Telling Your Story: Why and How? Or Strategic Communications 101 A presentation by The Hatcher Group Diplomas Now 2012 Summer Institute
Feb 23, 2016
Telling Your Story: Why and How? Or
Strategic Communications 101
A presentation by The Hatcher GroupDiplomas Now 2012 Summer Institute
Why Tell Your Diplomas Now Story?
• Build support for Diplomas Now• Sustain model to finish i3 study• Accomplish your objectives
How to Tell Your Story: It All Starts with a Plan!
• Plan should focus on a defined goal• Every activity should help persuade
key people to support your goal• Doesn’t need to be complex or costly• Look ahead to leverage opportunities
The Quick and Dirty Communications Plan
Goals Audiences Messages
Strategy and tactics
Staff and deadlines
Review and modify
Set Your Goals First
GoalsImmediate
Concrete Measurable
Realistic
Identify Your Audiences
Primary audiences:
Key people you need to reach
Secondaryaudiences:
People the primary audiences
listen to
Develop Your Messages
Design messages to persuade audiences: We need to keep more than a million students from
dropping out of high school every year. Diplomas Now helps the toughest schools in America’s
largest cities ensure that students graduate ready for college or career. It improves a school’s curriculum and instruction as it provides the right students with the right support at the right time.
Diplomas Now will help high schools that currently graduate only a fraction of their students achieve graduation rates of 80 percent or better.
Develop Strategy and Tactics
What’s your roadmap to success? • Who can make your goal happen? • Is this realistic?
Every tactic should support your strategy• Tactics deliver your messages to your
audiences• Use activities to interact with audiences
What About Media?
What’s newsworthy? • New, first or most comprehensive.• Tied to the news.• Raise or solve a problem.• Interesting data.• Unexpected. • Intriguing to your neighbor.
More about the Media
• Contact Hatcher for DN media inquiries. • Know your message before talking to a reporter. • Use concise language. Avoid jargon, acronyms. • Stick to message to control the interview.• Use brochures, statistics, photos, graphics, video.
• Practice clear answers to tough questions.
Other Media Tips
• When a reporter calls, ask questions first. • Never tell a reporter something untrue. • Offer to get answers if you don’t know them. • Assume everything is on the record.• Respect tight deadlines.
In a Crisis
• Don’t ignore a crisis and hope it will go away. • Don’t go it alone! Call Hatcher. • Tap one person to speak to the media.• Gather facts; develop positive messages.• Stick to your messages; avoid “No comment.”• Don’t argue with reporters.
Telling Your Story
Examples of your good news: • Student success stories• Best practices• Results data • Endorsements from
principals, others
Send Us Your Best Stories!