we talk again if I use your business. If I go to your nonprofit, if I donate, if I volunteer, whatever the network knows that the more I do that, the more I interact with you, the more you have the right to market to me and the more you will be at the top of my stream and the more I will see information about you, the less I will have to uh uh search for you. But if you do something stupid or we’re no longer friends see you, you’re gonna fade. I don’t have to unfriend you. You just disappear. Unfriending is also awkward. I dated a woman. We broke up, but it was nine months after we broke up, either of us wanted to unfriend the other one because it was just awkward. So I, I woke up in front of me anyway. But you know, the concept of not having to, to do that of just, you know, OK, I haven’t talked to you in a while. I don’t see your posts anymore. It’s the real world. That’s how it should be, and if you’re not feeding zombie loyalists, they can start to defect. So I, I want to spend a little time on if you’re not talking to them, giving them what they want, talking about their information, helping them out, they will gladly go somewhere else to someone who is, you know, if I have a great experience with the restaurant, uh, every week for three years and then all of a sudden over time, I’m noticing less and less that restaurant’s doing less and less to uh take care of me, you know, and maybe management’s changed and I don’t feel that uh you know, I’m ripe for being infected by another company. I’m ripe for someone else to come and say, you know, Peter. Uh cause if I tweet something like, wow, I can’t believe I have to wait 40 minutes for a table. It didn’t used to be like that. If I, if someone else is a smart restaurant, they’re following me and they’re gonna be great. You know what, Peter? There’s no way, no way over here. Why don’t you come two blocks north and we’ll give you a free drink, you know. Oh, you know, and that right there, that’s the first sign of infection and I might become infected by, by another company, become a zombie loyalist for them. And so let’s, let’s take, you have a lot of good examples. Let’s take a one on one situation. How can we start to cure that. The simple act of realizing following your customer’s understanding when they’re not happy and fixing the situation before it escalates. Um you know, you can contain a small outbreak, a small outbreak, small viral outbreak. You can contain that by getting the right people finding out what the problem is, getting them into one room, fixing their problem, healing them. You have a good uh united story right back when it was Continental, I was uh a frequent flyer and booked a trip to Paris and uh I was very angry because they charged me like $400 in, in booking fees or something like that. I don’t remember what it was. And, uh, I called the CEO, I just, just for the hell of it. I’m like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I wrote, I wrote an email, this was before social and I wrote an email to the CEO and I’m like, this is ridiculous. I’m a frequent da da da da and like 30 minutes later my phone rings like, hello Peter Jman, please hold for Larry Kellner CEO of cotton lines. I’m like, oh crap. You know, and the guy gets on the phone, he’s like Peter, how you doing, Mr Jman? How are you doing? Sorry, listen, these fees, they’re new. Um, we sent them a note, I’m guessing you didn’t see it. We’re gonna waive them for you. But, uh, if you have any more problems, you know, feel free to call me and I hang up the phone for the next 40 minutes just sort of staring at it like, holy crap. Larry Kellner, the CEO of United Airlines just called me and, uh, talk to me and I mean, it was like, it was like God coming down and say you now have the power to levitate your cat. It was just ridiculous. And, um, so, you know, I have been faithful to Continental and now United ever since and, and they continue to treat me with respect and, and do great things and they’re, they’re improving. They, they were getting a lot of crap over the past several years and they really are starting to improve. It’s nice to see and not only, of course, your own loyalty but you’re a loyal guy. You’re a zombie loyalist for them. And how many times how, how much it’s unquantifiable. It’s un, I, I dragged so many friends to United. I’ve, I’ve made so many friends. Uh, I mean, my father, you know, uh, he only flies United now, which means he only drag, he drags my mom only on United. I only dragged my wife on United. There’s a lot of, a lot of work that way. Yeah, we gotta go away for a couple of minutes when we come back. Of course, Peter and I are gonna keep talking about his book comes out in January, zombie loyalists. You have some examples of zombie loyalist leaving en masse like Dominoes, Netflix. They’re both, they’re both in the book. So, so one leaving, if you don’t, if you’re not starting to cure one leaving and then that’s the thing, you know, the beat will be the internet with the hashtags and everything like that, you know, it doesn’t take a long time um for those things to sort of blow up in your face. And, uh, you know, at the end of the day, everyone say, oh, you know, Twitter’s responsible for, for us losing money. No, they’re not. You’re responsible for you losing money. You know, and, and if your product isn’t great and you, your actions don’t speak well of who you are, then there’s no reason your customers should stay with you, you know, and it was, oh, social media is really hurting us because no, you’re hurting yourself. The only difference is that social media makes it easier for the world to know about. They’re just telling the story. Dominos and Netflix are, are good examples because they, they bounced back. They took responsibility and they both owned the Dominoes came out and said, you know what? You’re right. Our pizza, we do have a problem. We’re gonna fix this and they spent millions fixing it. And sure enough, they’re back with a vengeance. Now, I’m, I may or may not even have ordered them every once in a while. And I live in New York City. That’s, that’s a, that’s a sacrilege. But, um, you know, I have the app on my phone for when I’m over, you know, traveling somewhere. I’ll be in shea, whatever. And, and you know, what are you gonna get at 1130 at night when your flight’s delayed and you land? It’s Domino. Um, which reminds me I should probably go exercise on the flip side, you know, something like Netflix. They, uh, they also were screwing up, you know, they were losing, they tried to switch between the two. They came up with a new name and it was like gross in public. And so, and again, you’re watching the same thing happen with Uber right now. So it’ll be really interesting to see if they were able to repair themselves. Listening is important. Both, both those, both, those two examples, they listen to their customers. I think there’s a problem with listening because everyone’s been saying, listen, listen, listen for months and years and years and years now. But, you know, no one ever says that you have to do more than just listen. You have to listen, actually follow up. It’s one thing to listen. You know, I, I use the example of my wife, I could sit there and listen to her for hours, you know, but if I don’t actually say anything back, she’s gonna smack me, you know, and go to the other room. And so you really have to, it’s a two way street, you know, listening is great, but you gotta respond and uh look, I’ll take it a step further. I was like, oh, Twitter’s so great because someone was complaining on Twitter and we went online and we, we saw the complaint and then we fix their problem and yeah, how about if the problem didn’t exist in the first place? You know, because the great thing about Twitter is that, yeah, people complain on Twitter. The bad thing about it is they’re complaining about on you’re on Twitter. So it’s like, what if the problem didn’t exist in the first place? What if, what if you empowered your front desk clerk to fix the problem so that I didn’t have to tweet. Uh Hertz is my favorite story of all this. Uh I used to rent from Hertz religiously. Um And then I went to uh Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport this past April and I gave it, I was giving a speech and I, I go and I, my name is supposed to be on the board, you know, so I can go right to my car and it wasn’t, it was ok. That happens. I got upstairs, I wait 40 minutes on the VIP line. Um After 40 minutes they finally say, you know, there’s a uh only one guy here, a lot of people might have a better chance if we go up to the regular line. Like, ok, you probably could have told us that a little earlier, go up to the regular line. Spend 45 minutes waiting in the regular line. It’s now been. Are you tweeting while this is happening? Well, I had, I was actually not only tweeting, I had enough time to create a meme that should give you some idea of how long I was online with my cell phone. I was enough time to have a meme. I get it to the counter. Hi, can I help you? Yeah. Um I, I was downstairs at the VIP desk and they told me that oh your VIP reservation you have to go downstairs like yeah. Ok, let’s let’s put a pin in that. Um they just sent me up here like uh right. They have to help you. Well, it’s not really, they, you guys are the same company. I mean I could see the reservation on the screen. You, you, you, you can help me. Sorry sir, I can’t help. You have to go to the VIP next. I’m like you just next to me. Ok. So if you know anything about Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, um all of the rental car company, they’re all in the same place. So I walked 50 feet. It’s a bus takes you to the big to the big pavilion where they’re all next to each. I walked 50 ft from the cesspool of filth and depravity that was hurt to the, the wonderful Zen Garden of tranquility. That was Avis. And in four minutes I had a nicer cheaper, more or a nicer less expensive car given to me, a woman named Phyllis who was 66 and moved to Phoenix from Detroit with her husband for his asthma. I knew this because she told me, um, she smiled at me. She brought her manager out and said, ah, it’s another refugee from, uh, Hertz. And I said, so this happens a lot. They’re like, yeah, I’m like, wow, you’d think they’d have done something about that. And so on the way out in Avis. Um I, I thank them, I walk past hers. I shoot them this, you know, sort of look at the look of the beast. I get my Avis car and I drive to my hotel. Once I get to my hotel, I write a wonderful blog post about my experience called Peter and Hertz and the terrible, horrible, no good, really bad customer experience. Once you have a kid, you find up rewriting titles about your blog posts that have to do with kids books. Um I do not like Hertz Sam. I am and things like that. And um I included in this blog post, the five things I’d rather do than ever. Uh ran from Herz again, I think number three was um was uh ride a razor blade bus through a lemon juice waterfall um with just, you know, and, and so, but, but of course, the next day Hertz reaches out to me. Oh Mr Jman, this is the head of North American customer service. That’s all you’re about. I’m like, they’re like, you know, we’d love to let Nick know like you, you’re not gonna fix the problem. Number one because I’m gonna Nas Car. I’m never going back to Hertz. Number two. There were five people yesterday, five people I interacted with all of whom had the chance to save me and keep me as a customer for life. A, a customer who had been so happy and I would have loved you. Five people blew it. So don’t waste your time trying to convert me back. You’re not going to what you wanna do is spend some of that energy, retraining your staff to have empathy and to give them the ability and the empowerment to fix my problem when it happens because five people it it takes every single employee to keep your company running, it takes one to kill it. Yeah. PS Avis reached out um to thank me personally and uh I am now just this ridiculously huge loyal fan of Avis and always will be you have a pretty touching story about uh when you worked in a yogurt shop, you were really young. Um We have a couple of minutes tell that, tell that good story. That was on the east side, which again is another reason why I live on the west side. Nothing good ever happens in Manhattan’s East side. So I was uh I was working and I can’t believe it’s yogurt, uh, which was a store that I think back in the eighties IC by. No, no. TCBY was the country’s best yoga. IC biy was a poor, I can’t believe it’s yo, I can’t believe it’s not yoga. I can’t believe it. Yogurt. It was a poor attempt to capitalize on. That was TCB. And I’m working at this store and, um, I go in every day and make the yogurt to clean the floors. I do. You know, it’s a typical high school job and, uh, it was during the summer and thousands of people walking by, I think it was like Second Avenue or something. And there were these brass poles that hung from, you know, it was the, the, the, there was an awning, right? That’s a, that there and there were the brass poles that held the awning up and they were dirty as hell. Right. I’m sure they’d never been polished ever. And I found some, I found some brass polish in the back like, oh, they buried in the back. And one afternoon I went outside and IP started polishing the poles. My logic was if the poles were shiny and people saw them, maybe they come into the store, maybe they’d wanna, you know, buy more nice clean place. And the manager came out. What the hell are you doing? I said, I told him what I thought, I don’t pay you to think, get inside. You know, I’m like, there’s no customers in there. I’m like, ok, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll make sure the yogurt’s still pumping it full blast. And I quit, I just quit that job. Like, I mean, I, I couldn’t even begin to understand why someone would invest, I mean, to own a franchise for 50 grand, to at least to buy that franchise. Why wouldn’t he invest in the two seconds? It took little elbow grease to make the poll clean That might bring in more customers. What the hell? You know, but you’re not paid to think. You’re not paid to think. My favorite line. Yeah. Um, I, I just, I, I encourage if any kids are listening to this teenagers. If you, if your boss says that to you quit, quit, I will hire, you just quit. It’s, it’s, it’s probably the worst thing in the world that you could possibly do because you have customers who you have customers who every day can be helped by people who are paid to think. And that’s the ones you wanna hire. We gotta wrap up. Tell me what you love about the work you do. I get paid to talk. I mean, my God, this is the same stuff. I used to get in trouble for in high school, but on a bigger picture, what I really love about it is being able to open someone’s eyes and have them come back to me. Um, I run a series of masterminds called Shank Minds Business. Masterminds. It’s shank minds.com. They’re day long seminars all around the country. And, uh I had someone come to me and say, you know, I took your advice about XYZ and I, I started listening a little more and I just got, uh, the largest, um, retainer client I’ve ever had in my life by a factor of four. And she goes, and I just can’t even thank you and I send me like a gorgeous bottle of tequila. She’s like, I can’t even thank you enough. Oh my God. Being able to help people, you know, at the end of the day, we’re, we’re, I, I have yet to find another planet suitable for life. I’m looking so we’re all in this together. And if that’s the case, you know, why wouldn’t we want to help people just a little bit more? You know, there really isn’t a need to be as douche as we are as a society. We could probably all be a little nicer to each other and you’d be surprised how that will help. The book is Zombie Loyalists. It’s published by Palgrave macmillan comes out in January. You’ll find Peter at shankman.com and on Twitter at Peter Shankman, Peter. Thank you so much. Pleasure is Amanda. Oh, thank you. Next week. That’s an open question. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking the supporter generosity donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez, Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for February 14, 2022: Fundraising Amid Polarization

Drew Lindsay: Fundraising Amid Polarization

From The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Drew Lindsay uncovers the details from his two recent articles reporting on the impact of political polarization on nonprofit fundraising.

 

 

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[00:02:25.84] spk_0:
mm hmm. Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. It’s the valentine’s Day show. I hope you and your valentine or valentine’s can snuggle a bit and do something special together or at least share that you’re special to each other. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into para que sis if I had to hear that you missed this week’s show fundraising amid polarization from the Chronicle of philanthropy. Drew Lindsay uncovers the details from his two recent articles reporting on the impact of political polarization on nonprofit fundraising on tony stick to an example beyond polarization into conspiracy theory. Last week I said Amy sample ward would be on this week. You have no idea what it’s like working with these big time celebrities. There was a calendar mistake and it would be indiscreet of me to say who made the mistake. Amy, we’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C o here is fundraising amid polarization. It’s my pleasure to welcome to nonprofit radio Drew Lindsay. He is a long time magazine writer and editor who joined the Chronicle of Philanthropy in 2014. He previously worked at washingtonian magazine and was a principal editor for teacher and M. H. Q. Which were each selected as finalists for a national magazine award for general excellence In 2005. He was one of 18 journalists selected for a year, Long Night Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan. You should be following him. He’s at Drew Lindsay C. O. P. If he was Drew Lindsay COPD that would be chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. But he doesn’t, he doesn’t have COPD. He’s at the Chronicle of philanthropy. So Drew Lindsay C. O. P. Welcome

[00:02:35.66] spk_1:
Drew, appreciate it.

[00:03:24.84] spk_0:
My pleasure. Thank you. We’re talking about two of your very recent articles in the Chronicle. one is donations in the balance fundraising in the age of polarization. The other is advice for fundraisers caught in the middle of political battles. I’d like to start with a quote from, from the second of those. And then, uh let’s let’s talk about what’s going on, quote at the extreme our episodes where blocks of disaffected donors protests and organizations position or work. But fundraisers report that even casual encounters with supporters can lead to challenging conversations about political and social issues. End quote. What does your reporting tell you what’s going on? Drew

[00:05:00.44] spk_1:
Well, it’s interesting how this story even came about in the sense that um for that I’ve been asked to do for six months. Very deep stories on fundraising. What’s going on. So, I’ve been talking a lot of sources, a lot of fundraisers, a lot of consultants just generally to see stories that I should pursue. And almost as sidebars, um, these individuals had mentioned and oh yeah, this is going on. This is sort of we’re encountering this daily. Um, and I also saw there were some stories where some of these, um, sort of collisions of politics in a sense popped up and became news stories. Um, so I decided this was sort of worth the story for us. And I think, um, importantly for us, I think we write for a audience that is largely fundraisers in the sense I have often is that they’re not very connected with each other. They often think their work and their problems and their challenges, they sort of face a little bit of isolation. So we wanted to talk about the daily experience as best as we could to sort of in one sense, make nonprofits, their leaders and fundraisers realize, hey, we’re not alone. It’s not like we’re doing anything wrong. Um, at times it’s that we’re encountering this because the way the country is and, and the way things are playing out. So that was our goal with this story, um, is to offer a glimpse. I don’t by any means suggests that my reporting covers at all and that this is happening nationwide. I do think it’s common enough that people are going to count encounter maybe just in a casual conversation and maybe something bigger. But we wanted to show that happening.

[00:05:21.54] spk_0:
Yeah. You know, you say in one of the pieces that non profits are bringing together large numbers of people who just reflect society’s divisions and the country is divided polarized. So nonprofits are sometimes in the Crossair. Um, you know, let’s talk a little about, you know, social media and what, you know, how things can inflame, you know, so quickly. And, but the anonymity behind that

[00:06:31.54] spk_1:
to, I think one of the interesting things, some of the veterans that I talked to about this issue said, you know, the, the country has, you know, this is not new to fundraising in the sense of encountering donors or others who disagree with the organization for some reason, but, and there are examples in the country’s history. Talk to one fundraiser who have been, you know, working since at least the civil rights movement, he said, she said, this is, you know, this, it’s been part of what we’ve dealt with a long time. I think there is some sense that social media um accelerates this intensifies. It amplifies it, um, that, you know, people are, as we all know, people are very quick on social media to be in their own camp one and two to react to whatever they see in the moment. Um, without measured thought without context. Social media itself is not a great, um, you know, a great means of conveying nuance of conveying, you know, um, deep background and context. So I think people are reacting sometimes too quickly to things that are not put forward in the right way, which just inflamed the situation in a sense.

[00:06:46.64] spk_0:
And then you have the anonymity to it. Also, you quote, you quote someone who wonders if the people there, that she’s talking to day to day, you know, it might be trolling anonymously, you know, and and inflaming

[00:07:55.34] spk_1:
I think that’s true. I think it’s unsettling for people that you don’t know. Um you can be sitting in a development officer communication office and you are putting forward messages from your organization and you can have um, what’s called clap back people reacting on social media to what you’ve done and you really don’t know. Is this a supporter? Is this, uh, alumni that is upset? Or is this someone from the outside? Is this someone who has no connection to the organization whatsoever will happen to see this and reacted. And so it’s a little hard as a um, you know, steward of your organization to understand how to react to those kind of things, because it may just be somebody who’s Who isn’t again, isn’t a supporter and doesn’t even know much about your organization just responding to those 160 characters in the tweet. Yeah,

[00:07:56.50] spk_0:
it could just be a troll threatening to stop giving who’s never has given and and maybe never even heard of your organization until they

[00:08:48.84] spk_1:
Yeah. And I think some of the in the advice piece, I think some of the folks really tried to help put that in perspective, that you can’t just assume that because you have a mini firestorm on social media, that that is all your supporters, that if someone on social media declares, I’m never giving you this organization again, that may not be true and maybe something I thought about it in the moment and so to try and also that it it often doesn’t represent had several organizations. Tell me, you know, something that happens on social media that probably doesn’t represent our whole constituency. It’s it’s maybe a small minority and you need to keep that in mind as you react as you respond. That isn’t all what’s on social media doesn’t represent your whole supporter base.

[00:09:45.14] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. Thought leadership. Do you or your nonprofit want to be seen as leaders in a public dialogue, not merely participating in a conversation that involves your work. Wouldn’t it be delightful? Wonderful to have media call you to get your opinion on breaking news. It takes time to learn that credibility to build those relationships. But it’s eminently doable. Turn to can get you there, turn to communications. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o now back to fundraising amid polarization. Yeah. You you say the group at M. I. T. The Free speech

[00:09:47.61] spk_1:
Alliance,

[00:09:55.04] spk_0:
You know, they based on your reporting or at least up until your reporting. You know, they had something like 500 followers but Almost 150,000

[00:09:56.36] spk_1:
alumni,

[00:10:10.64] spk_0:
but but a vocal a tiny minority but but vocal inflammatory and that you know that leads to um the potential of donations being used as a one of your 11 of the folks you quote says as the donations can be a screw that’s

[00:11:14.84] spk_1:
turned. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s um I think that’s one of the things that surprised me about it is that I knew that that you know, people sometimes talk about on social media and letters or you know, they’re responding, there’s an organization to a message that they may say in that individual response I’m never gonna give. It was interesting to me to see that some critics of an organization now have taken it and become more formalized since uh the M. I. T. Case. You you mentioned um the Free speech Alliance has not taken this step, but they are considering forming a donor advised fund in which they would encourage um supporters of their free speech issues to instead of giving to M. I. T. They would give to this donor advised fund. And then it would in a sense, be held as leverage as they try to convince the university to to pursue certain free speech principles that they adhere to. So um that somebody gets surprised me is that in some cases it’s become a little more formalized in terms of how you used donations as leverage.

[00:11:23.24] spk_0:
Yeah. You saw this at Washington. And lee also,

[00:11:55.44] spk_1:
that’s correct Washington lee the free speech group there um has I think 10 to 12,000 supportive followers. I won’t say supporters that, you know, they, when they sent out an email, they have a base of about 10,000 and they have encouraged repeatedly to their supporters to withhold their contributions to the university as a means of getting the university to pay attention to them. They feel the university we disagree that they feel they have not, their views have not been heard. And so they are trying to, in a sense, use donations as a way to make the university pay attention to them. Um, so

[00:12:15.24] spk_0:
yeah, at Washington and lee, it’s around the, the treatment of general lee, the, the administration took his name off the chapel and that, that seems to have incited ignited the, the, the organization called the general’s readout. That’s correct. I guess they’re the Washington and lee generals.

