Back to basics: online integration with media

I spent part of the night last night watching the second half of the Heat/Pacers game. I am a casual basketball fan but my wife was watching a tivoed episode of Giuliana and Bill and I saw the "live coverage" of the game on the MSNBC home page so wandered down to our second TV in the basement and turned it on. There are a couple of interesting things in that to me - that my adding my eyeballs to that game's viewers was driven by the web, I was passingly aware that they were playing but it did not occur to me to watch the game until I saw that news item and that I did so in a time frame that was not driven by the game. How does that apply to fundraising? The major aspect of it for me is the media coverage. We all spend a lot of time working to get targeted messages to specific constituents based upon identified interest points. Yet not one aspect of that applied here in my daily life. The message was not targeted to me at all, the venue was generic at best and the coverage was not pushing me to take any action other than follow the game online. Now you can certainly add that my lack of interest in reality docu-drama had a major impact on my decision but that happens every day in every household in some fashion. So are there ways for you to get your information out there for folks who are interested in you to find? There certainly are. You have your basic press release - something that you are most likely less than confident about but your media relations office most likely knows more than a little about. Build that relationship. They may be open to it, they may view you negatively at first but Starbucks can be your friend - take them for a cup of coffee or in the summer to Coldstone Creamery as it has magic properties as well! Either way, get in front of them and ask them to work with you. Build this into your plan and ensure that you not only get coverage for the big things you do (donor receptions with major speakers or in a smaller town campus events that the paper may not know about are good starting points.) Find your alumni in the press and go directly to them asking them to help. Start with faculty relationships with reporters (they have them, trust me) and donors and ask them if they will help you develop stories directly. I would caution that you need to make a decision regarding the impact of this step on the first one - how do you involve your media relations office in this? If they are working closely with you that is an easy and needed step, if not, it may be the leverage you need to get them on board with you as well. There are many ways to get readership of blogs, twitter accounts and social media in order to increase this type of exposure as well, all of which can work to increase your exposure. Make sure that you strongly and clearly include a case for support in your materials and provide landing pages on your own site that support these efforts and make clear and concise asks with easy links to giving pages so that you can convert those who are interested into your donors.