Digital Strategies: Engaging Influencers, Creating Champions

I’m deviating a bit from my website strategy series to bring you a post that was originally published on NetSquared. I wrote it with Roshani Kothari, my co-coordinator of NetSquared DC.

Nonprofits often struggle with creating effective content and engagement* strategies. It’s not enough to just share stories about your impact, but how do you mobilize and engage people who are passionate about issues you’re working on? NetSquared DC organized a panel discussion at the innovative co-working space, 1776, on Engagement Strategy: Empowering Champions* and Influencers* on November 3, 2015, to delve into this question.

The panelists included:

NetSquared DC
NetSquared DC Engagement Strategies Panelists Maddie Grant, Andrew Nachison and Dale Pfeifer (left to right).

Here are some of the key points shared during the discussion, plus a couple of our own thoughts.

1. Put People at the Forefront of Your Stories

Your audience will respond to stories that immediately grab their attention. For example, a story that begins with a big emo­tional impact will leave the reader ask­ing ques­tions and want­ing more infor­ma­tion. It will keep them reading, and that’s what you want!

One of the best ways to do this is to tell the story from someone who has been impacted by your work. Interview people who are your influencers and champions, and find out why. Create meaningful relationships with both of these groups. Write their stories exceptionally well (hire someone for this if you need to; great stories told well are priceless). Share their stories with your audience.

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Tyler Riewer’s Adventures With charity: water

Tyler Riewer collects water with a 14-year-old girl. (Photo credit: charity: water) http://www.charitywater.org/journey

Tyler Riewer collects water with a 14-year-old girl in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. (Photo credit: charity: water)

I’m in the process of writing a series of blogs about nonprofits doing storytelling well. In my last blog post in December (if you read my newsletter, you’ll know that I took a couple of months off to focus on my fiction writing) I wrote about charity: water.

In that post, I included two awesome stories that just happened to be by Tyler Riewer. So, of course, I looked him up, along with his background. I wanted to find out more about this guy who did such a great job with storytelling. Well, turns out, there’s a great deal to tell. So that’s what I’m going to do.

The story begins like this: once upon a time there was…no, scratch that. Let’s just start with, there is “the charming and wonderful world of tyler riewer.” And the highlights include a link to a series of videos where host Tyler takes you on a trip to Ethiopia to showcase some of charity: water’s work, information about his year-long hobby adventure (p.s. you can join), a video inspiring people to get to know their neighbors, plus creepy mustache photos, photos of recent acting gigs, and links to a couple of secret clubs.

But let’s start off by talking about “The Journey.”

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