[00:13:05.94] spk_1:
And I think it’s, I think Washington is an interesting case study of this in the sense that, um, you know, it’s an older institution. Um, it has that history going back Washington lee or in the name and its current, there are a number of, of um, individual supporters, faculty alumni who would like them to consider dropping lee from the name of the institution itself. So they have that pressure at the same time as an institution, they made the decision to take the name of lee off of the sort of central chapel to the college. It’s now called the university Chapel. So, um, this, this generals readout is not, is not, I’m happy with the decision to drop leaf from the chapel name, but others are not happy with the university because it’s not taking lee out of the college name itself. So, um, in a sense, they’re feeling this pressure on all sides

[00:13:27.44] spk_0:
on 11 side believes they’ve gone too far on the other side believes they haven’t gone far enough. That’s correct. And then, and you know, non profits are caught in the balance. Um, and your reporting suggests this is, you know, across all missions. I mean, we’re talking right now about education, but you’ve talked to folks in the arts, social services, Environmental.

[00:16:32.74] spk_1:
It’s true. And it’s, um, that it was interesting to me and I think, um, the social scientists I talked to David Brubaker, um, sort of put this in context, in the sense that, you know, nonprofits, any, any organization in the country at this point, schools in particular, you’re seeing a flash point, any, any organization or group in the country that is bringing together large groups of people behind a mission. Um, it’s sort of subject to this because the nature of that mission now gets called into question. So yes, you see. Um, uh, so I think that’s one thing I think there’s another viewpoint we ought to consider in that, um, there are, there’s some pressure on groups, in a sense of taking it, you know, I’ll just say it’s their outside their lane, you know, since they may be doing environmental work, or they may be doing health work and if they take up an issue or cause um, I think the one that’s most, most, most top of mind for me is an environmental group, um, stands behind Black Lives Matter or takes up an issue like that. They even have some liberal supporters, people who are part of their constituency, kind of them saying you’re an environmental group. I’m not, I’m not supporting you for your stand on Black Lives Matter and supporting you for your work in the environment. So, um, I think it’s it’s across a lot of different cause areas, um, perhaps most, I would say it’s most intense, perhaps at schools, colleges, universities, um, in some sense, those are places where supporters feel a real personal connection to those institutions and they, in a sense, have much more invested in what they’re doing and how they’re doing than say, uh, supportive for a health group that is behind its mission to reduce produce cancer, to do certain things. So, um, and, and there’s a sense of belonging to those institutions. And so, um, a lot of talking to schools and colleges, that sense of belonging is sometimes hurt when or change, that’s their their relationship with school changes, um, when they feel like the mission is now, or the school has gone off and done something they don’t agree with. So, um, colleges and universities also see themselves as um, societal change agents in a sense. They may be seeking a change in, in the society that some of their online may say, Well, that’s not something I see as a positive. So I would say it’s most intense that I was surprised. Um, David Rubin acre put me onto this. Um, the number of clergy and churches that feel because of Covid caught in the middle in a sense and that they are, you know, obviously, you know, bringing large groups of people together. And the question of whether you have in person services, worship group meetings, kinds of things, whether you wear masks and things have become real contentious to the point that, Um, David pointed me to the survey, four and 10 pastors recently surveyed said they are considering leaving the field and this is a real distension. This dynamic is a real problem for them. So

[00:16:42.83] spk_0:
yeah, the masking is in churches is interesting, but I could see it in theater groups

[00:16:47.74] spk_1:
too. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:20:41.24] spk_0:
We’re gonna, we’re enforcing masking for the safety of our, of our patrons. Well, you’re going too far, you’re giving into fear. And then if they don’t have a masking requirement, then you’re not keeping us safe and we’re not. So for that reason we’re not going to come to the right to the congregation or to the theater. Yeah, It’s time for Tony’s take two drew and I are talking about political polarization, hurting nonprofits. There’s a story this week that goes even more extreme. It’s more extreme in what’s driving the pro driving the impact and in the impact. I can’t think of anything more benign than butterflies except maybe tofu butterflies at least you know, have have independent flight tofu, you shake the plate and just jiggles. So tofu might be more benign than butterflies, but butterflies are pretty darn benign. Not according to some conspiracy theorists who claimed that the National Butterfly Center, a nonprofit in Mission texas is a refuge of human smuggling and child sex trafficking. There’s no evidence to support any of these claims. It’s a, it’s a gross conspiracy theory. Sounds very much like the, the pizza parlor and pizza gate in Washington D. C. With the, with the theories the National Butterfly Center has had to close because they’re concerned about the security of their staff. I mean, I presume the butterflies would be safe, although maybe the butterflies are the ones, maybe they’re spiriting aliens across the border. Uh, so the center has had to close because of these concerns about safety. It involves the border wall. There’s, there’s a segment, there’s a segment of the border wall that’s near the, the butterfly center and, and the center objects to the wall being built through their property. That’s what seems to have given rise to the, to the theories claimed to be happening at the National Butterfly Center. So you know, you can, you can find that it’s again, National Butterfly Center in mission texas. It has been in the news just this week. So you know, Drew and I are talking about trends. I mean he’s a journalist. He, you know, he has dozens of people that he’s spoken to. I see this one case. I’m not saying it’s a trend. It’s not one case doesn’t make a trend, but it’s quite disturbing. And you know, it could happen to any nonprofit really. I mean, I don’t see how an organization can be exempt and I can’t think of one that’s more innocent than a butterfly center. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for fundraising amid polarization withdrew Lindsay listeners, you may notice a change in sound quality. That’s because we lost the internet connection and uh, I’m now on my phone. But non profit radio perseveres through technology, uh, disruptions and disappointments. But there’s no, there’s no, we’ve, I’ve been at conferences and had the lights turned off around me. So there’s no, there’s no stopping. non profit radio Drew, you had mentioned racial equity statements and black lives matter, but it could be something as seemingly innocuous as an auction item that incites people.

[00:21:40.34] spk_1:
Yeah, I think Auction finishing. I talked to some, some consultants and fundraisers in the west or some rural areas where 10 or 15 years ago, no one thought twice about Putting in, um, say an afternoon at the gun range as an auction item or auctioning off a piece of weaponry or some sort of accessory. No one thought twice about it now, 10, 15 years later with school shootings and other things starting raising the profile and issues concerning gun safety. Those are really questionable. Yeah. At the same time they’re part of the culture in some of those rural areas. So fundraisers think really wrestle. I think, you know, there are other things. Even something as basic as a holiday, email or video for any given holiday particularly say around the christmas season is a real cause for anger for people. How do you, how do you, um, write something that isn’t offensive at the same time? It’s not gonna gonna still has meaning still has something some some back. So, um, yeah,

[00:22:15.34] spk_0:
all right, interesting. You know, interesting times. Uh, important. I think just for consciousness raising. So uh, nonprofit leaders are aware that there’s the potential out there. So let’s, let’s talk a little bit about advice for, for fundraisers, which, you know, draws from your second piece. And the first idea is that prepare.

[00:24:01.44] spk_1:
Yeah. And I think a lot of the folks that I talked to really want to put notice leaders on notice that this is part of your job as a nonprofit leader as an advancement leader is to consider this and prepare your staff. Um, part of, you know, the advice is often that a position the group takes or a new program or something needs to be firmly explained and put in context of the organization’s mission. And um, you know, that can be done at a high level. But the thinking and strategy behind it needs to be conveyed to the gift officers. That needs to be conveyed to the donor communications staff to steward folks. They all need to be prepared for even perhaps have talking points prepared for individual conversations with donors for putting out their own communications so that, you know, a stepped in organization takes that is rooted in mission. Those routes have to be made very clear to folks. Um, so that’s a little bit on leadership. I think leadership also has to look at gift agreements and look at, um, what those policies call for, what gives it that can accept what’s the contingencies for them. Um, that was something everybody suggested that the groups ought to take a second look at in in lieu of this kind of political context out there. Um, I think there’s also some sense that, um, Gift officers in particular needs some process put in place for them. That if they have really awkward, uncomfortable, even sometimes offensive conversations with donors that they have recourse, they have a process. They know what, how the organization will handle those situations. You can’t leave your Gift officers out there alone to deal with this and manage it on their own, that, that they have to feel supported backed up. So a lot of this starts with leadership and proper preparation.

[00:24:32.14] spk_0:
And your reporting suggests there’s there’s a shift away from donor centrism and, and into, uh, you know, you’ve, you’ve alluded to it a couple of times that the mission and values of the organization, that, that in the past this might have been something that organizations rolled over on just to appease appease donors, especially major donors, but not so much anymore. You’re seeing a trend away.

[00:25:17.94] spk_1:
Well, I, I think, um, and you know, put this in context, I think there there’s donor centrism that people embrace, say, 15, 20 years ago, some veterans in the field talked about, there might have been a time where the donor could call the shots on these things and this is a long time ago, but people have begun, I think, to move away from that strict and embrace of donor centrism and there was some sense that, you know, the gift that someone is giving you is for the mission and purpose of the organization. And again, your conversations have to tie whatever you’re doing into that mission and purpose of the organization. Um, so it’s perhaps, um, A little bit of a shift away from the focus on the donor and what they’re doing for the organization as opposed to here’s what the organization is doing. Um, so I think that’s true. And, and again, it was the veterans mainly talking about this and that there was a time again, 15, 20 years ago where donors called the shots. So

[00:25:46.24] spk_0:
and that also helps the organization root the, the controversy in, in its own, in its own work. And so that this is not, you know, just a reflection of the times. It’s not a whim that we, you know, we, we read a headline and we’ve taken a stand, but this is rooted in our, in our work, what we

[00:27:04.04] spk_1:
believe absolutely that and that folks may, you have to make clear when you make a change or you make a position, similar things you really have to read and strategy in your mission because people can too often see you as reacting to the headline, putting a finger to the wind, trying to react to the times. And you know, it’s one of the things about social media that was interesting in my conversations with both you for to hear two things you hear, you know, um don’t, there’s a temptation when you’re getting for the flap clap back on social to sort of pull back and not do as much and folks that, you know, you can’t do that. You’re not, you’re not, you know, you’ve got to continue to advance and promote what you’re doing in your cause. But at the same time you have to consider that social media is an incredibly condensed prism through which to view something and if you need to do the work to tie something into mission and to provide context and nuance, Keep dynamometer going to social social has to be done very carefully so that you can make the connections that are necessary for people to see how this ties back to your mission. Um, so that’s it sort of contradictory advice in the sense of you want to keep doing social, you want to resist the temptation to pull back, but at the same time you gotta be careful what you do and really craft it well. So,

[00:27:18.64] spk_0:
and then likewise, you know, having difficult one on one conversations with donors don’t, don’t shy away from them as well as its the advice you were

[00:28:09.04] spk_1:
hearing. Well, it was really remarkable and a lot of fundraisers, you know, there are some challenging and difficult conversations and um really they need to hear out from people some borders what the concerns are. And again the conversation is bringing about to explain calmly and, and you know, um, without reacting defensively, in a sense to how this ties to mission I think um, I was surprised and that a number of fundraisers talked about those difficult conversations actually leading to a deeper relationship with a donor and sort of getting you beyond some superficial sort of things and getting the donor perhaps to understand more about the mission of the organization. So that part of the advice that don’t shy from these conversations is there can be a real benefit from. Um, so, but at the same token, there are some people are gonna walk away, but that there are some benefits,

[00:28:28.04] spk_0:
it wasn’t it the ceo of the Salvation Army who told you that that when, when he has these conversations, they almost almost uniformly lead to, uh, an understanding across on both sides.

[00:28:52.64] spk_1:
Yeah. And I think that that suggests there has to be a process in your office for when perhaps you get an email back or you get, um, some sort of response or negative reaction to seek out a personal one on one conversation, those can often, you know, people are disarmed by those and suddenly you see each other as humans and things change, the dynamics change.

[00:29:08.24] spk_0:
So yes, considerably right, right. 11 thing that came out of the reporting that I was, I was surprised that was the idea of in these conversations sharing your own personal views.

[00:30:15.34] spk_1:
Well, attention that since the peace has gone out, that’s the most reaction I’ve got from people and some suggesting and that’s not what you should do. I think, um, I think as the piece suggests that there are some fundraisers who really feel like their job is not to censor themselves that, that in a sense, you know, they’re putting their whole self into the job and for them to censor. Um, I think perhaps one way to look at it is, you know, your personal view of why this fits within the mission of the, the, you know, I don’t think you need to sound off on things that are completely unrelated to the topic, but if you have a view of an organization position or program or what it’s doing and how it matches with your beliefs and what the organization should be doing. That’s a way to frame it. Um, as opposed to, you know, you know, if this conversation strays into say gun rights, it’s not like you have to pop off on that just because that’s how you feel. But try, you know, you don’t eliminate your personal, um, views when it comes to things that are really related to the organization and is said to make you a a more three dimensional person for for the donor, if you explained how your views high end to why the organization is important to you.

[00:30:22.94] spk_0:
Yes, you’ve, you’ve said it a couple of times relate how it relates to the, to the mission and values of the organization,

[00:30:28.74] spk_1:
right?

[00:30:29.27] spk_0:
Um, being willing to apologize when you when you do make a mistake.

[00:31:38.34] spk_1:
And I think that, um, you know, there are a couple example of, of organizations that perhaps did something that touched off something they did unintentionally. And I think, um, and again, I’ve had some response since the piece has been out, but being upfront declaring it a mistake, not trying to wrap it in some sort of pr gauze as if really this is what we intended and oh, you’re, you know, you the donor or not understanding how we came out, you know, just sort of upfront be upfront about it. I think some readers that I’ve talked to since the piece came out suggested that if a donor is offended by something, it’s not, there isn’t necessarily a mistake on your part and you shouldn’t be automatically apologizing for something. It’s, I think the piece and I probably didn’t frame it correctly is suggesting more where, um, you know, the organization truly has made a mistake in terms of language or something. And again, the the idea is to be upfront, um, to not try to hide that just leads to erosion of trust. Um, but by the same token, not to assume that every time someone objects to something, you’ve done that it is your mistake. Um, so if that makes sense.

[00:31:47.65] spk_0:
Yeah, yeah. And that’s a fundamental of crisis communications to and if if the organization has made a mistake,

[00:31:55.14] spk_1:
absolutely

[00:31:55.83] spk_0:
be out front with an apology,

[00:31:58.26] spk_1:
you know, right,

[00:32:04.34] spk_0:
yep, control of the, of the narrative. Um, and then, you know, finally you alluded to it earlier, but I’m gonna flush it out of it. Not to panic if people say they’re gonna withdraw their support.

[00:32:40.44] spk_1:
Yeah, I think that’s the case, and again, it’s it’s numbers and particularly looking at noise on social media or noise of, you know, phone calls or response, you know, keep in mind, um, you know, that you have a very large constituency and supporters, um, I know of, of a couple of nonprofits that had, um, something touched off, you know, phone calls or social media and they felt compelled then to write to their entire constituency about it. And then long behold their entire content. You know, 90% of the constituency had no idea what anybody was talking about. And all you’ve done is raise it to their attention. So keep the criticism, the protests, the concerns raised in context of your broader, um, set of supporters.

[00:32:58.24] spk_0:
What’s some of the other reader feedback that you’ve heard?

[00:33:46.34] spk_1:
Uh, it’s been it’s been good in a sense. I I described this as you said it to a glimpse of what’s happening. And, you know, I never in our reporting want to suggest that this is universal or anything we’re describing. And I really didn’t want this to be seen as a glimpse. Um, and, and this is not that people are seeking me out. But if I continue to talk to people for other stories, they will mention this story and said, oh, yeah, you know, you’re right, this is happening. And it’s often the what you and I have talked about in the small ways that this sort of tension is creeping into everyday work. There are some cases where individuals have mentioned, yes. Because of our stand on this, a million dollar donor walked away and, you know, that’s this is a reality. So, um, I’ve heard it just in casual conversations that I’m doing reporting on other stories. That a confirmation in the sense that this is an issue for a current in front of mine for a lot of people.

[00:34:20.44] spk_0:
All right, well thank you for making us aware and sharing some of the advice advice based on your reporting. Again. The pieces are in the chronicle of philanthropy donations in the balance fundraising in the age of polarization and advice for fundraisers caught in the middle of political battles. He is Drew Lindsay at Drew Lindsay C. O. P. Thank you. Thank you very very much.

[00:34:22.03] spk_1:
No, thank you for your time. I enjoyed it.

[00:35:36.44] spk_0:
My pleasure. Next week For sure. Amy Sample Ward returns to talk about the 2022 nonprofit technology conference. Talk about celebrity culture. But I will work through it. I’ll work through their booking agent, attorney Pr staff virtual assistant. I will get them here if you missed any part of this week’s show, I Beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications Pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott stein. Okay, thank you for that. Affirmation scotty Be with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for December 20, 2021: Zombie Loyalists

My Guest:

Peter Shankman: Zombie Loyalists

Peter Shankman is a 5x best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker. His book “Zombie Loyalists” focuses on customer service; creating rabid fans who do your social media, marketing and PR for you. This is our annual rebroadcast of a show with very smart ideas for you to think about over the holidays. It originally aired 12/19/14.

 

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[00:00:04.14] spk_3:
Hello

[00:00:52.94] spk_2:
And welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the embarrassment of Brome Hydro sis if I had to walk through the idea that you missed this week’s show. Zombie Loyalists. Peter Shankman is a five time best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker. His book, Zombie Loyalists, focuses on customer service, creating rabid fans who do your social media marketing and PR for you. This is our annual rebroadcast of a show with very smart ideas

[00:00:57.71] spk_1:
for you to think about

[00:01:19.84] spk_2:
over the holidays. It originally aired December 19, Antonis, Take two Thank you for the year We’re sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot c o. Here is a zombie loyalists.

[00:02:41.54] spk_1:
Peter Shankman is a well known and often quoted social media marketing and public relations strategist. His latest book is Zombie Loyalists. He wants you to create rabid fans who do your social media marketing and PR for you. He’s got super ideas and very valuable stories. I’m very glad Peter Shankman is with me in the studio. He is the founder of Haro. Help, a reporter out connecting journalists with sources in under two years from starting it in his apartment. Horror was sending out 1500 media queries a week to more than 200,000 sources worldwide. It was acquired by Vocus in 2010. He’s the founder and CEO of the Geek Factory, a boutique social media, marketing and PR strategy firm in New York City. Peter is on NASA’s civilian Advisory Council. You’ll find him at Shanklin dot com, and he’s at Peter Shankman on Twitter. His latest book is Zombie Loyalists, using great service to create rabid fans. I’m very glad his book brings him to nonprofit radio and the studio Welcome, Peter. Good to be here, honey. Thanks Pleasure. You, um, live on the West Side of Manhattan And you and you. There’s a there’s a pretty well known five star steakhouse. I’ll get Wolfgang’s not far from you,

[00:02:44.54] spk_0:
but you pass

[00:02:45.28] spk_1:
it to go to a different steakhouse. Correct? Morton’s correct. Why is that?

[00:04:33.94] spk_0:
I am a zombie loyalist to Morton’s. What does that mean? I, uh love the service, the attention to detail, the quality, the the sort of where everyone knows my name mentality. When I walk into that Morton’s or any Morton’s around the world, they have a tremendous, uh, customer relationship management system. When I call one number, uh, in New York or anywhere in the world, it they know who I am by my cell phone. And, uh, I’m treated with just, you know, phenomenal, uh, happiness to to hear from me and my wishes are granted as it were. I we have a happy hour holiday party coming up at Morton’s next couple of days. And, you know, as always, I forgot to call and make a reservation. And, you know, I called yesterday and said, Hey, I need a, uh, she has to get a reservation for seven people. Um, you know, Thursday night at seven p.m. Which is, you know, the week of the holiday party, and, uh, they looked and they said, Oh, well, and then I guess their computer system kicked in. Of course, Mr Shank, not a problem at all. We’ll get the frame and we you know we’ll have. We’ll have a great booth for you that, um, you know, and we’ll we’ll tell us the names of people attending and, you know, you know, you know, they’re gonna have specialized menus for them and their names on they Really, they have a really high level of service that they provide, not just to me. That’s the beauty of it. You know, it’s one thing, everybody. Yeah, it’s one thing that they just provided to me, but they do that for everyone. And that is huge because, you know, being able to call when a normal person makes reservation. And not that I’m special. I’m actually rather abnormal. But when a normal person makes a reservation and says, Uh, no, Martin says. Okay, great. Are you celebrating anything? So, yeah, it’s my wife’s birthday that’s always asked to anyone who calls. I said, Oh, you know what? It’s my wife’s birthday. Great. What’s her name? And her name is Megan. Whatever. And you go in and they and you sit down on the on the on the menu. It says, Happy birthday, Make it. And then Megan, whoever she happens to be, we’ll spend the next 45 minutes, you know, taking 50 selfies with her menu and and that will go online. And when her friends, you know, want that same experience, they’re going to go Morton’s,

[00:05:04.54] spk_1:
you say, uh, in in the book, you get the customers you want by being beyond awesome to the customers you have. And that’s why I wanted to start with that Morton story, which is in the middle of the book. But they do it for everybody, and then they have the V. I. P. S as well. And there’s the terrific story of you tweeting tell that story. That’s a good story. It’s

[00:07:24.54] spk_0:
a good story. I love stories. I was flying home from a day trip to Florida and was exhausted and starving, and they trip meeting you’re flying down and slow down at six a.m. At a lunch meeting, flew back the same day. You know, one of those one of those days, and I jokingly said, the tweet Hey, Morton’s, why don’t you meet me at Newark Airport when I land with a porterhouse in two hours? Ha ha ha ha ha. Um, you know, I said it the same way you’d say, Hey, winter, please stop snowing. Things like that and I landed. Uh, find my driver and sit next to my driver is a, uh is a waiter in a tuxedo with the Mortons bag. They saw my tweet. They put it together. They managed to bring me a, uh, a steak and, you know, as great of a story as it is, it’s that’s that’s it’s a great stunt and it’s a great story and it wasn’t stage, and it was completely amazing. But, you know, that’s not what they’re about. They’re not about delivering states airports. They’re about making a great meal for you and treating you like world when you come in. And you know, if they just did that, if they just delivered the state of the airport, but their quality and service sucked, you know, it wouldn’t be a story because, you know, you know what they did for Peter. But, you know, my steak is cold. So what it really comes down to is the fact they do treat everyone like kings. And that’s that’s really, really important, because what ends up happening, you have a great experience importance. And then you tell the world you know Oh, yeah, Great dinner last night. that was amazing. I would totally eat there again. And as we move to this new world where you know, review sites are going away and I don’t I don’t need to go to yelp reviews from people I don’t know. You know, if they’re shills or whatever the case may be, I don’t know. Or trip Advisor. Same thing. I want people in my network quite trust and and people in their network who they trust by default, I trust. So that’s gonna be that’s already happening automatically. You know, when I when I land in L. A and I type in steakhouse, uh, you know, not me. I know, I know where the steak house in l. A. But if someone types into Google Maps or Facebook Steak House in Los Angeles, you know they’ll see all the steak houses on Google map. But if any of their friends have been to any of them, they’ll see those first. And if they had a good experience, only if the sentiment is positive. Well, they see those first. And that’s pretty amazing, because if you think about that, the simple act of tweeting out of photo Oh, my God. thanks so much. Martin’s love this. That’s positive sentiment. The network knows that. And so if you’re looking for a steakhouse, you know, and your friend six months ago, I had that experience. Oh, my God. Amazing state. This is a great place. There’s a the sentiment’s gonna be there. And and And the network will know that network will show you that steakhouse because you trust your friend.

[00:07:25.84] spk_1:
And this is where we start to cultivate zombie loyalists. Exactly. Through this awesome customer service of the customers, you you have to say more about

[00:08:22.64] spk_0:
zombie. I mean, you have so many companies out there who are trying to get the next greatest customer. You know, you see all the ads, you know, the Facebook post. You know, We’re at 990 followers are 10 are 1000. Follower gets a free gift. Well, that’s kind of saying screw you to the original 990 followers who you had who were there since the beginning. We don’t care about you. We want that 1000 you know, that’s not cool. Um, the the the companies who see their numbers rise and you see their fans increase and their their, um um revenues go up are the ones who are nice to the customers they have. Hey, you know, customer 8 52. It was really nice of you to join us a couple months ago. How? You know, how are you? We noticed that you posted on something about a you know, your car broke down. Well, you know, we’re not in the car business, but, you know, your your two blocks from our our closest outlet or whatever. And you know, if you if you need to come in, have a cup of coffee when I use the phone, Whatever. You know, those little things that you can do that that that really focus on the customers you have and make the customers. You have the ones who are the zombies who tell other customers how great you

[00:08:35.54] spk_1:
are. And this all applies to non profits, certainly as well in

[00:09:12.94] spk_0:
the system. But even more so, I mean, if you you know, non profits are constantly worried about how to how to make the most value out of their dollar and how to keep the dollar stretching further and further, and you know you have this massive audience who has come to you, who is a non profit? Who said to You know, we want to help here we are volunteering our help and just simply treating them with the thanks that they deserve, not just as simple. Hey, thanks for joining us, but actually reaching out, asking what they want, asking how they like to get their information. Things like that will greatly increase your donations as well as, um, making them go out and tell everyone how awesome you are and letting them do your PR for you. And

[00:09:17.22] spk_1:
that’s what a zombie loyalist does. And this is for this. Could be donors could be volunteers organization who aren’t able to give a lot. But giving time is enormous.

[00:09:25.27] spk_0:
And if you know if they have such a great time doing it, they’ll bring friends

[00:09:29.84] spk_1:
as zombies.

[00:09:49.84] spk_0:
Do you know zombies have one purpose in life? A. Real zombies have one purpose in life that’s to feed. It doesn’t matter. How the Mets are doing it doesn’t matter, you know, because chance that they lost anyway. But it doesn’t matter how, how anyone is doing, you know, or what’s going on in the world and any kind of bad. It doesn’t matter what matters with zombies. Where are they gonna get their next meal? Because they feed and they have to infect more people. Otherwise they will die zombie loyalists to the same thing. All they have to do is make sure that their customer, they tell the world, and we all have that friend who does it. You know that one friend who eats nothing but the olive garden because oh my God’s greatest breadsticks everywhere, you know and they will drag your ask the olive garden every single time they get that chance. That’s a zombie loyalist,

[00:10:04.75] spk_1:
and you want them to do that for your nonprofit, and there’s a big advantage to being a smaller, smaller organization. You could be so much more high touch, and we’re gonna talk about all that. We got the full hour with Peter Shankman. Gotta go away for a couple of minutes, stay with us.

[00:10:35.54] spk_2:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. You’re 2022 writing. Do you have time to do all the projects that you need to do? Like social posts and blog posts, newsletters and annual report Web updates board reports, fundraising appeals and acknowledgment messages. What about your staff Communications? What about your process? Documentation? What about training and on boarding documents?

[00:10:51.74] spk_1:
Do you need help with writing

[00:10:53.52] spk_2:
In 2022?

[00:10:55.64] spk_1:
I mean, you can talk to them about

[00:11:24.24] spk_2:
2023, but that seems premature. But if you need help in 2022, with all your projects talk to turn to, they can create the content for you. They’ll get to know your tone and your messaging. They’ll create in your voice, turn to communications. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot c o. Now back to zombie loyalists.

[00:11:27.44] spk_1:
Peter, it doesn’t take much to stand out in the customer service world, does it?

[00:11:52.24] spk_0:
It really doesn’t, you know. And the reason for that is because we expect to be treated like crap. You know, if you think that I I I love this example. Whenever I give speeches, I asked, I asked everyone the audience I’m like who here has had a great flight recently, Like at least one person raised their hand. I’m like, Okay, what made it great and without fail. And I said, Well, we took off on time and I had the seat I was assigned and we landed on time. And so you paid for a service. They delivered that service and you’re over the freaking moon about it. Like that’s the state that we’ve become. You know, that’s how bad customer service has been that you are just beyond thrilled that they did exactly what they said they were gonna do it. Nothing more.

[00:12:05.51] spk_1:
Less than 20 minutes in the post office line.

[00:12:24.44] spk_0:
And I’m ecstatic Exactly. You know, it’s so we really are at a point where we only have to be one level above crap. I’m not even asking my client to be good. Just one level of crap. You know, if everyone else’s crap and you’re one level above that, you’re gonna win. It’s my favorite. One of my favorite jokes. Um, the two guys are out in the woods hunting in the woods and or just jogging and was the first one sees a bear and they see these bearings bears raised and he’s about to strike. And the first one reaches down and tightens up his laces on his running shoes and see what the studios don’t be. Don’t be. Don’t be an idiot. You can’t outrun a bear because I don’t need to. I just need to outrun you. You know, I love that joke because it’s it’s so true. That’s the concept. You know, all you have to do is be just a little bit better than everyone else and you’ll win the whole ballgame.

[00:12:50.14] spk_1:
Now we have to set some things up internally in order to have the structure in place to create these The zombie loyalists.

[00:16:14.14] spk_0:
Yeah. I mean, you have a you have a company where the majority of people in your company are afraid to do anything outside the norm, you know? I mean, look at look at the cell phone company. You know, they call them cause you have a problem, right? 18 T or T mobile. You call them, you have a problem. They are actually the customer service people to handle your caller, actually judged and rewarded based on how quickly they can get you off the phone. You know, not on whether or not they fix your problem, but how fast they can get you off the phone. Which means how many more? Cause I remember I worked when I worked in America Online. We all had to do a day of customer service every month just to see what it was like. That was a brilliant idea. But, you know, again, it was a system called Vantive, where you’d sign on and as soon as you signed on, if you want to call, you know, that was tacked against you. And if you were in a call and and it went over a certain amount of time, that was tacked against you, So the decks were stacked Not in the favor of the customer. There are some companies out there who allow their customer service employees to simply be smarter about what they do and do whatever it is they need to do to fix the problem. Um, you know, my favorite story about this Verizon, uh, wireless. I went overseas as in Dubai, and I landed to buy and I turned on my phone. I had gotten global roaming on my phone, Which, you know, $20 for every 100 megabytes. Okay, so I land and I turn on my phone and it says, um, like before I’m even off the plane. I get a text that you’ve used $200 in roaming charges on what the hell you know, $300 by the time I get off the plane. Like something’s up here. So I called Verizon and a nice guy answer the phone and Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, the first thing that was Yes. So you do have global roaming, but it doesn’t work in Dubai, I’m like, Okay, well, that’s not really global. That’s more hemispherical. Roaming, I think is the issue. And so the, uh I said, Well, look, I’m gonna be here for a week. I said, you know what? You have my credit card on file build me like I don’t know. Can you give me, like, 1000 bucks and just let me have the phone for, like, the week? And you know, daddy, you know, 500 bucks, I won’t go over two gigs. Would just do something for me. Sorry, sir. I’m not authorized to do that. Um, you can. I’m like, So what do I have? He’s like, Well, you can pay $20.48 a megabyte. I’m like, I’m sorry. Seriously, which equates essentially two. I will be charged $20.48 seconds, $20 or 48 cents for every I think at the time was for every four seconds of the video Gangnam style, if I decided to watch on my phone Like this is pretty ridiculous. So I simply hung up, hung up on Verizon. I went down the street to do by the mall of the Emirates, which is the largest mall in the world, has a freaking ski slope in it. And I’m not joking. It has a ski slope in the small and, uh, went to one of the 86 different electronic stores in this mall. Uh, but an international unlocked version of the same exact cell phone I have went next door to the local SIM card store, bought a SIM card that gave me 20 gigabytes of data and 1000 minutes of talk for $40. I then put that in my phone because it’s an android phone. I simply typed in my user name and password for Google and everything imported, and Verizon did not get a penny on that trip. Um, how easy would have been for Verizon to say Okay, you know what? We’ll cut your brake uh, they still make a lot of money off me. And I would tell the world how great Verizon was to work with and how wonderful, how helpful they were. Instead, They guaranteed that I will never they will never make a penny for me on any international trip. And I take, what, 15 of them a year. Because now my cell phone, um, my international cell phone that I bought all I do is pop out the SIM card in my land. Wherever I am, put in a new SIM card. So

[00:16:14.85] spk_1:
and you’re speaking and writing and telling bad

[00:17:32.54] spk_0:
stories, Of course. And and every time I tell the story about Verizon, I make it a little worse. Apparently, Verizon, uh, tests out the durability of their phone by throwing them kittens. I read this on the Internet Must be true, but, you know, not necessarily. But you know, the concept that that all they had to do, all they had to do was in power mark customers. And it wasn’t Mark’s phone. Mark was a really nice guy, but he was not allowed to do that. He would get fired if he tried to do a deal like that for me. And so it’s this concept, you know. And the funny thing is, it comes down to if you really want to go down the road. In terms of a public company like Verizon of where the issue is, you can even trace it to fiduciary responsibility because the fiduciary responsibility of any company CEO all the way down to the employee is to make money for the shareholders. Okay, that’s the future. Responsibility means by not allowing me, they’re not allowing Mark, the customer service agent to to help me and take a different tack. He’s actually losing money. Too many CEOs think about the next quarter, so we have to make our numbers. Next quarter, I’m fired. Companies in other countries tend to think of the next quarter century, And they make a much bigger difference because they think, Okay, what can we do now that will have impact in the next 5, 10, 15 years, you know, and really implement the revenue that we have and and augment and companies Americans don’t think about that, and that’s a big problem. I

[00:17:39.24] spk_1:
buy a product line, uh, has a lot of natural and recycled materials its seventh generation and their, um, their tagline is that in in our every decision, we must consider the impact on the next seven generations. It comes from an American Indian.

[00:17:48.98] spk_0:
It’s a great it’s a great line. I mean, just think about how much money Verizon would have made for me in the past three years. Just just in my overseas, you’d be telling

[00:17:55.71] spk_1:
a story about like them about Martin’s like the one of Morton’s

[00:18:19.64] spk_0:
look, a lot of people listen to me and they for a time when you Googled roaming charges variety When you Google Verizon roaming charges. My story about how I saved all this money came up first because I did the math. And if I had not called Mark and bought my own self on and done this, I would have come home with $31,000 cell phone bill and your damn of what I’m gonna do anything about that would be like up Too bad. Sorry should read the fine print

[00:18:23.91] spk_1:
and plus the the employee who sold you the quote international

[00:18:27.56] spk_0:
plan, right?

[00:18:28.53] spk_1:
I’m sure you told her,

[00:18:29.93] spk_0:
she said, where we’re going, I’m going to Canada and I’m going to Dubai. I’m assuming she didn’t know where to buy, was she? Probably. It was near Canada, but, uh, yeah, Long story short, I couldn’t use it.

[00:18:40.14] spk_1:
All right. So employees have to be empowered. There has to be. We have to be changing a thinking too. I mean, the customer has to come first. The donor of the volunteer

[00:20:41.74] spk_0:
Don’t volunteer. You get at the end of the day, where is your money coming from? I don’t care if your nonprofit or Fortune 100, where’s the money coming from? You know, and if you we see it happening over and over again, we’re seeing what you’re seeing right now. Play out every single day with the company uber, um, and uber. It’s so funny because uber makes, uh, you know, they’re valued at $40 billion right now, but that doesn’t mean anything that doesn’t mean anything. If people are running away in droves, which people are, there’s a whole delete your uber app movement. People are God’s people are leaving. What’s the problem? Well, it’s several number one. That uber is run by a bunch of guys who honor the bro code. The company was actually started by a guy who, in on business in business insider, said he started the company to get laid. Um, his goal was to always have a black car When he was leaving a restaurant, uh, to impress the girl he was with that he came out and said that And you see that culture run rampant throughout uber, um, from their God mode, where they can see they actually created. It was, uh I don’t know where I read this business insider as well. It was They created a hookup page that showed or or or or walk of Shame Page that showed where, uh, women were leaving certain apartments like on weekends going, leaving certain place on weekends, going back to their home. Um, it was obvious that they, you know, met some guy like they did that. And then, of course, just their whole surge pricing mentality, which is, you know, two days ago there was a couple days ago. It was a the terrorists of the figures, a terrorist attack in Sydney at that at that bakery and Sydney, uh, uber and Sydney instituted surge pricing for people trying to get out of harm’s way. You know, and and they later refund it. Always a computer glitch. You know, I’m sorry. You have a stop button. And you can when you see something happening like that, this has to be someone in the office, because you know what? Not cool. We’re going to take care of that and and hit the stop button. And it was Yeah, bad tons and tons and tons of bad publicity. You know, I was having an argument with one of my facebook page facebook dot com slash peter Shankman Because they said, Oh, you know, um, so what? They don’t they don’t turn on surge pricing, don’t have enough cabs there, and, you know, people can’t get home. I said I’m pretty sure that the only I’m sure that no one had cab companies there. I’m sure that there wasn’t anyone who had enough cars, their private cabs, ubers, whatever. Yet the only stories I read about companies screwing up during the event where uber not Joe’s Sydney cab company. You know, I didn’t see him screwing up because he didn’t turn on surge pricing. You gotta You gotta respect your customer. You have to,

[00:21:07.34] spk_1:
As we’re training for that then not only, uh, trying to change their mind shift. Well, in in trying to change that mindset rewards for for customers, for employees that do go, do go the

[00:22:11.74] spk_0:
extra mile. Well, first of all, if you give the employees the ability to do it to go the extra mile and I understand they won’t get fired, you’re not gonna get into. I always tell every one of my employees you’re never gonna get in trouble for spending a little extra money to try and keep a customer happy. You’ll get fired for not doing it. You know, you get fired for, not for seeing an opportunity to fix someone and not taking not doing everything that you could. You know? Ritz Carlton is famous for that. Ritz Carlton hires people not because whether they can fold a bedsheet but for how well they understand people. Because in Rich Collins mind, it’s much more important to be A people person and be able to be empathetic. And that is such a key word. Empathy is just so sorely lacking. You know how many have called customer service? Yeah, you know, I have to have to change my flight. My my my aunt just died. I really need to 100. Okay, great. That’s $300. I just want to go an hour earlier. You know, you show up at the airport, your bag is overweight by half a pound. $75. I just Can you Can you just cut me some slack? Nope. So empathy and giving the custom, giving the employee the ability to understand that the customer that sometimes you can make exceptions and it is okay to make changes.

[00:22:18.91] spk_1:
And this is where a smaller organization has huge

[00:22:33.84] spk_0:
advantage. It’s easier to change. That’s what kills me. You know, I go to these. I try to frequent small businesses when I can I go to some of these small businesses and they won’t they act like large businesses, you know, in the respect that they don’t have a like they

[00:22:35.45] spk_1:
want to be respected. Almost. They

[00:23:14.14] spk_0:
Don’t have, like, a 66,000 page code that they have to adhere to. They can simply, uh, do something on the fly. And yet, for whatever reason, they won’t do it. And and it’s the most frustrating things. Like guys, you’re acting like a big you’re acting like Mega Lo Mart here, you know, And you’re not Mega Lo Mart, and you’re just Joe’s house of stationary, whatever it is and you know, Not be able to help me. You’re pretty much killing yourself because you don’t have 85 billion customers that come through the door after me, you know? But I have a pretty big network, and for small business to get killed socially, as social becomes more and more how we communicate, you know, it’s just craziness.

[00:23:23.64] spk_1:
It’s, you know, we’re pretty much in the world. I think we’re something almost hasn’t happened to you unless unless you share it.

[00:25:44.34] spk_0:
I joked that, you know, if I can take a selfie. Was I really there? Um but it’s true, you know, we we do live in a world where, you know, I remember God 10 years ago. Maybe not even not even 10 years ago. I was one of the first people to have a phone in my camera you know, and it was like drinking from that’s what I said. Yeah, I can’t find my phone right. And it was like a I think it’s a 0.8 megapixel, you know, it looked like I was taking a picture with a potato. But it was, um it was this. I remember it was 2000 and two, and I was in Chase Bank and there was a woman arguing with the teller, and I pulled out my video. You know, it was it was the crappiest video you’ve ever seen. But I pulled it out and I said, You know, uh, I started recording, and the woman behind the woman behind the counter was the woman behind the counter was talking to the customers, saying, You do not speak to me that way. You get out of this bank right now and the customers saying, I just wanted my balance, and you and the manager comes over and get this whole thing on my little crappy three g Motorola phone phone. And I remember I posted online, and Gawker picks it up. I gave my email. You know, my headline I put on my blog was, you know, chase where the relationship is that Go after yourself, you know? And it was It just got tons of play. And then Gawker picked it up. It went everywhere. Totally viral. So it’s one of those things here, just like, you know, this was in 2000 and two. It’s 12 years later. How the hell can you assume that nothing is being that you’re not being recorded? You know, I I remember blowing I sneezed a couple weeks ago and, uh ah, not to get too graphic here, but I needed a tissue big time after I was done, anything. I remember going through my pockets looking for desperate, looking for tissue and looking around making sure I wasn’t on camera somewhere that someone didn’t grab that. Give me the next viral sensation, you know? I mean, I went God, I went to high school with eight blocks from here, right? If the amount of cameras that are in Lincoln Center today Were there in 1919, 90 be having this conversation entirely, I’d be having this conversation behind bulletproof himself. And, um, yeah, so you know, you’d be you’d be talking to You have to get special clearance to visit me, probably at the Supermax in Colorado. So, you know, it’s it’s one of those things that you’re just like my kid, who’s who’s almost two years old now is going to grow up with absolutely no expectation of privacy the same way that we grew up with an expectation of privacy. And I’m thankful for that because she will make a lot less stupid moves. You know? I mean, God, the things that I thought, you know, in, in, in, in high school I thought the stupidest in the world. Thank God there wasn’t a way for me to broadcast that to the world in real time. Jeez, thank God

[00:25:59.64] spk_1:
creating these zombie loyalists. And we’ve got to change some. We’ve got to change culture and thinking and reward systems. Let’s go back to the cost of all this. Why is this a better investment than trying to just focus on new donors?

[00:27:20.74] spk_0:
I love I love this analogy and I’ll give you a fun analogy. Let’s look at a bar and there’s a very cute girl across the across the park and she catches my eye catcher. I go up to her go. You know you don’t know me. I am amazing in bed. You should finish your drink right now. Come home. Let’s get it on. I’m gonna impress. I’m that good chance that she’s gonna throw a drink in my face. Go back talking to her friends. I’ve done a lot of research on this. That’s probably understand. Now let’s assume let’s assume an alternate world. I’m sitting there on my phone. I’m just playing like, you know, some words with friends like that. And, uh, she’s over there talking to her friends, one of her friends. Holy crap. That’s Peter. I think that’s Peter Shankman. I’ve heard him speak. He’s in this fantasy world. I’m single, too. He’s I think he’s single and he’s having this amazing guy. I know he has a cat you have. You should totally go talk to him. At the very least, I’m getting this girl’s number. That’s PR. Okay. And what do we trust? More me with my, you know, fancy suit collar Going over the seventies, leaders did. Hi, I’m amazing. Or the girl saying, Hey, we’ve been friends since third grade. I’m recommending that guy. You should trust me on this, You know, obviously that that’s where, uh, good customer service comes into play. And that’s where corporate culture comes into play. Because if I have a great experience with you and at your company, I’m going to tell my friend when they’re looking and I will stake my personal reputation on it. And there’s nothing stronger than that.

[00:27:26.19] spk_1:
And these are the people who want to breed

[00:27:27.55] spk_0:
as it’s stronger than advertising stronger the marketing

[00:27:30.74] spk_1:
and they’re gonna share. People

[00:27:55.94] spk_0:
want to share that. I think about the Internet runs on two things. It runs on drama, drama and bragging or bragging and drama. And if you if you need any proof of that, you know, go and look at all the hashtags with crap that’s happened, you know, bad customer service, bad, whatever. But then look at all the good Hashtags. You know, when our flight’s delayed for three hours and we lose our seat. Oh my God, I hate this airline. Worst airline ever. But when we get upgraded right hashtag first class bitches or whatever it is, you know something stupid like that and the whole because we love to share. It’s only a great experience if we can tell the world, and it’s only a bad experience if we can make everyone else miserable about it as well.

[00:28:54.94] spk_2:
It’s time for Tony’s take two Thank you for the year. It’s been another the second in a row up and down years. But you can count on nonprofit radio, and I know I can count on you are consistent, loyal podcast listeners year after year or some of you. Some of you knew this year. Welcome. Whether you knew this year whether you’ve been with us for a long time. I mean, this is show # 570. So, have you been with us 570 shows? Um, that’s a long time that I’ve been here. I’ve been here 570, however long. Thank you. Thanks for being with us. Yeah. And up and down year yet again. But, you know, you can count on nonprofit radio,

[00:29:00.74] spk_1:
and I know I can count on you.

[00:29:31.84] spk_2:
That’s the That’s the bargain. So thank you. Thanks for the year. We’re gonna be off next week and then and then back in early January. Thanks very much. So glad to have you with me. That is, tony. Stick to We’ve got Boo Koo, but loads more time for the classic zombie loyalists.

[00:29:41.34] spk_1:
Peter, you have a golden rule of social media that that a good number of customers like to share and people are going to keep doing it.

[00:31:15.14] spk_0:
People will always share again. It goes back to the concept that if you create great stuff, people want to share it because people like to be associated with good things. If you create bad stuff and buy stuff, I can meet, I mean anything from a bad experience. Too bad content. People not only won’t share that, but we go out of their way to tell people how terrible you are. Um, you know, how many times have you seen companies fail horribly? Uh, you know, after major disasters when companies are tweeting, um, you know, completely unrelated things after after a random school shooting? Uh, no. It was after the shooting at the theater in Aurora, Colorado at the Dark Knight. Um, the NRA tweets. Hey, shooters, what’s your plans for this weekend? You know, and I’m just going, really, you know, but And of course, the thing was, the thing was retweeted millions of times, you know, with the sort of shame on the NRA. So we we’re a society. Like I said earlier, that loves to share when when great things happen to us, but loves to tell the world when we’re miserable, because we’re only truly miserable. We make everyone else miserable right now, Um, it’s funny you mentioned, uh, generosity series, Uh, the one of my favorite stories, which goes to sort of a bigger picture of culture. And, um, somehow when you’re just doing your job because that’s what you’re supposed to do your job. But you don’t realize there are ways to get around that. I I listened to your podcast, among others, when I’m running through Central Park, Um, and more like, if you know, my body type more like lumbering through Central Park. But I get there. I’m an iron man. I have, I have that. And so I go through Central Park and it’s super early in the morning cause I usually have meetings and I don’t run fast. Um, I run like I really don’t run fast, but But as I’m running, But

[00:31:24.23] spk_1:
let’s give you the credit. You have done a bunch of iron man. I have try.

[00:33:28.64] spk_0:
I do. I do it, you know, my mother tells me that I just have very poor judgment in terms of what sports I should do. But, um, on the flip side. I’m also a skydiver, which is with my weight is awesome. Yeah, I fall better than anyone. Um but so I’m running through central park. Last year it was February, February of of 13 and 14 of this year and it was probably about 4. 45 in the morning because I had a an eight. AM meeting. I had to do 10 miles. So 45 in the morning, I’m running about but around 19, 79th, 80th Street on the east side, in the park and a cop pulls me over and I said, What are you doing? I look at him, you know, I’m wearing black spandex. I have a hat. It’s five degrees. I don’t like what I’m playing checkers, you know? But, you know, I’m like, I’m running and he’s like, Okay, can you stop running? I’m like, Okay, because they give the park’s closed like, No, it’s not like I’m in it. Look around. There are other people who know part does nobody else exam. I’m like, he’s like, Do you have any idea on you? I’m like, No, I’m running. He goes, What’s your name? I’m like, seriously, like I’m writing you a summons. I’m like you’re writing me a summons for exercising. I just want to clarify that you’re writing music, and sure enough, I wrote me a summons for exercising in Central Park before it opened. The charge was breaking the violating curfew. You know, I’m like I get the concept of the curfew is to keep people out after two a.m. It’s not to prevent them going in early to exercise, to be healthy. I’m like, I’m not carrying, you know, a six pack. I’m not drinking a big gulp. I’m not smoking. I’m you know, I’m doing something healthy, and you’re writing me a summons for it. Um, and I said, you know, I’m gonna have a field day with this. I said I I kind of have some fathers. There’s gonna be a lot of fun. I’m not, You know, I know you’re just doing your job, sir, even though you have the discretion not to, but Okay, so I go back home, take a picture of my ticket, I email it to a friend of mine in New York Post. You know, front page, New York Post. Next day. No running from this ticket. You know for that. Great New York Times covered it. Runner’s world covered. I mean, I went everywhere. Gawker covered it, you know? And And my whole thing was just like, Dude, you have to scratch. Look at me. You know, I’m not I’m not even going super fast, for God’s sake. I’m just I’m just trying to exercise here, you know? And of course, I went to court, and I beat it. But how much money they cost the city for me to go to court, fight this thing? You know, every employee you have to give your employees the power of discretion. The power of empathy to make their own decisions. If you go by the book, bad things will happen.

[00:33:36.14] spk_1:
And again, small shops. So much easier to do. Flat line, flat organizations.

[00:35:10.94] spk_0:
I work with a non profit um, animal rescue nonprofit. Um, a friend of mine was a skydiver and shot him out. No, I can’t, but but there’s a friend of mine was a skydiver, and she was killed in a base jump several years ago. And her husband asked to donate in her memory to this non profit. So I said, I’m a check and about three months later, I get a coffee table book in the mail. And I was living by myself at the time. I didn’t own a coffee table. It was more money to spend on my flat screen. And I remember I call I look at this coffee table book. I throw it, I throw in the corner. I look at it over the next couple of days and pisces me off. And how much How much of my donation did it cost to print? Well, and produce this book to me, And so I called them up. Well, sir, we believe most of our donors are older and probably refer to get a print version as opposed to, like digital. You know where they throw it away and like, you don’t throw digitally, but okay, um, I’m like So So you’ve asked your you’ve done surveys and you’ve asked, you know, we just assume that most of them are older. I’m like, Okay, So I opened my mouth, wound up joining the board, and I spent the next year interviewing customers, interviewing every current and past donor about how they like to get their information and shock of shocks, 94% said online. And so over the following year, we launched Facebook page, Twitter page, uh, Flickr account, YouTube, everything. Ps the following. After that, donations went up 37% in one year In that economy is right around 809. Donations went up 37% in one year, and they saved over $500,000 in printing, mailing and reproduction. Imagine going to your boss. Hey, boss. Revenues up 37%. And we saved a half million dollars. You’re gonna buy a really good beer. You know, all they had to do was listen to their audience, be relevant to the audience you have, and they will tell you what they want. We have tons

[00:35:17.89] spk_1:
of tools for segmentation. My God, you’ve got to listen to what segment that you want to. People want to

[00:37:33.83] spk_0:
be in. You know, someone? Someone asked me that they show what? What’s the best? I knew nothing about the company. What’s the best, uh, social media outlet for me to be on? Should be on Twitter should be on Facebook. I said, I’ll answer that question. If you can answer this this this question to ask you is my favorite type of cheese Gouda or the number six? Yeah, they say, I understand that’s not a real question like neither is yours. Like I can’t tell you where the best place to be your audience can. I said, Go ask your audience. Believe me, they will tell you there’s a gas station in the Midwest. Come and go. Um, I just love the name K U M and G O come and go and they’re tackling the book you can read more about. Their tagline is always something extra. I mean, come on, the jokes just write themselves, for God’s sake. But they don’t take themselves too safe. Really love that Come And just knowing the name of the company gas station. And, um, you know, I remember there in Iowa and I went to visit a friend in Iowa and I was like, You got to get a photo of me in front of come and go inside. And the beauty of this is that some of their employees actually look at their customers when they’re on their phones and the stories go. You know what do use Twitter or Facebook? And they say Oh, yeah, And they record that information and they know it. God, customers will give you so much info if you just ask them, because then they feel invested. They feel invested in your company. They feel like they that you took the time to listen to their nonprofit request for their their their questions. And they feel like they did for Harrow. Every month we have a one question Harrow survey, you know, harrowing question survey. And it was like 1000 people respond, and I spent the entire weekend emailing Everyone responded, thanking them personally took my entire weekend. But it was great, because what wound up happening is that, you know, if we took their advice and launched on Monday with the new thing, they go, Oh, my God. Howard did this. They took my advice. Well, yeah, it was your advice to 800 other people’s advice, but we took it and they’d be like, Oh, my God, this is it. And it just it just made them so much more loyal. And they tell hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people we get I mean, there were days like there are days where I was in Temple one morning, the Garment Center synagogue and my phone. I feel my phone getting really hot in my pocket, which is not normal, and I’m starting to hurt and I look at it. It’s almost on fire. It had frozen because we were mentioned in Seth Godin’s morning blog, and at that time I was getting emails. Every time we get a new subscriber and the phone is actually frozen and was locked and and was like overheating, I take out the battery and reset the entire phone because we just got so many new like 14,000 subscribers in, like, three hours. It’s obscene. Obscene,

[00:37:35.25] spk_1:
you say. Excuse me? You say, uh, that customer service is the new advertising marketing NPR?

[00:40:23.41] spk_0:
Yeah, it really is well again. You know, if we’re moving into that world where so imagine a lava lamp and I love that. I can use this analogy. Imagine a lava lamp. Lava lamp has water, oil and heat source. Right heat source heats the oil. The oil flows through the water. It makes pretty colors. I’ve heard it looks really good when you’re high. Now I’ve heard now imagine if Crystal’s imagine if you are, uh, everyone you meet in your network, okay, is a drop of oil. The water is your network. And what is your world? Everyone you meet in your network from from the guy you’re sitting doing the radio interview with to the guy who serves you ice cream with local deli to the guy who does your dry cleaning to your girlfriend to your wife, too, at the same time to your kid’s second grade teacher to your second grade teacher years ago. Everyone you meet is in your network, you know, right now, when Facebook first started, I would see the same weight from a kid with junior high school with his posted at the same weight as like my current girlfriend, Which is ridiculous. I don’t need to know about everything my friend from junior high schools do. We have to talk to the kid. In 15 years, Facebook’s gotten a lot smarter as Google. Now I see the people I communicate with the most, okay, and if I if I reach out and communicate with new people, they start rising in my feet and my stream. If I don’t they fall. It’s just like a lava lamp. Every person you connect with is a drop of oil. The heat source at the bottom that’s rising. Raising or lowering those drops of oil is relevance. So if you imagine the heat sources relevance and the more I interact with someone, the more the higher they go in my network. And the more I see of them, the more trust level there is. When I’m at a bar and I meet someone at a restaurant or conference, I meet someone. I don’t need to, um, connect them. I don’t need to go on Facebook and friend requested, you know, awkward friend. Requesting is when you stop and think. The last time I friend requested some of the real world was second grade. Will you be my friend? My daughter is doing that because, you know, she goes into like, the cat. Will you be my friend like honey? The cat doesn’t wanna be here, but you know it’s this awkward thing. Who the hell friend request someone anymore? If I’m if I’m hanging out with you to bar and we connect again and we talk and we go out to dinner and we’re having a good time with friends. I don’t need to first request that you, you know, that’s going away Friending following liking and fanning is all going away. What will interact is the actual connection. So if I meet with you and I have a good time with you and we talk again if I use your business, if I go to your non profit, if I donate if I volunteer or whatever the network knows that the more I do that, the more interact with you. The more you have the right to market to me and the more you will be at the top of my stream and the more I will see information about you, the less I will have to, uh, search for you. But if you do something stupid or were no longer friends, yeah, you’re going to fade and unfriend, you just disappear. Unfriending is also awkward. I dated a woman we broke up. It was nine months after we broke up. There was one other friend, the other one, because it’s just awkward. So I woke up in front of me anyway. But you know the concept of not having to do that, just, you know? Okay, I haven’t talked to in a while. I don’t see your posts anymore. It’s the real world. That’s how it should be.

[00:40:24.73] spk_1:
And if you’re not feeding zombie loyalists, they can start to defect questions. So I want to I want to spend a little time on. If you’re

[00:41:11.71] spk_0:
not talking to them, giving them what they want talking about their information, helping them out, they will gladly go somewhere else to someone who is. You know, if I have a great experience in the restaurant every week for three years and then all of a sudden over time, I’m noticing less and less that restaurants doing less and less to take care of me, you know, and maybe management to change. And I don’t feel that, you know, I’m ripe for being infected by another company. I’m right for someone else to come see. You know, Peter, Because if I tweet something like, Wow, I can’t believe I have to wait 40 minutes for a table that didn’t used to be like that. If someone else is smart restaurant, they’re following me. And they’re gonna get you know there’s no way. No way over here. Why don’t you come to black storms will give you a free drink you know, you know, and that right there, that’s the first sign of infection, and I might become infected by another by another. Company becomes a lot less for them.

[00:41:22.81] spk_1:
And so let’s let’s take. You have a lot of good examples. Let’s take a one on one situation. How can we start to cure that? The simple act of realizing

[00:41:42.21] spk_0:
following your customer’s understanding when they’re not happy and fixing the situation before it escalates. You know you can contain a small out Brett. A small outbreak small viral outbreak. You can contain that by getting the right people finding out what the problem is getting into one room, fixing their problems, healing them.

[00:41:42.84] spk_1:
You have a good united story. Back when it was Continental,

[00:42:40.50] spk_0:
I was a frequent flyer and booked a trip to Paris, and it was very angry because they charged me $400 and looking for you. Remember what it was and I called the CEO just just for the hell of it. I’m like, I’m gonna I’m gonna write a letter or an email. This was before Social wrote an email to the CEO and like this is ridiculous. I’m freaking tired, huh? And, like, 30 minutes on my phone rings. Hello? Peter, can you please hold for Larry Kellner, CEO of Cotton Airlines? I’m like crap, you know, and the guy gets on the phone. He’s like, Peter, How you doing? How you doing? Sorry, Clinton. These fees, their new, um, we send them a note, I’m guessing it and see it. We’re gonna waive them for you. But if you have any more problems, you know, feel free to call me and I end up the phone for the next 40 minutes, sort of staring at it like Holy crab Larry killed or the CEO of United. Everyone just called me and talk to me, and it was like it was like, God coming down and say you now have the power to levitate your cat. It was just ridiculous. And so, you know, I have been faithful to Continental and now united ever since, and and they continue to treat me with respect and and do great things, and they’re they’re improving. They’re getting a lot of crap over the past several years, and they really are starting to improve. It’s nice to see

[00:42:52.50] spk_1:
And not only, of course, your own loyalty. But

[00:42:54.41] spk_0:
you’re my God.

[00:42:55.11] spk_1:
How zombie loyalist for them And how many times how much it’s

[00:42:58.83] spk_0:
unquantifiable qualified. Dr. Drag, So many friends to united. I’ve made so many friends. Uh, my father, you know, uh, he only flies united now, which means he only drag drag my mom Only in United only drag my wife in United States. There’s a lot of a lot of work that way. Yeah.

[00:43:22.80] spk_1:
Are we gonna go away for a couple of minutes when we come back? Of course, Peter. And I’m gonna keep talking about his book Comes out in January. Zombie loyalists. You have some examples of zombie loyalist leaving and mass like dominoes. Netflix. They’re both They’re both in the book. So it’s so one leaving. If you know, if you’re not starting to cure one leaving,

[00:43:59.20] spk_0:
and then that’s the thing. You know that it will expand the internet with the hashtag everything like that. You know, it doesn’t take a long time. Um, for those things to sort of blow up in your face and, uh, you know, the end of the day, everyone say, Oh, you know Twitter is responsible for for us losing. No, they’re not. You’re responsible for you losing, you know, And And if your product isn’t great and you’re your actions, don’t speak well of who you are. Then there’s no reason your customers should stay with you, you know? And it was so social Media is really hurting us. I know you’re hurting yourself. The only difference is that social media makes it easier for the world to know about.

[00:44:06.14] spk_1:
They’re just telling the story. Yeah, dominoes and Netflix are good examples because they got back, they took responsibility and

[00:44:38.89] spk_0:
they both owned the dominoes, came out and said, You know what? You’re right. Our pizza. We do have a problem. We’re gonna fix this. And they spent millions fixing it. And sure enough, they’re back with a vengeance. Now I’m I’m maybe not even ordered them every once in a while and I live in New York City. That’s that’s a That’s a sacrilege. But, you know, I have the app on my phone from overseas, traveling somewhere I’ll be showing or whatever. And you know what? You’re gonna get it 11. 30 at night when your flight is delayed. You land down. Um, which reminds me I’d probably go exercise. On the flip side, you look at something like Netflix. They they also were screwing up, you know, They were losing their trying to switch between the two. They came up with a new name and everyone’s like, gross public man. And so and again you’re watching the same thing happened with uber right now would be really interesting to see if they’re able to repair themselves.

[00:44:55.39] spk_1:
Listening is important. Both both those. Both those two examples. They listen to their

[00:46:54.48] spk_0:
customers. I think there’s a problem with listening because everyone’s been saying, Listen, listen, listen for months and years and years and years now, But, you know, no one ever says that you have to do more than just listen. You have to listen actually follow up. It’s one thing to listen, you know, I use example, my wife I can sit there and listen to her for hours, you know? But if I don’t actually say anything back, she’s gonna smack me, you know, and go to the other room. And so you really have to. It’s a two way street. Listening is great, but you gotta respond and look, I’ll take it a step further. I was like, Oh, Twitter is so great because someone was complaining on Twitter and we went online, and we we saw the complaint that we fixed the problem and, yeah, how about if the problem don’t exist in the first place? You know, because the great thing about Twitter is that yeah, people complain on Twitter, the bad thing about it is they’re complaining about you on Twitter. So it’s like, What if the problem didn’t exist in the first place? What if What if you empowered your front desk clerk to fix the problem so that I didn’t have to tweet? Hurts is my favorite story about all this? Uh, I used to rent from Hertz religiously. Um, and then I went to, uh, Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport this past April, And I gave it. I was giving a speech, and I go and I my name is supposed to be on the board, you know? So I can go out to my car and it wasn’t it’s okay. It happens. I got upstairs. I wait 40 minutes on the v. line. um, after 40 minutes, they finally say? You know, there’s a, uh, only one guy here. A lot of people might have a better chance to go up to the regular line, like Okay. You probably have told us that a little earlier. Go to the regular line. Spent 45 minutes waiting. The regular line, it’s now been. Are you tweeting while this is happening? Well, I had enough. I was actually not only tweeting I had enough time to create a meme that should give you some idea of how long I was online with myself. And I was okay. Enough time. I mean, I get to the counter how I can help you. Yeah, I was downstairs the V i. P does, and they told me Oh, you’re very preservationist downstairs like, Yeah. Okay. Let’s let’s put a pin in that, um They just sent me up here, like right? They have to help you. Well, it’s not really they You guys are the same company. I mean, I can see the reservation on the screen. You you can help me. Sorry, sir, I can’t help. You have to get the V i p. Next. Like you just next to me. Okay, so if you know anything about Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. Um, all of the rental car company in the same place. So I walked 50 ft. It’s a

[00:46:57.76] spk_1:
bus, takes you to the big the Big pavilion, where they’re all

[00:48:53.37] spk_0:
next to each. I walked 50 ft from the cesspool of filth and depravity that was hurt to the the wonderful Zen Garden of Tranquility that was Avis. And in four minutes, I had a nicer, cheaper or nicer, less expensive car given to me a woman named Phyllis, who was 66 and moved to Phoenix from Detroit with her husband for his asthma. I knew this because she told me, um, she smiled at me. She brought her manager out and said, that’s another refugee from Hertz and I said, This happens a lot. They’re like, Yep, I’m like, Wow, you think they have done something about that? And so on the way out in Avis, um, I I thank them. I walked past her as I shoot them. This, you know, sort of look at the look of the beast. I get my Avis car to drive in my hotel. Once I get my hotel, I write a wonderful blog post about my experience called Peter and Hurts and the terrible, Horrible No book. Good, really bad customer experience. Once you have a kid, you find rewriting titles about your blog post that has to do with kids books. Um, I do not like hurt Sam. I am. And and, uh, I included in this blog post the five things I’d rather do than ever, uh, rent from Hertz again. I think number three was was ride a razor blade bus through a lemon juice waterfall. Um, with just, you know, and so. But, of course, the next day hurts reaches out to me. I’m Shannon. Well, this is the head of North American customer service. So your bike I’m like, they’re like, you know, we’d love to have Nick No. Like, you’re not going to fix the problem. Number one of the Navy’s car. I’m never going back to Hertz number two. There are five people. Yesterday five people interacted with all of whom had the chance to save me and keep me as a customer for life. A customer who had been so happy and I would have loved you. five people blew it so don’t waste your time trying to convert me back. You’re not going to. What you want to do is spend some of that energy retraining your staff to have empathy and to give them the ability and the empowerment to fix my problem when it happens. Because five people it takes every single employee to keep your company running. It takes one to kill it. Yeah, PS Avis reached out, um, to thank me personally. And, uh, I am now just this ridiculously huge, loyal fan of Avis and always will be.

[00:49:02.47] spk_1:
You have a pretty touching story about when you worked at a yogurt shop. Really? You’re really young? Um, we have a couple of minutes to

[00:50:39.26] spk_0:
tell that. Tell that story that was on the East Side, which again is yet another reason why I live on the West Side. Nothing good ever happens on Manhattan’s east Side. So I was I was working, and I can’t believe it’s yogurt, which was a store that I think back in the I c b y. No, no TCB. Why was the country’s best yoga The countries I c b i y was a poor? I can’t believe it’s yogurt I can’t believe it’s not. You can’t live yogurt. It was a poor attempt to capitalize on that. And I’m working at this store, and I go in every day and make the yoga to clean the floors. I do. You know, the typical high school job. And, uh, it was during the summer and thousands of people walking by, I think, like 2nd Avenue or something. And there were these brass poles that hung from, you know, there was an awning, right? That’s something that they’re never the brass poles that held the awning up and they were dirty as hell, right? I’m sure they’ve never been polished ever. And I found some. I found some brass polish in the back all the way back in the back. And one afternoon I went outside and I started polishing the polls. My logic was, if the polls were shining and people saw them, maybe they come into the store. Maybe they want to, you know, buy more screenplays. And the manager came out. What the hell are you doing? I told them what I thought. I don’t pay you to think. Get inside. You know, I’m like there’s no customers in there, like, Okay, I’ll make sure the yogurt still pumping it full blast. And I quit. I just quit that job. I mean, I couldn’t even begin to understand why someone would invest. I mean, do you own a franchise by 50 grand to at least to buy that franchise? Why wouldn’t he invest in the two seconds it took a little elbow grease to make the poles clean? That might bring in more customers. What the hell? You know, But

[00:50:40.04] spk_1:
you’re not paid to think

[00:50:49.76] spk_0:
you’re not paid to think my favorite line. Yeah, um, I I just I encourage if any kids are listening to teenagers. If you if you boss says that to you, quit, quit. I will hire you. Just quit. It’s probably the worst thing in the world that you could possibly do because you have customers who you have customers who every day can be helped by people who are paid to think. And that’s the ones you want to hire.

[00:51:00.56] spk_1:
We gotta wrap up. Tell me what you love about the work you do.

[00:51:44.76] spk_0:
I get paid to talk. I mean, my God, this is the same stuff I used to get in trouble for in high school, but on a bigger picture. What I really love about it is being able to open someone’s eyes and have them come back to me. Um, I run a series of masterminds called shank mines Business masterminds shank mines dot com their day long seminars all around the country. And I had someone come to me and, you know, I took your advice about X y Z and I started listening a little more. And I just got the largest retainer client I’ve ever had in my life by a factor of four. She goes, and I just can’t even thank you never sent me a gorgeous bottle of tequila like I can’t even thank you enough. Oh, my God. Being able to help people, you know, at the end of the day, we’re I’ve yet to find another planet suitable for life. I’m looking So we’re all in this together. And if that’s the case, you know, why wouldn’t we want to help people get a little bit more? You know, there really isn’t a need to be, as do she. As as we are as a society, we could probably be a little nicer to each other, and you’d be surprised that will help.

[00:51:54.56] spk_1:
The book is Zombie Loyalists. It’s published by Pal Grave. MacMillan comes out in January. You’ll find Peter at shankman dot com and on Twitter at Peter Shankman. Peter, thank you so much pleasure as Amanda. Oh, thank you

[00:53:05.15] spk_2:
Next week, As I said, No show you’ll have an extra hour. Have fun, have fun with your extra our next week, and we’ll be back on January 3rd. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot c o. A creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. The shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez Marc Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty. Be with me next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95 Go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for July 3, 2020: Thought Leadership & Content Strategy

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Peter Panepento & Antionette Kerr: Thought Leadership
Peter Panapento and Antionette Kerr co-authored the book, “Modern Media Relations for Nonprofits.” They share their insights on how to build relationships with journalists so you get heard as the thought leader you are. Plus other media strategies, like crisis communications. (Part of our 20NTC coverage)

 

 

 

 

 

Valerie Johnson & Katie Green: Content Strategy
Now that you’re an established thought leader, you need to produce multichannel content that’s relevant, engaging, actionable, user friendly and SEO friendly. Our 20NTC coverage continues as Valerie Johnson from Pathways to Housing PA and Katie Green with The Trevor Project show you how.

 

 

 

 

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[00:02:40.94] spk_0:
welcome to tony-martignetti non proper radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer with epidermal Asus below PSA if you gave me the blistering news that you missed Today’s show Thought leadership. Peter Pan, A Pento and Antoinette Car co authored the book Modern Media Relations for Non Profits. They share their insights on how to build relationships with journalists. So you get heard as the Thought Leader you are, plus other media strategies like crisis Communications. This is part of our 20 NTC coverage. Also content strategy. Now that you’re an established thought leader, you need to produce multi channel content that’s relevant. Also engaging actionable, user friendly and S e o friendly. Our 20 NTC coverage continues as Valerie Johnson from Pathways to Housing P A and Katie Green with the Trevor Project show you how on Tony’s Take two Dismantling racism were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com by Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund. Is there complete accounting solution made for non profits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Mountain for a free 60 day trial and, by turn to communications PR and content for non profits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot ceo. Here is a thought leadership. Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 NTC 2020 non profit technology conference. We were supposed to be in Baltimore. The conference was canceled, but non profit radio is persevering, virtually getting lots and lots of the very smart speakers. We’re, ah, gonna be part of the conference. We’re sponsored at NTC by Cougar Mountain Software. The Knowledge Fund. Is there complete accounting solution made for non profits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant in for a free 60 day trial with me now our Peter Pan a Pento and Antoinette car. Peter is philanthropic practice leader at Turn two Communications Internet is part of leadership team of women, Advance and CEO of Bold and bright Media. They are the co authors of the book Modern Media Relations for non Profits. Peter, Internet. Welcome.

[00:02:59.99] spk_1:
Great to be here. Virtually.

[00:03:11.74] spk_0:
Yes. I’m glad we could work this out among the three of us. Thank you. And, uh, it’s good to know that you reach well and safe in your respective locations. Okay.

[00:03:12.63] spk_1:
Thank you. Social distancing and full effect. Yes.

[00:03:42.02] spk_0:
Okay. Yes, I see no one within six feet of you. That’s good. Even though you are home. Um, we’re talking about thought leadership and media. Um let’s ah, let’s start with you. Internet. Um weaken weaken usar leverages to thought leadership and sort of ah, used the media to ah, to influence our ah influence are those who are engaged with us, our constituents, and even influence policy.

[00:04:27.40] spk_2:
So the media needs Experts and nonprofits are on the ground there doing the work. And they are the perfect votes to be experts in this conversation in particular and emergency Peter non talks about earlier about crisis communications in a lot of situations, the media scrambling looking for experts if you have establish yourself as a thought leader, which is what you should aspire to do, I know that turn to does the work and helping people to kind of establish themselves the thought leader in this conversation. But right now we need people with good information and who can provide great stories, for example. And nonprofits can do that and they can do that work. And that’s why that that leadership conversations important most non profit don’t see themselves needing to do that. It’s not the first thing we think about. We think about fundraising, right? Um, but not necessarily Media friend raising. And so now the time that you want to have those relationships and be considered as a leader,

[00:05:10.94] spk_0:
because when there’s news that relates to your mission, um, your call is more likely to be taken. Your email is more likely be answered if there’s that preexisting relationship you mentioned. But if if everybody in the sector is calling a LH the over media blindly, then it’s just sort of, ah, crapshoot whether they answer you or not.

[00:06:44.14] spk_2:
Or if you think about the media needing like, you know, going Teoh crisis example like the media needing a source or an expert and they don’t want to quote the same person, that’s, you know something that I’ve learned from my media background and training. I’ve been working as a journalist since 1995 and you know one thing that my editors say, you know, don’t quote the same person, don’t quote the same organization. So in a crisis people will call Big Box. It’s not profit sometimes, um, and they’ll just see them as being the experts for a conversation. And that’s why establishing yourself as a thought leader is so important. So someone can say, You know, I’m a unique voice about this. We have an example in our book Modern Media Relations, where someone who on organization that worked with Children and families involved in domestic violence, became very important in the conversation when a professional athlete in Georgia was convicted of family violence and all of a sudden that person was called upon to be on radio shows and talk shows and they became a thought leader. But they say done the work to position themselves is an expert. And so I know. Peter, you I know you have some examples as well, but we just got a dived in there and didn’t talk about the whole broad concept of about leadership. Well,

[00:06:44.59] spk_0:
all right. What? Um, Peter, I was gonna ask you how do we start to build these relationships? Um, you want toe? I don’t want to back up. What thought leadership is

[00:08:29.44] spk_1:
sure I’ll start with thought. Leadership defined. And that and that’s really the process of establishing ones expertise. And it’s been a specific area and and doing it in a way where they are recognized beyond their own organization in their own kind of immediate networks. As our as an expert, as a thought leader, somebody who is driving the conversation and really, really helping people better understand Ah, key issue or a topic eso for a non profit or a foundation. A thought leader might be your CEO, Um, who are executive directors, somebody who is at the front lines on dhe kind of is in a in a position where they, um not only have expertise, but they have some authority and being able to talk with some gravitas about a topic. Um, but in order to kind of establish your credentials there on get recognized, you have to do some legwork beyond just having that expertise you have to be. You have to be comfortable talking about that topic you have. Teoh. You have to spend some time kind of building the relationships and the and the and the the larger credibility that you are, somebody who has something interesting to say and the expertise to back it up. Um, and the more you do that and you can do that, not just through the media but through your own channels and through speaking at conferences and all kinds of other things. Um, the more you do that, the more you kind of become, ah, somebody who is recognized and is called upon to weigh in on important topics, or or when news events call for it or in a situation like what? Where we are now with with the Cove in 19 response. Somebody who can kind of come in and bring ah, voice of reason and perspective. Toe What’s going on around us?

[00:09:36.34] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Wegner-C.P.As Changes to Paycheck Protection Program Loan Forgiveness There have been many wegner had and up to date free wedding. Are you missed it? Fret not. Go to wegner-C.P.As dot com. Click Resource is and recorded events. Now back to thought Leadership with Peter Pan, a Pento and Antoinette car, you have to lay the groundwork. There has to be some fundamentals, and you have to have your gravitas, and you need to appear bonified and be bonified, not just appear. You have to be bona fide on the topic that you’re that you’re an expert in the mission of your your non profit. How do you. Then start to when you have that groundwork. How do you then start to build relationships when there isn’t really a need for you to be talking about the subject?

[00:10:39.09] spk_1:
Sure. Um, there are a lot of ways to do that. One, is that you? You start to build some personal relationships with media who are covering these topics, and you can do that either Through You know, somebody on your communications team that helps you or you can kind of do it yourself. But you can. You can start to show up in in their coverage of stories by, um, by positioning yourself and building relationships with individual reporters, maybe even when they don’t need you by having an informational coffee or call so that they can get to know you and know what you stand for. You could do it by your through your own writing and public speaking and making those things available and accessible to the media. Um, and you can you can do it through your own channels to a lot of nonprofits have logs. They have. They have their own podcast. They have different ways where they’re positioning their internal experts externally. So that they were kind of talking about in establishing their credentials around around a subject. And

[00:10:51.39] spk_0:
that’s your That’s your owned media, right? You’re your own media reverses earned media.

[00:10:56.80] spk_1:
Yes, yes. And the value of that is that the more you’re you’re kind of demonstrating through your own to media channels, your expertise. You’re not only building some greater relationships and credibility with your donors and the folks who are already kind of in your network, but you start to show up when people are doing searches, or when people are on social media and seeing stories and articles that air getting passed around. If they may see something you’ve written or talked about, shared in another network, and it sparks a light for them that you’re somebody worth going back to when they need, um, when they need some, you know somebody like you to weigh in on something

[00:12:00.68] spk_0:
good. Peter, I know you and Internet are both former journalists. Uh, I’m gonna jump over the Internet for what? Internet What? What do these outreach, I guess calls and emails to journalists to try to build the relationship. Uh, what do they what they looked like? What would you suggest people are saying to to try to get the attention, um, to build the relationship, Not not when I’m looking to be quoted because there’s a breaking news, but to build the

[00:13:43.62] spk_2:
relationship before him. So full disclosure. I’m a current journalist. Um, so current? Yes, eso I still work for publications right now, okay. And so people contact me on Twitter and social media, which is a new thing. We talk about press releases. I’m a big fan of press releases. Yes, just full disclosure about that. But I still like for people to pitch me on social media direct messages through Twitter. If I’m using my company profile, it’s safe for Don profits to contact me and say, Hey, I have a story. I noticed that you’re interested in this concept. It’s always great when people know what I’m interested in. Like when they’re like I noticed that you publish a lot of stories. Like, right now I’m working on a story, a series of stories about missing and murdered indigenous women. And so when people see Owen notice you’re publishing stories about this and they pitch me on a direct message or um, through Facebook, message or even and say, Hey, would you consider this story? And here’s the angle, um, or have you thought about you know, I’ve had other people reach out and say, I noticed your publishing these types of stories about, you know, missing and murdered indigenous women. Have you considered other stories about violence against women? And it’s always a really great connection for me. So I think just kind of knowing what the journalist is interested in is really important kind of understanding their angle. Are you, um, understanding their angle and just flowing from there and saying, you know, here’s how we fit into this conversation is always a

[00:13:53.83] spk_0:
wonder. And so, um, so outreach by any of the social channels is is fine to you. Talk about Twitter and direct message Facebook. Those are all

[00:14:06.95] spk_2:
yes. And people tagging me like I feel like if a journalist is using their profile in a way that is professional, then you’re safe to contact them and okay, bam And that

[00:14:21.24] spk_0:
Okay? Yeah, yeah, Peter, Anything you want to add to? Yeah,

[00:15:39.87] spk_1:
I think that I think Japan that is done on about making sure, though, that when you do that you are, You are you’re you’re not coming with something that’s off the reporters beat or off of what’s up? What you know is what they cover or the type of story they cover within. That be, um you could spend a lot of effort reaching out to every journalist you see on Twitter about your specific cause. But if they don’t cover your cause, it doesn’t relate to what they what they dio. Then they’re probably they’re going to ignore you or or start to block you because you’re you’re kind of almost spamming them. So, um, it’s it’s important to be targeted with who you reach out to as well, and make sure that you understand that journalists and their work before you before you do your outreach and come at them with a pitch that they don’t necessarily want. So, yes, I think it’s really important to to do a bit of that homework upfront, um, and respect that journalist time. And if you do that and if you come at them with something that is actually on on their beat and is of interest to them, um, then I think you have a much greater chance of getting their attention and getting them to want to follow up with you and help further the relationship. Beyond that initial pitch

[00:16:58.35] spk_2:
talking can, I would share a pet peeve like to pet peeves, actually. And, um, if I write about a non profit and they don’t share the story on their own social, it’s just it’s heartbreaking for me. A lot of times I have to fight for these stories to appear and after fight with an editor to say, This is why this is newsworthy. This needs to be here. And then the non profit really doesn’t share the story. And I think, Well, you know, I don’t write for my own, you know, just deport not to be shared. Um, And then the other thing is, I love when nonprofits support stories that aren’t related to their particular story. So I’ll start noticing, like one thing, um, Kentucky non profit network, for example. Before they ever shared or were involved in anything that I was involved in, they started sharing things or liking things that I would publish as a reporter, and I didn’t know anything about them, but I thought that was interesting. So that when they pitched something. Then you’re more likely to notice it. Because as a reporter, you’re more likely to notice because you feel like they’re really genuinely interested in a conversation, even if it doesn’t apply to them. You’re so interested.

[00:17:01.63] spk_0:
Internet. Where are you writing now?

[00:17:19.41] spk_2:
I am writing working on a piece for guardian. I am from the Guardian am writing for women Advance which we have our own network. And then I write for Halifax Media Group Publications. So I’m on the regional circuit doing all the fun things.

[00:17:25.84] spk_0:
Okay? Halifax is Nova Scotia.

[00:17:39.14] spk_2:
No, Halifax is, ah, media group in the United States. Okay, Okay. They own a series of their own regional newspapers across the country. So, um, let’s talk a little

[00:17:47.28] spk_0:
about crisis management. You wonder, can you get us started with, uh, how you might, um, approach crisis communications? Internet?

[00:18:13.03] spk_2:
I thought that was Peter’s question. No, I’m just getting a crisis communications, I think, actually, Peter is a really great person to talk about this. My crisis communications conversation really has shifted with what we’re going through. So I don’t want to make it so unique to our current situation. So I let Peter start and then Peter, I could back you up on it.

[00:20:06.39] spk_1:
I’m happy. Eso crisis communications. It’s really important to not wait until the actual you’re actually in a crisis to put your plan together. It’s really important to have a protocol that you’ve set up when you’re not in the middle of a crisis of possible to really kind of put together some protocols for not only what you’re going to say, but who’s going to say it and how you’re going to communicate during that situation. So what does that protocol look like? One. Is that you up front? You designate who you are spokesperson or spokespeople are going to be ahead of time. Um, and you spend some time ahead of that coaching them up in terms of what some of the key messages for your organization are, regardless of what the crisis might be. Some things that you would broadly want to try to reinforce and kind of a mood and ah, tone that you’re gonna want to take with what you’re talking about. Um, do that 1st 2nd is that you would really want to have a system in place for how you activate that for how you activate your crisis plan and your crisis communications. So that essentially means that you want to, um, you want Teoh. Make sure that, you know, kind of who? Who needs to sign off on what you’re going to talk about, who you’re gonna be involving in your decisions on whether you need to put out a statement who, ah, how you’re going to communicate in what different channels, the more you can make those decisions ahead of time and have your structure in place, the better equipped. You aren’t actually respond during a crisis situation and be able to get up quick and accurate. And, ah, positive message out in in a situation and often crises or not, they’re crises because they’re not expected. But you could be planning ahead so that you you are able to react quickly and a full authoritatively during that situation.

[00:20:34.02] spk_0:
You’re calm pounding the crisis if you’re not prepared. Absolutely. I’m scrambling to figure out who’s in charge, who has to approve messages. Where should messages go? All which are peripheral to the to the substance of the problem?

[00:21:38.12] spk_1:
Absolutely. And in today’s world, where crises can really mushroom, not only in the media, but on social media. The longer year allowing time to pass before you’re getting out there with with your statement and bonds to it the worst, uh, the worse the situation gets for you. So you really need to position yourselves to be able to respond quickly to respond clearly and to respond accurately. Um, and it’s important to know that you know that planning ahead of time is really critical. But what you say in this situation is also critical to you Do want to make sure that you communicate truthfully. That doesn’t necessarily mean that um uh, you, uh you, um, reveal everything. Reveal everything exactly. But they do. That you do reveal is accurate. It’s not going back to bite you later. Sleep. People

[00:21:45.19] spk_0:
talk about complicating the complicating the crisis. If you’re lying or misleading, it comes back. I mean, people investigate things get found out. You

[00:21:49.55] spk_1:
absolutely. And I was

[00:21:51.94] spk_0:
rhythmically expanded. Your problem?

[00:23:09.21] spk_1:
Absolutely. And you’d be surprised how, How many times when I was a journalist that people, if they had just come clean and kind of got the truth out there right away, they may have taken a short term hit, but their lives would have cut on fine after that. But the more you try to often office Kate or or lie about the situation or or try to spin it in a way where you’re you’re kind of hiding the truth, that the worst your situation is going to get eso Bubi in a position to be as transparent and clear and accurate as possible. Um, with that first statement, uh, knowing that in some cases you might have to say, You know, we don’t know, But we’ll follow up when we do know, because sometimes ah, crisis situation is one in which, speaking of one we’re in now, we don’t know all of the all of the different twists and turns. The cove in 19 situation is going to take So but but rather than trying to speculate, or or or in some cases as we’ve seen, some some public figures do try Teoh, spend this one way or another rather than just saying, Here’s the situation. Here are concerns. Here’s what we know. Here’s what we don’t know. It compounds the situation and in some cases that it could be dangerous to people.

[00:23:15.16] spk_0:
Internet. You wanna do you want to back up a little bit?

[00:23:52.09] spk_2:
I did it so that I think the statement, um I love how people are putting forward Thes Cove in 19 states, and I think we need to have more statements like that. I mean, these statements are demanding and people feel like that, but I’m like we could do more of that. We could have statements as non profit on issues on public issues, public concerns, things that are emerging, an urgent for people I think about in the eastern part of North Carolina. Because, tony, I know you’re in Home State.

[00:23:53.44] spk_0:
I’m in eastern North Carolina,

[00:24:47.98] spk_2:
happy to have you here. And when we have hurricanes, when we have issues like that, if non profits would put out statements like they have with come in 19 if they felt like they needed to say, Here’s where we are, here’s what we do here here’s Here’s what we have to offer before during after and just update them. You know, I feel like this crisis has brought forward a level of communication and help people to see the necessary level of communication that we need the hat, but we don’t have that. All the time is non profits, and people are looking for that. So I feel like in the eastern part of North Carolina, where we had, um, you know, 100 year hurricanes within three months of each other that didn’t think what happened. You know, it is people what people made covet statements like that. I mean, what if people And so I’m just gonna start comin covitz statements, Peter, that I don’t have a better to report. But what if we felt like we needed to make these types of statements when there’s an emergency and interesting.

[00:25:05.24] spk_0:
Thank you. Um, Internet. I’m gonna ask you to wrap up with something that you said, which is contrary to a lot of what I hear. Uh, you said that you’re a big fan of press releases.

[00:25:15.48] spk_2:
I am.

[00:25:16.25] spk_0:
Could you take us out with your rationale for why you’re a big fan of them? I’ve heard that they’re pretty much obsolete

[00:25:23.54] spk_2:
from a journalist

[00:25:29.81] spk_0:
from a country. No right guest of that. I

[00:25:31.14] spk_2:
believe that. I believe that s Oh, yes, because I’ve been reading press releases for a long time and I feel like the who, What, when, Where and how gets me past that part of it. Then I can ask you all the interesting questions. So if you can give me that in a way that I can cut and paste and I will not. But you’re someone’s name like this Bill tony.

[00:25:54.71] spk_0:
More than more at risk

[00:26:15.51] spk_2:
it might be. It might be a challenge so I could weaken. Get all of that out of the way. But a good press release gets me excited. As a journalist. It brings me into the conversation, and if you aren’t excited about your press release, I can probably tell on the other end. So I had a good press release.

[00:26:17.24] spk_0:
All right, thank you. We’ll leave it there. That’s Ah, contrary advice, which which I love hearing. All right, that’s Ah, that’s Antoinette Car, part of the leadership team of Women Advance and CEO of Bold and Bright Media. And also Peter Pan, a Pento philanthropic practice leader at Turn two Communications. And they are co authors of the book Modern Media Relations for Non Profits Internet. Peter, thank you very much for sharing. Thanks so much. Thanks for

[00:26:41.86] spk_1:
having us, tony.

[00:28:23.84] spk_0:
Pleasure stay safe and thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 and TC responsive by Cougar Mountain Software at 20 NTC. We need to take a break. Cougar Mountain Software. Their accounting product Denali, is built for non profits from the ground up so that you get an application that supports the way you work that has the features you need and exemplary support that understands you. They have a free 60 day trial on the listener landing page at tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant. Now time for Tony’s Take Two. You’re dismantling racism journey. That’s our newest special episode. You will have a long journey, so start with this single step. This show will be out the week of July 6th. My guest is pretty itchy Shah. She’s president and CEO of Flourish Talent Management Solutions. She shares her wisdom and solid advice on working through the journey, starting with your people, your culture and your leadership. That is tony Steak, too. Now it’s time for content strategy with Valerie Johnson and Katie Green. Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 NTC. That’s the 2020 non profit Technology conference. We’re sponsored a 20 ntc by Cougar mouth and software. My guests now are Katie Green and Valerie Johnson. Katie is digital giving manager for the Trevor Project. And Valerie Johnson is director of institutional Advancement at Pathways to Housing, P A, K T. And Valerie. Welcome.

[00:28:32.74] spk_3:
I deliver having us.

[00:28:59.74] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure. Good to good to talk to both of you. And glad to know that you’re each safe and well, um, in in Brooklyn and Ah, suburban Philadelphia. Glad you’re with us. Um, you’re NTC. Ah. What shop was content? Strategy for donor engagement. From tactics to testing. Um, let’s start with you. Ah, Katie. What? What did you feel was the need for the session Where non profits not getting doing so well, it could be doing a lot better.

[00:29:42.74] spk_3:
Yeah. So we have a session this morning at same time as the originally a plan, which is great. You were able to give it virtually. And I think what a lot of donor content strategy is missing is simply structure. I think a lot of people don’t know where to start, and they’re intimidated by it. And we, Valerie and I provided some real life examples on how you can achieve a donor content strategy that does get you closer to your revenue bulls. However, the tone of the presentation changed a little bit, given how the world has come to be our new reality. So we did talk a little bit about the crisis and what it means for fundraising and what it means for content strategy under a tight timeline, knowing that things are changing at a really rapid pace. So really just structure and story telling or the things that we talked about in this morning presentation, which will be available or, uh, viewing later, we’re gonna have a recording available for those who weren’t able to make it. But yeah, that’s what we focus on.

[00:30:29.30] spk_0:
Okay, um, remind me at the end. If I forget, let me know where that recording let us know where that recording is gonna be. Um, were you part of the plug in? That was That was that was today. Is that what that where you did your session or are plugged in now it was made with something else. Where did you do?

[00:30:32.82] spk_3:
Yeah, I don’t Gallery actually knows more about that. Um

[00:30:36.16] spk_0:
where did you did you do this session, Valerie

[00:30:40.14] spk_3:
Valerie was so kind to plan it all for us, so I don’t wanna speak over

[00:30:48.60] spk_4:
Valerie. Sorry. Looking it up. I wanted to make sure I was getting the correct name of the organization that helped us to put this together. Um, So Nyah at Bowery analytics contacted us. Um, and she actually contacted a large number of people who were planning to stick at N 10 because in 10 wasn’t able to do a virtual conference. The what she and Bowery analytics pulled together a bunch of us to help get the zoom set up and get the weapon are set up and get everything scheduled and get some registration links together. Um, all of the webinars for free. And a lot of us had already developed a content, So why not?

[00:31:28.22] spk_0:
Yeah, And for non profit radio as well. I’m glad we could do it here, too. So you want to tell us now where, where condone listeners find the full session? Do you know

[00:31:44.56] spk_4:
the full sessions are going to be available through Bowery analytics? It’s B o w e r y analytics dot com, and we’ll make sure we get a link to our specific such number.

[00:31:58.54] spk_0:
Okay, Okay. Thank you. Um, let’s start with, uh, part of the good strategy is using personas user personas. Can you kick us off with that? Valerie? How do you How do you start to identify what persona looks like? And what’s their value?

[00:32:53.84] spk_4:
Absolutely. So persona is really like a profile or a character sketch of someone that you need to connect with, um, and understanding their motivations and goals. So it’s a way of segmenting your audience. And rather than sending all of your messaging out into the ether trying to tailor that messaging to a specific demographic or a specific group of people, So for pathways to housing p a were actually still developing. What are person does look like? We have an idea of what it looks like, but we want to dig support into the research and analytics side of things to see who exactly is supporting us right now. And what, um, ties they have in common to help us build those profiles. I think Katie might be a little bit further ahead of us in developing this personas. I’m gonna toss it over to her. Yeah.

[00:32:55.44] spk_3:
Yeah. So, uh, user personas are something I’ve been doing throughout my career. I worked in an agency before I came to the Trevor Project, so I was able to get a lot of industry knowledge on how we create user personas and user journeys. But what we did when we started looking at our end of your campaign for last year Trevor Project, we made sure we carved out some time Teoh conduct a little bit of an audit of what our donors were looking like. Where were they coming from, what could be tracked, what could be tracked? We found out we had a lot more questions that needed answers. So in order to get user personas, something that’s really important is tracking and understanding where people are coming from and where their first and Lex last clicks are. So because of our ability to do so. Google Analytics and Source code Tracking Protocol. We did get a lot of tracking during end of year that will improve. What are user pursuant is like going into future campaigns, but now we’re gonna be able to better tell what is actually inspiring. People give what is the moment where they’re actually clicking that donate button. What is the first thing they’re seeing that’s starting a relationship with the trouble project. So

[00:34:06.99] spk_2:
what are

[00:34:13.06] spk_0:
the pieces of a persona? How granular do you get is where they live, to what they read or what? Yeah, give us, um, a depth of this thing.

[00:36:05.73] spk_3:
Absolutely so the main important piece of a persona is to know what their needs are so you can have a persona that says, General, as this is a donor, they need to know how to give. That’s a persona, but what you’d like to do is get a little bit deeper in being able to tell what the values of that persona are. What’s what’s the name? What’s the age? What’s The character is sticks. What are the opportunities, Really. You know, I like to create fake names and really go into a new stock in Madrid so that you can try to connect with who this person might be. You’re really giving ah face to a name and a value to a person, and you want to look at what donors are looking like. So, for example, for the Trevor Project, we have a lot of one time first time donors, and we have a lot of people who come in. They give their first gift, and I’m trying to find where they’re dropping off, right? What is causing that? So I baby create a persona that is, Ah, one time user that’s not really convinced they want to give again one time donor. They may be young. They may be, um, like within our demographic, which is under 25 youth that we serve with our Christ. The service is in suicide prevention. Service is, um so you can get as granular is making a name and an aged in the demographic and the location and what devices they’re using. I think that’s a big one. Is this person usually on their mobile? Are they usually on test top? What channels do they typically like to look at Twitter? You can get as granular email. Are they just looking at your website? So you know it should get a detailed as you can, but I would encourage people to get really creative with it. If the more detailed you’re able to get, it’s just a just a more clear picture of a donor that you’re looking to target just make sure it’s someone you actually want to target and not someone you’re gonna be. Uh, that wouldn’t actually be coming to you like maybe Bill Gates isn’t gonna be coming. Teoh. A non profit website to donate. But you can look at what those specific I don’t as I would like that are more realist. Extra Your

[00:36:27.10] spk_0:
okay, right? You’re basically non. What’s realistic? Not what you aspiration is.

[00:36:36.82] spk_3:
Yeah, two degree. I mean, I think you could be aspirational, aspirational in some facets of what you’re doing. It has to be somewhat grounded in, you know, a realistic approach. We do get asked. I get aspirational myself when I’m creating donor personas. When you know I am looking for major gifts. I am looking for people who are willing to process a $15,000 credit card charge. And there are people out there that that do that. So when I do my donor personas, they may not be the number one target of my campaign. But I do want to consider what those people are interested in, as well so that I can personalized content for them to the best of my ability.

[00:37:10.53] spk_0:
Okay.

[00:37:24.13] spk_4:
Yeah, the other thing to keep in mind is diversifying your donor base. So in looking at who’s giving two pathways to housing right now, they’re mostly middle aged, college educated white women who prefer Facebook and giving on a desktop. Um, which is fine. And that’s definitely one category of people that you would want to be supporting you. But Philadelphia is an incredibly diverse city. So if those are the only people that we’re getting to with our messaging, that we really need to think about diversifying our strategies to build new donor profiles for people who don’t all look the same.

[00:38:14.55] spk_0:
And then once you have a bunch of personas and profile that I mean it sounds like you could have 10 or 12 really different ones different. Um, yeah, different characteristics of people, different types of people that come to you. And like you, said Kate, even people who leave no, you want to capture them back. So once you have these Valerie, then you’re trying to communicate to them. But how do you How do you turn your communications into targets to these personas?

[00:38:27.62] spk_4:
So you really want to think about building content specifically for that persona, so you might be doing a campaign that you want to hit a couple of different personas with. But you’re gonna taylor that campaign specifically to each persona and deliver the message Teoh a specific segment of that campaign. So if you’re gonna do a mail campaign, um, you want to think about how you’re putting together that letter and what you’re writing into the letter and how you’re addressing the donors for each of the different segments of each of the different personas that you put together to really help craft a message and inspire them specifically to donate?

[00:38:59.82] spk_0:
Okay, right. Like it. You, like you were saying, you know, yet know what’s important to them. Um, but

[00:39:00.80] spk_1:
that stuff is this is

[00:39:03.82] spk_0:
very, uh, amorphous to try to, you know, it’s not just what they give and how much do they give And what time of year do they give? You know what’s important to them? What do they value this

[00:39:13.75] spk_4:
is This is

[00:39:14.29] spk_0:
difficult stuff to suss out.

[00:39:29.53] spk_4:
Yeah. One thing our co presenters that this morning, Marcus, was that donors were smart and they’re savvy. And with the advent of the Internet and all of the various channels that you can communicate with people now. But what they want and they know what they want to hear from you. And if they’re not hearing from you what they want, they’re gonna go find someone else who’s gonna provide that information and communicate to them the way they want to be communicated with. So fundraising and marketing for non profits right now looks very different than it did maybe 10 15 20 years ago. Um, and And donors know what they want now.

[00:40:01.31] spk_0:
Okay, so it’s worth you’re trying. Teoh suss out all this amorphous information. A ZX best you can. Okay, Katie, Is there anything more you want to say about personas before we move on to being multi channel?

[00:40:07.52] spk_3:
Let’s go on a multi channel. I could talk. Is the personas all day?

[00:40:11.59] spk_0:
All right? All right. Anything. I don’t want anything important out, though, from

[00:40:16.15] spk_3:
OK, I think we’ve covered the main points.

[00:40:18.25] spk_0:
Okay, what’s what’s what’s important about? Well, I think we all know why to be multi channel, But how to coordinate those messages? What’s your What’s your thinking there?

[00:41:37.71] spk_3:
Yeah, I can jump in here. So I think what people often don’t Dio is they don’t coordinate messages Cross channel at the right time. That’s what I’ve been seeing a lot with, just my industry research. I mean, I’m always looking at what everybody is doing in the space because I want to be part of the best. Uh, but they say they being What I’ve heard on multiple conferences is that there’s a rule of seven, right? So as a non donor, let’s am school after Facebook, I need to see and ask seven times before I’m actually likely to give. So if you’re seeing that asked seven times on Facebook, that means it’s seven posts. That’s kind of a lot, and that’s gonna have to be spaced out through a certain amount of days, weeks, months. Even so, if you’re just increasing all the channels that you’re presenting that message on, so let’s say I’m seeing it on Facebook I’m seeing in my email. I’m seeing it on my instagram. I’m getting a paid ad for it because I liked it on Facebook. That’s gonna shorten the window of which I see seven points of that call to action. So I’m gonna be more likely to give if I’m seeing it in a wider spectrum on the digital space. Then I am in just one channel. So making sure that you’re saying similar things but that our custom to what the channel is providing, like social media has, like paid ads, have a certain amount of characters you can use. So bacon shorts optimized for what channel you’re using but still with the common thread, is really important for increasing your numbers. Right.

[00:42:31.14] spk_0:
Okay, Now it’s a little clear to me why I see so many ads for the, uh, pickpocket proof slacks. I see them across all kinds of different channels. I’m not I’m hardly on Facebook anymore. But, um, I I see them when I goto websites and I’m reading articles and because one time I don’t know why, I swear it was like, three years ago I was browsing through these CIA a approved slacks with 14 pockets, and it’s all supposed to be a pickpocket. Proof for something is, you know, the $200 slacks or whatever they’re you know. But I get

[00:42:39.22] spk_3:
your seven times

[00:43:26.30] spk_0:
I has ever since. Yeah, and, uh, I know I’m not even sure that if I bought them the ads would stop. Maybe the West is sophisticated enough. No, it’s not right. That is now your brother needs pair. Whatever time for our last break turn to communications relationships, the world runs on them. We all know that turn to is led by former journalists so that you get help building relationships with journalists. Those relationships will help you when you need to be heard. So people know you’re a thought leader in your field and they specialize in working with nonprofits. They’re at turn hyphen two dot ceo, we’ve got but loads more time for content strategy from 20 and TC. Valerie, anything you want, you want to explain about multi channel and how important it is to reinforce and be consistent.

[00:44:25.22] spk_4:
I think the biggest thing for me is if you’re starting from scratch and you’re really trying to develop content and put it in the right places, um, you really want to be thinking about who? Your audiences, all those channels. So for lengthen the messaging that you’re putting out is gonna look a lot different than what you’re putting out on Facebook. Most people use Facebook recreational E, and they use lengthen for professional relationships So the type of information that someone is seeking on Linkin or more likely to respond to go on Lincoln is a lot different than what they’re more likely to look for or respond to on Facebook. So for us, we make sure all of our job listings go up on LinkedIn. And all of our that’s specific for me was humbled Lincoln just to kind of show our expertise in the area. But one were posted to Facebook. We’re talking more likely to people that we know are supporters of us and want to do tangible things to support us. So the messaging is different, even though the information is really the same.

[00:45:00.29] spk_0:
Okay, Okay. Again, you’re consistent, but consistent, but different. Maybe different format even. Um OK, yeah. Um I mean, there’s there’s other format, you know, content paper. Were white papers, Um, again, depending for the right for the right channel research. Um, do

[00:45:01.51] spk_2:
either of

[00:45:12.58] spk_0:
you use, um, media working in working through thought leadership in developing thought leadership in media media relationships A

[00:45:14.19] spk_4:
little bit. Yeah. Yeah. So there is a local media outlet here in Philadelphia called Generosity, and they are focused on nonprofits and social enterprises and people who are making positive impact in Philadelphia. So they’re super open to having folks guest post or write op EDS for them. So we’ve utilized that outlet a couple of times. Um, actually, just last week, uhm our CEO wrote an article about the opportunity for kindness in the era of Corona virus. So it’s something that she actually wrote to communicate to our staff members and let them know what our stance on, you know, moving forward was going to be. And we thought it was think that would be beneficial. Not just our staff, but the at large. So we pass it along to they posted it as an op ed and that gave us, um, a little bit more bang for our buck for that we had already written.

[00:46:07.22] spk_0:
Yeah. Good, good. Um, Katie, you’re doing much with earned media.

[00:46:11.38] spk_3:
I am not. The Trevor Project is. But Katie Green is not that our constant handle that.

[00:46:20.12] spk_0:
OK, um, let’s talk about some some analytics. How do we know whether we’re being successful on where we need to? We need to tweak or pivot. Can you get us started?

[00:46:42.48] spk_3:
Absolutely. So analytics is very hard for a lot of nonprofits because it’s such a scientific based, skilled touch. And, you know, that’s something that when I first came onto the Trevor Project, is the first thing I implemented was our source coding protocol. It’s so important to know where people are coming from, but you can actually optimize, but we a be tested and continue to be test absolutely everything. We do it through. Ah, our website radio through email, We do it through our paid social and to see how things work. I think really we just test absolutely everything. Things you think you know you don’t. And that’s what I keep learning through. Testing is what you think works today, work tomorrow and we retest everything. A time of day test, for example, isn’t gonna throw send for email isn’t gonna be the same after daylight savings. It’s not gonna be the same as the seasons change, and particularly not the same now that everybody is stuck at home. So you know, they’re testing and optimizing Really, what you know is working. It just requires retesting, re optimizing and testing.

[00:47:43.41] spk_0:
Could you could you give some more examples Besides time of day. What examples of things you test.

[00:49:01.17] spk_3:
Oh, absolutely. So on our website we tested, we have a little call out box with questions on our donate form. We tested the placement of that. Is it better to have it right up next to the form underneath, directly on tops of dispersing people see to be tested. Placement there. We test what photos we use. A lot does a photo of somebody looking sad versus somebody looking more celebratory and happy. We test a lot of pride imagery because the serv LGBT Q youth We want to see if pride imagery actually helps get our word out there. We test our colors a lot because our brand colors orange, which is can be very cautionary. But we see you think that it’s your brand color. Of course, everybody’s gonna always just on toe, But that’s not really the case like sometimes they like our blues and R purples and greens when it comes to see ta buttons. Um, gosh, I mean, I could tell you every test I’ve ever run thunder test, some using graphics versus photos on the website. You know, the size with the height of our life boxes with mark donation forms. The amount of buttons we have it just the list goes on and on. I

[00:49:21.77] spk_0:
heard one that just made me think of one small example of what? Riffing off What you just said was testing the text inside a button. Yeah, instead of just donate or ah, reviewed or something, you know, beam or more splits explicit about what? The what? The action is you asking for just a single word. A little more descriptive.

[00:49:56.13] spk_3:
Yeah, Testing. See, Ta Izz is something that we dio a lot just to get people some ideas. I think one that can be really helpful when it comes to fundraising is seeing how your donors reacts to the word give and the word support and the word donate. So all the same thing we’re after you to support our mission to give to us and to donate. But those three words have very different feelings when you’re reading them on your screen. So that’s one of the biggest test we ran. But I would recommend always test taking see ta when you have a new one, especially

[00:50:05.61] spk_0:
Was it was it act blue that, uh, change dot or GE, I think maybe change that or GE started calling it chip in, could you? Chimp man,

[00:50:12.99] spk_3:
I think that that flail sounds like a classic act Blue.

[00:50:18.26] spk_0:
Yeah. Okay. Um eso Valerie, can you talk us through some metrics? You’re the director of institutional advancement. What? What numbers do you look for? Decide how you’re doing.

[00:51:11.98] spk_4:
Ah, we look at a lot of things. So we’re looking at the click through rates on our emails and honor Post, actually reading to the bottom and clicking the links that we’re providing. Um, we’re looking at how many people are interacting with things that were posting on social media and whether they are, um, injuring it. We’re not. Hey, son, how many people are interacting with it? Um, we took a lot of surveys to do. So talking to our donors directly and asking them what kind of things they won’t see. What kind of thanks. Um I know Katie’s doing ah lot more with metrics than we are. So this is my friendly reminder to smaller nonprofits where there’s just one person trying to do all of this. You don’t have to recreate the feel eso you could look at an organization like the Trevor Project that does have the staff who can look at all of these things. And you, all of these tests chicken, all of the match person, See, But for the past at a imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So you can look at what they’re doing and then borrow It s o for an organization like me that has a fuller staff were doing a little bit on our own. But we’re also looking a lot of what other nonprofits were doing and a scooping that they’re taking the time to test things. And we’re kind of, you know, copying what they’re doing, obviously successful for them.

[00:51:44.45] spk_0:
How do you learn from them? Do you just created build a relationship and then asked, What? What kind of metrics do you look at?

[00:51:51.46] spk_4:
Sometimes And sometimes it’s a simple as going to the Trevor Project websites donate page and seeing where they placed things and what they named their buttons and what giving levels they’re putting up there. Um, because, you know, you’re never gonna be exactly the same as another organization. So you definitely want to take a look at your use thing as an example and use someone who’s doing similar work or in a similar location to you. But at the end of the day, there’s only so much you can learn through testing. And after that you’re just gonna have to dive in and do something. So if you don’t have time for the testing, you could do a quick search of what everybody in your industry is doing and kind of take it from there and said,

[00:52:33.45] spk_0:
Katie, since everybody’s stealing from the Trevor Project, What, uh, what? I assume you knew Valerie was doing this.

[00:52:36.65] spk_3:
I didn’t. But it’s such a compliment

[00:52:39.48] spk_4:
is because you do a great job. That’s why we’re looking at you.

[00:52:43.95] spk_3:
Oh, gosh,

[00:52:44.69] spk_0:
What do you want to add about? Metrics?

[00:52:48.65] spk_3:
Um, I think I just want toe reiterate Valerie’s point that there are so many nonprofits where one person is doing us. Um, I’m the only person on the digital giving team. I’m the first person they were hired to do. Digital living. Um, I’ve been still with the team member of one, but, you know, I do have the support of a very large marketing team that helps me with creating all of the tests that we dio and anyone can tweet me, email me whatever it like any non profit everyone to connect. I Moyes unopened resource. But, uh, metrics are increasingly, uh, important. Just critical role to donors. Content strategy. So

[00:53:29.99] spk_0:
is your offering yourself as a resource. Do you want to share your e mail and or your Twitter? You don’t have to give your email if you don’t want to.

[00:53:37.22] spk_3:
Yeah, maybe Twitter is probably the best way to reach me because I’m trying. I’m trying to learn how to tweet more as a digital person. I feel like radio its act. Katie Sue Green like one word. So it’s k a t i e after you e g r e n Katie Stuart Green green. Just like the color. No, ESPN.

[00:54:05.19] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. Thank you. Um, that’s a Valerie. You want to, uh, gonna wrap us up some parting thoughts about content strategy?

[00:54:07.13] spk_4:
Sure. Um, since I am kind of representing the smaller organization here, I just want to remind everybody that you’re doing everything that you can, and it’s everything that you’re doing is important. So don’t try to do everything at once, really. Pick one thing to focus on and get to a point where you’re doing that well and comfortably before you try to add more. Um, listen, podcast like this or going to a presentation like the one that we did this morning is overwhelming in the number of things that you could be. Do you think? And it makes you feel like you’re not doing enough? But you are. And just tackling the small hills one at a time is much, much easier than trying to climb the mountain.

[00:56:13.47] spk_0:
That’s very gracious. Gracious advice. Thank you. Thanks very much. That was Valerie Johnson. That is Valerie Johnson, director of Institutional Advancement at Pathways to Housing P A. And with her is Katie Green. Digital giving manager for Trevor Project. Thank you very much for sharing each of you Thanks so much. And thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 20 NTC pulling it together. Virtually responsive by Cougar Mouth and Software Denali Fund. Is there complete accounting solution made for non profits? Tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Mountain will get you a free 60 day trial. Thanks a lot for being with us next week. Accessibility and inclusive design If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you find it on tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com by Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund Is there complete accounting solution made for non profits? Tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant er mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot ceo. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff, Sam Liebowitz Managed Stream shows. Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy on this

[00:56:22.08] spk_8:
Music is by Scots with me next week for non

[00:56:29.63] spk_0:
profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great

Nonprofit Radio for August 10, 2018: Your Media Relations Strategy

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Peter Panepento & Antionette Kerr: Your Media Relations Strategy
Co-authors Peter Panepento and Antionette Kerr want you to have a plan for earned, paid and owned media that’s G.R.E.A.T.: Goal oriented; responsive; empowered; appealing; and targeted. Their new book is “Modern Media Relations for Nonprofits.”

 

 

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Oppcoll hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d endure the pain of tacky fajita if you made me swallow the idea that you’re missed today’s show your media relations strategy co authors peter panepento and antionette car. I want you to have a plan for earned paid and owned media that’s great goal oriented, responsive, empowered, appealing and targeted they’re new book is modern media relations for non-profits i told you, take two millennials versus boomers we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant wagner see piela is guiding you beyond the numbers regular cps dot com bye tell us turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash tony tello’s and by text to give mobile donations made easy text npr to four, four, four, nine, nine, nine. What a pleasure to welcome peter panepento to the studio and his co author, internet kurt to the show by phone. Peter welcome, welcome back. I’m excited to be back on tony martignetti non-profit radio back to the show. First time in the studio, though first time in the studio, we’ve done it by phone. We’ve done it on site at conferences, but never in the studio. So it’s pretty cool to see you in your native habitat. Thank you very much. Peter’s cofounder and philanthropic practice leader of turn to communications, a pr in communications firm working with non-profits and foundations, he has deep experience in the media and non-profits he was a journalist for more than twenty years, most recently as a managing editor at the chronicle of philanthropy that’s where i first met him even before he was managing editor. He’s at turn hyphen, too dot ceo and at peter panepento internet car welcome to the show. Thank you for having my pleasure. Internet is the founding ceo of bold and bright media, a multimedia publishing company helping non-profit writers tell their stories. She also works as a non-profit leader and a journalist. She contributes a weekly column for the lexington dispatch in north carolina, that’s where she started in journalism, she’s been a ted ex presenter and is a contributor to non-profit marketing guide that’s, a friend of the show give you the room, miller she’s been on a few times. Internet is at bold and bright media dot com and at the right folks w r i t again. Welcome, antionette. Look. Thank you. Welcome from north carolina. Now i have two homes in north carolina, in pinehurst and emerald isle. Where is lexington? I think it is somewhat north of finders. But finders is beautiful and it’s a lovely place. Not like to go and visit. Great place to go. Yes, it is. I’m not. Yeah. I’m not a golfer. A lot of friends say that’s a waste of a house in pine er’s. Because it’s actually on a golf course. But i just watched them thankfully. It’s. A nice, quiet sport and i don’t know too much about sports. But it’s a nice quiet one. It goes by in the backyard. I don’t hear them. No golf balls in the kitchen, windows xp. Fine. Where so we should get together sometime. We definitely should have written for a pine straw, which is a beautiful publication there in-kind okay, so, yeah, you get a chance to pick that up? I haven’t written for them in a while, but it’s really great magazine. Excellent. Pine straw, i’ll look for it together. Peter and antionette have this book new book called modern media relations for non-profits creating and active pr strategy for today’s world antionette let’s stick with you. Why? Why do we need a media strategy? Well, we need a media strategy because i haven’t been on the other side of covering non-profit and then on the executive director side, i was actually exactly director of where q different non-profits i realized that there was a missing element of communication, and a lot of that has to do with not having a media strategy. Most non-profits don’t have a sign media relations coordinator, we we wish we all had the money to do that thing strategy is really a cost effective way to implement some tools. Second make you a media darling that can help you get promoted in larger publications or on television and radio, so that our goal in writing this book was just to help people with, you know, some constant, active and quick ways that they can improve their media relations strategy. Peter, you were at clark chronicle of philanthropy when i first met you. I think you were web. Editor. That guy was probably right. Yeah, i was on your podcast that’s right before i had this show. I’m pretty sure this is very meta. Yeah, we’ve come. Yes. The student has become the teacher. You have to obey me now. We were in the chronicle philanthropy studio. Um and yeah, i think you were web editor. Alright. So through web editor, you became assistant. Was this a managing editor? And they’re managing editor or one of the managing editor’s eye was a system managing editor. Yeah, go right. The point is through that time you had you received thousands of from press releases to enquiries to phone calls, maybe tenth out who knows from non-profits trying to get attention, right? What are i mean, we have an hour together, so we can’t say it all here. Okay? What? What do you what? One or two things you wish non-profits could do? Would do better around their media? Yes. So, it’s interesting. I’ve been on both sides of this equation now, and i know how hard it is to pitch stories that yes, but but, you know, like antionette i had twenty years of experience in journalism, so i got a lot of pitches over the years, and as you noted, the time i had at the chronicle, i got a lot of pitches from non-profits and i think i think the biggest, biggest turnoff for journalists and the biggest thing i wish i could do when i would get a bad ah pitch from a from on organization is give some really basic advice to actually get to know the publication and the person that you’re pitching. This is that of getting blanket pitches that you send everybody, you know, get to know who you’re actually pitching and and know what they cover and and know a little bit about what the reporter editor cares about and taylor your pitch to that to that reporter, knowing what she or he might be interested in covering and the angle that they would want to cover. Okay, duitz you get so many, you get so many pitches that really the ones that stand out are the ones that that kind of, you know, they show some research, they show some research, they know what they cover like at the chronicle, we’re not going to come and cover your charity gala. Every every charity in the country covers a charity gala, but i would get, you know, all these news releases from organizations pitching their gala. I’m not going to cover that, but if you tell me something unique about what that gala might teach other non-profits or can identify a speaker, that might be of interest to a broader non-profit audience that might get my attention. So do that little extra bit of research find out what’s unique about what you’re doing and how that that unique thing that you’re doing actually intersects with the interests of that reporter you’re reaching out, okay? We’ll talk more about your advice for press releases specifically, but okay, excellent. So cem basic do some basic research now. I was disappointed to read in the book that newsrooms are no longer like i saw in the movie spotlight. It doesn’t mean it’s not like that anymore. It’s not it’s, not and what’s really interesting about spotlight, too is that that was pretty reese, right? I mean, that was an investigative team at the globe about ten years ago that was doing some major investigative work, some of that’s happening now, but in a lot. Of cases newsrooms have been really cut to the bone, they’ve been commoditized, the business has really changed and and as a result, there aren’t thes robust reporting staffs in these big news holes that you’re going after it’s become a lot more competitive, especially for non-profits who may actually be reaching out to publications that don’t have anybody who actually covers non-profits as a beating the non-profit beat right? All right, we’re going, we’re going toe take our first break, and it is for pursuant your newspaper is pursuing e-giving outlook, they took the latest fund-raising reports and boiled them down to the takeaways you need in a concise content paper. Watch the archive of their related web in or do both it’s, an ensemble piece of paper with matching webinar through the coordination both are on the listener landing page. Tony dahna slash pursuing capital p for please now back to your media relations strategy. So peter what’s the implication of this degradation of the newsroom loss of the newsroom, no longer a non-profit beat reporter for non-profits trying to get the attention of media there, some negatives and positives related to that, i would say the big negative is that it’s a lot harder to identify the people you need to build relationships within news organizations and it’s a lot also a lot harder to get your story place, because there’s there, our reporter now might be hearing, you know from from even more folks who are competing for the limited space and what we’re talking about a newspaper here in this case in the newspaper. But it actually goes across local television and other things, too. There’s just the news hole ott of a lot of news organizations now have less space, or they are part of a conglomerate and there’s some, you know, national coverage in your local newscasts that has that’s eating up time now to that’s kind of mandate and there’s no one devoted to the non-profit beat, right? So the surgeon or the people you’re pitching r r have multiple assignments? Absolutely. Nobody is devoted to your your category of existence that’s, right? And people are turning over quickly too, so i’m so the net result of all of that is is you’re competing with a lot more people for a lot less attention. The upside of that, though, is if you are really good about building relationships with a few key reporters out there, and they start to trust you their time is so short instead of you having to pitch to them, they’re going to come to you probably a lot more regularly when they need an expert on a specific topic. So if you’re able to break through and get the attention of that reporter and and they trust you, um, that becomes really valuable to you and that’s really a key basis of the book to its howto build those relationships and howto break through and get to the point where it’s not just you sending news releases out to reporters and hoping they cover it, but but that they’re actually coming to you when they need an expert on your cause or on what’s happening in the nonprofit sector in your community or, you know, whatever you’re really looking, push, we need our media relations strategy to be much deeper than spread what you caught spray and praise brain provoc press releases, you know, to one hundred outlets, none tailored and just and just hopeful weigh a lot deeper that we’ll get to it, we’ll get to it shortly antionette by the way, i love the name antionette that was my grandmother’s name on my father’s side. Antionette antionette do you do you go by and short or do admonish people know it’s antionette now, it’s just that it’s hard to fail, but when it was hard enough to learn that name, so i think i’ll just go by that name because i noticed you have a n t i o n e t t and i think the more common spelling is oh, i end absolutely catches everything i never yet it’s right on my show sheet. I’ll prove it, peter, i’ll show him i have it spelled right every time because you’re smelling it like a grandmother, but i know i noticed i noticed you spell it differently. I thought maybe you were saying antionette but no, not internet. It’s okay, antionette martignetti was grandma martignetti you spend all the time in the book talking about ethics? Why internet? Why? Why? If we’re approaching media, why do we know about? Why do we need to know what’s the some ethics guidelines basics for journalists? Well, this is an important time in an important environment you’ve been a journalist. So one thing one of my pet peeves is whatever i work on a story non-profits asked me if they can read it, which would cause me to lose my job. I really leave a lot of people don’t understand that, you know, it could be really offensive that crosses the line between advertising and paid yeah versus a really urgent media story. So you know, where you go to a television producer, for example, and working studio you might be ableto see it after it edited and sent you, but you don’t really get to have input in that process, so we wanted people to understand that, and to really it’ll help with your relationship. So we begin our book with some jargon in terms that we use like moon, where the peter just talked about you tell me why someone would want to come to your gala will for a journalist, you say here’s, why they knew where they are, ears perked up so that’s that will really help people in establishing relationships to understand the ethics and the jargon and behind the scenes scenario with newsroom another point, you make his offering someone journalist free admission to a gala. Or maybe, you know, can i buy you a lunch? You should. We should know that. There’s. A good chance. You know you’re polite offers will politely be turned down. Right, and most organizations have a have a policy about that on the other side of the news room, so don’t take offense if they say no, i can’t accept your ticket. I mean, it’s it’s for, you know, a ten dollar event that might be that might not be an issue, but if it’s for one hundred fifty dollars gala, you know that that might be an issue for journalists, except that it could be considered, and julie influencing their objective news stories on din the new york metro area, it could be a fifteen hundred dollar ticket right way. Okay, we’ll get there in north carolina. It’s coming, it’s going, well, i’m not i’m not saying that’s a good thing anyway, i’m just saying that that’s that’s the state of the state of some some dollars in the northeast or certainly in the new york metro area, i’m not saying that that’s something to aspire to by any means, right? So you antionette you touched on earned and paid versus owns you in the book the two of you call this the trifecta could you distinguish between earned payden and owned media for us? Absolutely. And the trifecta isn’t a unique term for our conversation when that is used quite often in the journalism world, but what i noticed is that non-profits we’re really focused on earth media, but sometimes their strategies weren’t connecting their own video, which earned media traditional journalism. So it is what a reporter on whether it’s radio on the radio are print, which cover and its objective information paid media is advertising, and then all of the media which people forget that they actually own their own media sources right now between social media and website, they they do have control over that i’m seeing people, for example, a community college that had a huge cam picking that they paid for with an advertising firm to say we want a traditional student but well written their website, it didn’t really correlate with the messaging that they have paid so much money through advertising and paid people to get stories and earned the other press releases, and then they didn’t coordinate that with their own owned media that we really talk about dating you cover that case in the book that they were paying to get nontraditional students, but then there’s social media and the website was highlighting volleyball and some other sport. You know, it was highlighting the sports, and so people are looking for coordination in message, and they weren’t finding it right. They were born. They were showing back about players, and they wanted older students, people to consider themselves a student. If they’re older, they had a violent past about being featured on the website. Let’s, see so let’s stick with you internet talk a little about the earned media. Peter gave some tips about press releases. What i like way like here, actionable, no actionable strategies tips. You know what? What, what, what some other advice around making press releases more likely to be acted on and not not trashed. We have a section where we talk about appealing for may have been working with pressure lisa’s much first job as an intern at a newspaper with a full presently about the fax machine and deliver it to the right. This doesn’t seeing press releases the good, the bad and before quite some time and for non-profits a particular thing after you that they’re not really appealing a lot of times that we’re having the same event. You know, we talked about the gala where a golf tournament, we just kind of recycle the same press release every year and again, that’s not showing what worthy and a lot of times when you read the press release, i tell people, if you get bored reading your own press release that, don’t they? So just to make him appealing is good and then as some really powerful quote. So once the happiest people has this really stuffy quote from the executive director, that doesn’t end quality to the conversation. So that quote from from your weather report chairs or eighty your communications director to me, something exciting, not great language, but nothing exciting. You even recommend you recommend spending ten minutes interviewing the person, even if you’re the internal. You know, if you’re the internal communications person, you recommend spending ten minutes interviewing the person you’re going to quote, you can get some of their active language and bring some of that passion out that theyve got for the subject. Absolutely, absolutely that’s part of making your strategy appealing. So, you know, just just kind of sprucing up the language and and again removing the jargon from your non-profit and your great language. I feel like people, especially if they receive a grant that cutting case, you know, part of their executive summary into the press release and the journal is not you. I love making this news worthy. So, peter, our press release is still valuable men. Should we even bother be doing them, though? Yeah, i mean there’s value to him. But i think they shouldn’t be the default any more. I think a lot of organizations think there think that by sending news releases out, whenever they have something to announce that’s their media relations, they’ve got made a strategy right right on that it should be part of the picture, but it shouldn’t be the whole picture, and they are valuable in a couple of ways. One is they actually can provide valuable information to a reporter when they’re reporting on a story they’re very helpful toe have posted on your website a zoo in an archive for when people are looking for information specifically when reporters are looking for information on a lot of times, if you have those news releases posted on your website, they may connect through a story they’re writing on. It may not happen the day you signed the release out, but three months from now, if you release an important report on something and reporters covering that issue let’s say you put a report out about hunger in your community and it gets to be around the holidays and reporters doing story about hunger and hunger charities around the holidays that release might actually get their attention when they’re looking for information so there’s value there. But when i think you’re sending them out, i i feel like you get a lot more attention and you do a lot better job of building relationships if instead of just sending a news release to everybody on your media list, you you identify a few people and actually send a personal note to that reporter talking about what’s coming up, you know, giving them a heads up about what’s there, talking about some things that might be of interest in that announcement to that reporter and then making yourself available is a resource for for follow-up either right then or whenever the reporter needs that, i think if you actually spent more time doing that and less time just cranking out press releases you, you get more of your news covered and you built some better relationships and that the personal note idea. You have a little section in your book where you say you’re recommending something, you say way, have we switched years to make this a fund-raising book? No, you’re talking about relationships with reporters? Yeah, yeah, and no. So, i mean, i know it’s. Just that relationships are important and the personal note goes above and beyond how many personal. You know how many personal handwritten notes would you get in a month? You know what? The chronicle of philanthropy? Very few. But you know what? Average it’s a stand. And it stands up, you know? So he’s going to get rid. Exactly, write something stupid in your hand written note. You know, it’s still gonna end up in the garbage, right? So don’t try anything stupid, but, you know, you can stand out absolute waste. And that z very, uh it’s perfectly consistent with what we say about dahna relationships, absolutely for fundraisers sends the personal thank you note from a boardmember or something? Yeah, the personal notes, the thank you’s are really crucial. Azan example on dh this has happened fairly recently. One of the clients i work with, you know, is looking to build relationships with reporters who cover philanthropy in wealth. And i’ve reached out to a really prominent ray boerner, who covers wealth and have built a relationship with him without ever actually pitching a story to him. Yeah. So, you know, i sent along a couple of of story ideas to him and explain to him who i was and who i worked with and how i could be helpful to him. And we had a bit of a back and forth, and it got to a point where he actually reached in some of the email back and forth, he finally reached out to me and said, hey, i’m working on the story. Do you have any people who can who can be quoted and and i got back to him with three people home run, yeah, he’s asking you, he’s asking me, and then on top of that following that and, you know, actually delivering on it and him getting the sources he wanted. I got our email back afterwards where you actually i thank him for the story and he replied back and he said, you are now in the pantheon of pr people whose emails all open every time. So if grand slam, if you can deliver on that, you can you can move yourself into that pantheon and and that’s way more valuable than that would’ve been way more that one relationship is way more valuable than me putting a release out on pr newswire and hoping it gets picked up a thousand times more. See all these ideas in the book you got to get the damn book that’s just the point where we can’t cover everything in an hour. It’s modern media relations for non-profits just buy-in panepento incur. Just get the done thing let’s see? Okay, little moron earned media. That was some good in the media for us, right? They’re actually very good. It wasn’t e-giving, but nobody. You’re welcome, but nobody listens to this show way. Have over thirteen thousand. Um, let’s. Stick with you, peter. Peter p on on beds writing your you can write up ed. You’re writing on spec though you might spend a lot of time. It may not get printed, but it could be valuable if it if it does absolutely, you can be purposes. That’s, right? Ok. Writes a little opera. Okay. So op eds. If you’re not familiar with what i’m not, that is if their opinion pieces that are written by outside writers. Thank you. You’re a newspaper keeping me out of george in jail. Well, my own show. I have jack in jail and i think it’s interesting s o, i’m about to put out an e book on top says, and we’ve had a really hard time titling it because way can’t assume that anybody knows what an op that is so it’s kind of an internal struggle i’m having right now too, but ah ah lot of people think that op eds are kind of ah dinosaur thing of the past that they don’t really exist anymore, but guess what? Newspapers are still running them, and in fact they’re probably running more of them now because they have smaller staff, so they’re actually looking for more writers to contribute to their pages. So if you’re actually looking to advance an idea or, you know, advance an issue trying to, you know, build awareness about, you know, health care and you’re in your community or some kind of gap there, this is an opportunity for you to build a, well, a statue, you know, well crafted argument written by a thought leader in your organization, your ceo, your executive director, you know, the head of whatever initiative you’re working on and and use that space is a is a a place to kind of articulate your argument about why that issues important and what’s being done about it, or what people can do about it and a cz you noted the great value of that, you know, there is competition for these so you you’re writing these on spec your you may send it into ah paper, and they may not pick it up. The op ed page is limited space, right? Exactly if it does get picked up. Wonderful, right? You’ve gotten you’ve gotten in there if it doesn’t get picked up now you have a piece of writing that you can use for other things, you can use it on. You’re on your own media, you can use it on your website. You could put it in an appeal to donors. You can put it in your annual report. You khun it’s, it’s, not wasted effort. You can you can do something else with it. And the great thing about the era of internet journalism now, too is if the if the peace does get picked up before you know, twenty years ago you pick up the newspaper, you’d read the op ed that day and you throw it away. Now it lives forever online and when people are searching on that topic, your op ed might show up six months later and you might win a new supporter. You might, you know, no, get somebody who wants to learn more about your organization and joined your email list, you can get lasting value from these now internet there’s. Also some services is that you can use teo to find out what generalists are working on currently, as they’re trying to source. Haro is one help a reporter out profnet say little about those would you please sure the one of the big things that we really try to emphasize that help people find you. So a lot of times reporters are working in a silo like peter mentioned before, they have us to worry they have a story idea whether they’ve pitched it to the editor of the editor, came that i really love you to write a christmas story about non-profits in the area, i get that i get that a lot, and so here they are. You know, out here looking for sources. Finding people on facebook is a really great way, but there are services like said president, helpful reporter out sourced bottle on pitch rate that you can, you can say, you know, here here we are, here’s our mission and we can provide stories on this particular topic so you can go forward and really and thinking about your strategy think about what stories you want to share. I worked with a community that serves families who are facing homelessness, and they wanted people to know what that looks like, and they wanted to challenge this stereotype. So when they had an opportunity to connect with reporters over the holiday, they really share different stories about who was living in their community and why, and that was great for them because it was a really empowered story versus just having an expectation that you’re only is gonna work out the way you wanted to. We have just about a minute before a break internet so we’re gonna spend a lot of time after this break talking about great goal oriented, responsive, empowered, appealing and targeted for your media strategy started start us off with goals, and we’ll have plenty of time. The finish up talk more after the break, we’re gonna start with what your advice around setting goals for your strategy? Well, i wouldn’t say start with your with your team, so you know what if whatever role you’re in and you’re reading this book, i mean, we wrote it so that it could be helpful before members of your communications staff eighties, but really start with city now with her team and talking about what is your goal for your media relations strategy? That’s a measurable outcomes like you would for a grand opportunity and think what what comes out of that conversation? It’s really simple, but not something that people take the time to do in their non-profit daily work, you have some sample? Ah, couple of sample goals you can share. Yes, one of the big goals we talked about that before, with the with the community college i worked with was, do they really sell student enrollment going down? And they thought, has only increased enrollment, so their media relations strategy goal was to show that, you know, other that, you know, you just have to be a high school student high school graduate coming directly to the community college. They wanted to emphasize that college was open and welcoming to also they said, oppcoll around that i’ve also you know, i’ve had a personal goal of my last organisation, i work for housing non-profit that kept getting mistaking for the housing authority that our goal was just for people to know our name was a big old fred. All right, we’ll take, uh, take a break. Weather cps it’s personal now heat coach doom he’s a partner. You heard him on the four hundredth show just two weeks ago. Check out the firm, then talk to him. Very good guy. He’s no pressure, have you? I don’t know if you have you ever even heard of a high pressure sepa? I’m not sure that exists, but dahna you will listen to what your needs are and then he’ll tell you whether they can help you. They are wagner, cps dot com to start and then talk to him now. Time for tony steak, too. While there is a lot of talk about millennials, including on this show covered in many times millennials, donors, i’m pursuing baby boomers. I’ve got a different perspective. If you’ve got donorsearch or sixty and over, you need to promote plan gift to them that’s gift in their estate and retirement plans? I’ve heard it so many times loyal donor-centric boardmember they’ve been giving for fifteen, twenty years, maybe more, they die and there’s nothing in their state plan for the organization, everybody expected it, you know, people are saying we just assumed it would be there, but it’s not there they were never asked. I hear about it because it’s often the reason that people initiate contact with mito to start a plan giving program because they’re so disappointed about this, this gift that you expected and wasn’t there and they don’t want to repeat that they’re competitors are asking, your competitors are asking the other non-profits it might be a small community and, you know, they’ve found out that there was a gift to another organization in their will in the community that hurts a lot, but they were left out on against that they didn’t ask. So it’s it’s really not? You know, millennials versus baby boomers uh, you don’t you might very well need to be promoting to both, depending on what your causes and who you don’t what your donor looks like, but, well, the headlines and webinars you know often are going to millennial. E-giving i’m paying attention to baby boomers sabat there’s a north an enormous amount of wealth in that generation, and they are generous with it, and that creates potential. My video says a lot more, and that is at twenty martignetti dot com let’s go back to peter panepento and antionette car who are with me talking about their new book, modern media relations for non-profits, um, answer that we were talking about goals, the g and great, um, you need to identify who you want to be pitching once, you know what you want to do you to identify, you know, who you’re what, your audiences, right, who the right journalists are absolutely, and i need to pitch with purpose. So instead of spray and phrase talk about know, how do you how do you actually pitch with purpose? And a lot of that piers talked about with your delivery of, you know, sitting a press release but also sending a personal note or pitching or approaching them even when you aren’t necessarily pitching your no, i’m agreeing with you and cut you off there no, no, absolutely absolutely that’s that’s part of our goal oriented basically it’s what’s. Your game plan? What we’re asking people, you know, what do you each year you should sit down with your non-profit and say, what’s our game plan with our media relations strategy? You some people call it a campaign, you want to look at it that way, but that is important, and it can it can enhance what you already have going on. Maybe you’re having a big no anniversary fundraiser that really wants some great media attention around that. This could really help you with promoting your fund-raising strategy well and go hand in hand. You need to think of it as something long term to write a relationship building like you were saying, peter, absolutely, and in setting the goals, they’re really not goals there. Not so much goals for your media placements, but as much as their goals for your organizations and you’re connecting your media strategy to your organizational mole. So it has the huh? The maximum value free organization if you’re only able to invest, you know, twenty hours a month of media relations let’s, make sure we’re investing those twenty hours a month on something that’s actually going to move the needle for the organization not just necessarily get you media hits for the sake of media and in the in the immediate term, right? Like, you know, if you if you’ve got your, uh, let’s say you got a milestone anniversary. So you got a fifty if their hundredth anniversary coming up, you know, the time to think about your media strategy is not two weeks before the big gala celebrating the anniversary, right? Yeah. It’s, like, eighteen months before of the anniversary. Osili abila start building those relationships like you’re talking about exactly what you want to build the relation in ships, and then you actually want to think about all right, we have we have one hundredth anniversary coming up. What do we want to? Not only not only do we want to celebrate that, but what do we want that to say? What message do we want to come out of that? Who do we want to reach with that message and having some clear goals around that that actually kind of advanced the work of your organization, you know, really gets you off much bigger lift from the effort and the investment that you are putting in the media. In the in the end. And it requires more thinking and and work up front. But it’s going to lead to much better results. And i think. What? What always gets me and and i understand why it happens is is a cz you noted like you don’t you don’t just make it an afterthought two weeks before the event. Oh, no, we’ve got to invite the media to this that’s. What leads to those cookie cutter press releases? They don’t get into any impact, but if you are actually building the relationships, you’re thinking about what the key messages are your thinking about how they connect to the reporters you want you want, you actually want to connect with, ah, that time is really well spent, and you probably actually ultimately wanna spend less time chasing stories than you. You you are if you’re just kind of doing the dahna oh, no, we need a press release conversation two weeks before that, and you’re also so much more likely to have a positive outcome absolutely and less frustration, absolutely absolutely the are they are in our great is responsive. Does this mean that our media strategy should be responsive? We’ve covered a little this already in the conversation, but really it’s about making sure that you’re not just pushing things at a reporter that you’re being responsive to that reporter’s needs and what here she might be working on. So it’s it’s really media relations there’s two words in it there’s media, obviously, but there’s relations it’s it’s building that relationship on dh kind of being attuned to and responsive to the needs of that reporter that you’re tryingto work with. So it means it means being available, it means, you know, helping connect them the sources it means sometimes actually saying we’re not the best source for you, but let me connect you to somebody at another organization who is on, and it also means to having some basic information on your website and some other places that are actually helping a reporter when they’re on a deadline, connect with you and get the information they need. So we talked a bit about the fact that a lot of non-profits don’t have, you know, a media or a pressroom page on their web sites, and if they dio, they may include a bunch of press releases there, but no contact information for for their media person on dh having been in that reporters share and looking for sources if i can’t find your media contact. Or a place to to connect with you. I’m going to move on to the next organization s o being responsible in some ways being proactive, too. It’s, you know, it’s it’s having some of those basic kind of, you know, building blocks in place to make sure that you’re you’re responding to the needs of the reporters. Internet let’s say little about this flesh is fallible, but in terms of deadlines and you know the urgency that a reporter has when they’re on assignment first, let me ask a basic question is this i used to learn back when i had relationships with people like stephanie strong at the new york times who once upon a time had the new york non-profit beat in the times that ten a m was a critical time like that was a deadline time for a lot of newspapers. Is that is that anachronistic maya dinosaur? Or does that there’s something like that still hold true? I know you’re not a dinosaur at all. I would never say that. Hee hee. I never say that, but every publication as their own deadlines and that’s another thing that speaks to what? What peter mentioned. Understanding the reporters deadline and i love whenever i reach out to people and they say what’s your deadline because they know that they’re going to try to help me keep things moving in a timely manner. That’s a good question, and one that might impress your reporter friend of what you just did. And the other aspect of this being responsive is that when the news breaks that might be related to your organization, one particular organization talked, and we share this example in the book about how there was a domestic violence situation, unfortunately, with nfl player in there state that really launched this conversation about domestic violence, and they responded, but, you know, when you’re where they call newsjacking you have to be ready to go on dh and be prepared to be the scout leader for the person leading the conversation and really no sharing why this particular thing that happens, your organization have been working with families to help ensure that that just doesn’t happen. So they were i mean, you know, when reporters call you calling back, understanding their deadlines, but also if you wanna happen, teo a popular topic in news cycle reach out to a reporter and say, i know everybody’s talking about me too, here’s, how our organization within that conversation and that’s what newsjacking is ok, just try and keep you out of jack in jail. You’re paroled, okay, but longs to explain the term newsjacking alright, so it’s taking advantage of what’s happening in the news, right, and seeing how your organization fits into it and can lend its expertise to the conversation. Absolutely. Okay, um, okay, okay. Um, anything else about well, events? Yeah, internet hyre peter. Peter was talking about events, and, you know, the ubiquitous gala press releases that he would see, but but hey, touched on this little bit. I want you to flush it out for me. If there is something newsworthy about your event, then, you know, highlight that, like he mentioned, uh, maybe a celebrity attending or something like that. Absolutely so that’s a good way to get the media out, offer them a media representative of a time before or after, where they can talk to the celebrity or the expert. You know, i’ve seen a lot of people successful when they had data report, and they offered this expert as they made it relatable to a community need, and then they offered an expert who will interview we do have a section where we talked about what to do to make your event we’d hear friendly, yes. So having been on the other side of that, you know, it has been a challenge with reporters show up everybody’s busy at the gala for the event, and, you know, things are hectic and the reporter shows up looking for the executive director, and no one can seem to find that person who was it? Who was the media contacts and doing something as simple as making a little place where you tell the reporter here’s where you could check in is nice and important, and you really don’t want the reporter roaming around, you know, in some cases talking to random people, so i went to one of it. And i assure you that i was there on assignment and never find anybody who would take the time to talk to me, so i went back and told my editor, we weren’t covering that story. So that’s that’s really, you know, one thing that people don’t think about that think about it in the media there when they’re they’re sometimes they are prepared, so we talk about how to how to make your event media’s really before, during and after the event and share some of your coaching tips for for when they are talking to the executive director ceo, the person may not be so media savvy. You have you have a lot of tips in the in the book share a couple of those for coaching in advance to prepare so coaching and prepare. You want to make sure your media person is on message that’s part of that goal conversation. So, you know, whoever is responsible for coaching the scout leader, that could be a boardmember a lot of times it is, and, you know, that’s, even worse, they don’t do work on the day to day basis, so you want to give them the key. Points, and he did don’t overwhelm them with information, but maybe even a sheet to say no if you get stuff, bring it back to this message and bring it back to this place. I recently experienced that i am on a community advisory board, so i was in that position where our public radio stations and they had a white board and the communications director was like, ok, tell me why you like public radio, and then she would tie it to key messaging, lifelong learners. So she said, well, just keep saying lifelong learners get stuck just say and i’m a lifelong learner, so that was messaging that they wanted to promote it fit within something that was very comfortable for my story and that’s a tip that i also get two people to make sure that that you give them some practical tips. But i’m not why they why they like being a part of your organization that they’re boardmember if there is the executive director, make sure they’re not doing day to day work, they’re busy thinking differently. Make sure they have a personal connection to the story. Peter, you can probably give tips for foundations. Sure, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it’s really about kind of both preparing the spokesperson or the leader for with, with what those key messages are, but it’s also kind of preparing them for what to do when they don’t know an answer to something, and in some cases it’s, it’s, it’s, even them saying, you know, i actually don’t have that information in my fingertips can i have? Can i have somebody follow up with you after the interview, or can we send you some more information afterwards? A reporter often, especially when they’re dealing with non-profits isn’t out to get you, you know, they want to get accurate, useful information, so though they’ll respect that and and and if you don’t know an answer to something, just say you don’t know an answer something and yeah, by the same token, you talk about the hot mic problem and the fact that anything that a reporter hears is fair game unless it’s explicitly off the record. Yes, there’s there’s tons more tips. Yeah, no, i think the one thing to keep in mind, though, is that anything you actually say can unless it’s it’s agreed upon between you and the reporter that it’s off the record and they can’t use it it’s fair game is shooting after they put their notebook and that the men away. Some of the best stuff i ever got as a reporter was after i put my notebook, you know, i closed my notebook and the doug, and it wasn’t deceptive at all. The people let their guard down a little bit, and they start talking a little bit more contemporaneously, and then you go in, the reporter might go back and say, oh, hey, do you mind if i write that down or can you can you talk a little bit more about that kind of make it give them a signal that there are they actually are still on the record, but but always assume when you’re talking to a reporter, when you’re when you’re sitting in front of a microphone like i am right now, that it’s getting picked up way have a president who knows that very well right now. All right, so you know what you say in the presence of a reporter is is on the record, and there are a lot more tips about coaching your ceo. We gotta take a break, tell us you’ve heard me say the test. The tellers, moughniyah, lt’s, tell us, moughniyah, lt’s from from charities that referred companies for credit card processing and air. Getting that revenue each month, and from the companies who are using tello’s. Four credit card processing can use more revenue that long stream of passive revenue. You’ve heard the tell us. Moughniyah, lt’s. Watch the video it’s at tony dot, m a slash tony. Tell us now, back to peter panepento and antionette car. Let’s, move on because we’re going to cover the whole word greek and there’s there’s more about were jumping around. We’re jumping to different parts of it a little bit as well. Just gr yeah, it comes e what do you mean, jumping around this a planned? Well, i mean, we’re kind of covering a little bit of empowered with some of the other things we’re talking about, okay? That’s what i’m saying? Yeah, you’re staying on target antionette hyre assault so anarchists but oppcoll look, i’ll keep you on a message, all right? I’ll help you with your media strategy, your media messaging. Okay, so yeah, there’s a lot more about being responsive. Just get the book for pizza. Alright? Empowered the ian. Great empowered what do this mean? Peter it’s really about kind of owning your message and being proactive in your in your in your work with reporters and wave touched on this issue at different points in the conversation here, but it’s really about not waiting for things to happen to you, but kind of being in a position where you’re where you’re taking an empowered and proactive role in talking about your organization and reaching out to reporters in showing up in the places where where they are so it’s not just again sending emails and press releases its making sure that your, you know your web page has the right information it’s making sure that yes, your own properties? Yeah, you know it’s actually properly it’s it’s, it’s identifying the reporters that you care most about uncover your beat following them on twitter and, you know, retweeting their messages and doing things they’re so you’re kind of showing up on their radar screen and getting their attention that way. It’s it’s really taking the steps that you can in little and big ways to to make sure that that, you know you are showing up and you are kind of putting yourself out there and all the places that really that really help your organization get a story told in the media also, if there’s some placement and it’s inaccurate o r you’re accused of being fake news or you have some rights in this process, absolutely too, and being empowered is recognizing what to do when when this story is wrong or, you know, you feel like something is mischaracterized you feel like somebody’s misquoted. They got a fact wrong, it’s it’s knowing that you have some tools in your toolbox to ask for a correction to run a write a response letter to the editor to take steps to actually own your message. Even in the cases where part of the story was missing or keep perspective was missing. Your organization’s left out of a story that you feel like you should have been in, you know, knowing that you actually have a right and and, uh and an ability to actually advocate for yourself and try to right those wrongs. And we have a lot of tips on how to do that. You also have advice on positioning your organization. Somebody within your organization is a thought leader. Yes. Power say little about s o and an answer not. And i both weigh both work on this issue quite a bit. It’s it’s. You know if and and ties back to your goal. Let’s, say your goal is to position your your organization, your community college as a place for lifelong learners. For people who are nontraditional students having and and by doing that one of the things you decide you want to do is you want to get the message out that there’s value in education in your thirties, forties and fifties, for instance, having an expert on your staff being kind of the voice for that issue, who’s out, advocating and talking about that in your in your own media, but also in her new media is really valuable. So having tony martignetti, the expert in our college, on lifelong learning and looking, you know, for opportunities for him to write op eds for him to be a voice in coverage of education around that issue. You’re branding a person and your organization is a thought leader, but by extension, you’re raising the profile of your organization and building relationships that will get you more media coverage and get you more attention from prospective students, prospective donors and others. There’s a lot of advice in the book about how to position yourself, how to make yourself ready, making organization ready for for to position yourself as as thought leaders plus thank you for the the durney talk pretty when he says my name martignetti martignetti three italians and thank you for that. Yeah, i should have made it about playing, giving. All right, because that’s where your i was going to admonish you that on very shortly start for our last break text to give mobile donations made easy, it’s, simple, affordable, secure. While i was on their sight for a few minutes last night, donations were popping up. The window pops up. Tells you with new donation the ten. Twenty, there are multiple fifties, there was a fifteen hundred donors are using them. Text npr to four, four, four, nine, nine, nine for info on text to give and to claim your special listener offer. Got about six more minutes for your media relations strategy. Internet let’s. Turn to you, teo. Talk about the r is appealing. Your media relations strategy needs to be appealing. What do you two mean there? So we spent time interviewing other journalists about what they would like to see. Not just based on our experience, but we interviewed other people about what they wanted to see in covering non-profits and here’s. How that chapter came together. People told us what they what they wanted to see impressively. The list of them against the elements of a really good quote. I mentioned it. Earlier that people didn’t want to see, you know, great jargon were like, you know, since, um, you know, very it sounds like the official statement of the organization in the quote, but they were looking for something a little bit, you know, when one reporter described it exactly, like, give me something sexy and so that’s how this appealing conversation came about, and the other thing is visuals, a lot of people are under pressure, they might have one photographer that is going to cover breaking news or that that is really important because they high resolution, high quality photos and in some cases, officially, in the television side, videos for the website there’s a pressure we heard from television reporters to have other content on the web site outside of the interviews so that the media source can run that. So having me visuals are very appealing to people, and they’re very helpful when you’re covering something like data and report like, you know, some of us who like that, you know, like reports, but of others in immediate really need to know what’s appealing about your report, so having a very cool executive summary and maybe some really great brand messaging will be helpful. You know, something colorful, even a cover, read it and just spending that in your press early. So those are some of the things we talked about, and we also talk about if you are able to do that, it might be time that hyre announce that resource. So that’s, a question that came up for a lot of non-profit that we interviewed, like, when do we know it’s time to invest? We don’t have this ability to make it appealing or the time in our wheelhouse. So we just give some examples of when you might want to invest in and out, that a company that can help you get placement in coverage, like a turn to that, that that is a really question for non-profit. A little piece of earned media there, like like a turn, too. Yeah, turn hyphen to dr dot ceo that’s, right? Wow, yeah, yeah, bookmark it, everyone. I tell you something else. Ah, on appealing visual. Yeah, you sent you say in the book on lee on ly fourteen percent of the press releases that pr newswire hosts have have anything visual on them, even though it’s a very good idea was, like fourteen percent or doing it so you could be in the and you could be in the eighty sixth percentile. If you just start doing some writing, you’re having some visuals that a publication can not only get the attention of the reporter, but they could run with a story they might cover gives you a bit of a leg up having a photo having cem cem, you know, nicely produced infographics for report. You have those things actually can help tip the scales for you in a really big way, a little known secret at the chronicle, and i’m sure stacey palmer’s either going to be very happy or admonished me afterwards for saying this, but they don’t have a staff photographer at the chronicle philanthropy almost all of the photos they run, they either have to hire out or they get them from non-profits that air cover that that they’re covering, and having been inside the chronicle for years, um, you know, often it would fall on the reporter to actually find photos for a story and guess what if if i know a non-profit has an interesting perspective, and they have a great photo that could go with my piece and i and i and i know i can check that off my box and get that done, you know, i’m going to spend a little extra time talking to that non-profit making sure i can work them into the story because now i have a photo to go with the story so ah, a little piece of tip if you’re trying to get the chronicle, have some good photos available for him. Stacy problem, of course. Dropping names. She’s, the editor in chief? Yes, yes. Alright. Antionette i’m going to turn to you with a little bit of pressure. We just have about a minute. So would you explain targeted, please? I will indeed. We talked about it already in the we mentioned that somewhere in the goal oriented section again, this is identifying relationship. One of the things we talk about, we give an example of a non-profit that really had some great media coverage to a podcast that was related to the topic, so they work in the areas of george preservation, and they connected with george preservation podcasts and it’s the best media coverage they were able to receive, they were ableto have fun donors and boardmember through this relationship. So, you know, taking some time to sit down, we call it modern media relations because a lot of the other books were out before podcasts were even popular, but we really try to challenge people to think about a targeted strategy. And where is your audience? The best audience for you and your non-profit work? Yeah, i’ll give you thirty seconds on targeted. Yes. Oh, this podcast is example of that. Antoinette and i you know, when we were mapping out our media strategy for this book, we targeted a few outlets that we thought were really valuable. They were the outlets that reached non-profit leaders and folks who could benefit from this book. And guess what? You were on that list by implication buy-in non-profit radio is a valuable resource, absolutely. Bye. You know, we didn’t send this to folks who covered the textiles industry. We sent it to folks who cover non-profits and we were really targeted and who we knew we reached out to him. He’s peter panepento you’ll find him at turn hyphen too. Dot ceo and at peter panepento and she is antionette car at bold and bright media dot com and at the right folks w r i t internet peter. Thank you so, so much. Thank you. This was great pleasure. Thank you. My pleasure, antionette next week. Not sure have ever let you down, though, except for that one show on fermentation. But that aside, if you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com, responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. Twenty dahna slash pursuant capital p weinger cpas guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps, dot com bye tell us credit card and payment processing your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash tony tell us and by text to give mobile donations made easy text npr to four, four, four, nine, nine, nine. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff, known to these teo co authors sam leaving, which is the line producer. You have to get the book to see how they know her. The show’s social media is by susan chavez. Mark silverman is our web guy, and this music is by scott stein of brooklyn. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the either ninety five percent go out and be great. You’re listening to the talking alternative network, waiting to get in. Thank you, cubine you’re listening to the talking alternative net. Are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down? Hi, i’m nor in something potentially ater tune in every tuesday at nine to ten p m eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show. Beyond potential live life your way on talk radio dot n y c hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com. Are you into comics, movies and pop culture at large? What about music and tv, then you’re in for a treat. This is michael dole. Check your host on talking alternative dot com. I’ve been professionally writing comic books, screenplays and music articles from fifteen years. 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