You’ve got a lot to say. In terms of messages you want to get to the public, there are events, sales, meetings, volunteer opportunities, job opportunities, good news, bad news, new inventory, new promotions – and the list goes on and on. As long as your list of news items may be, odds are your list of people to tell is even longer.
A downtown development organization, for example, there are downtown merchants who need to hear one message, volunteers who need to hear another, then there’s the general public – and then sponsors, of course – and also board members and committee members. With so many audiences with whom to communicate and so many messages to send to each of them, how will you have time to actually put on any of those events, sales, meetings, volunteer opportunities…? Are you exhausted yet?
Sometimes it seems like the answer to this is simply to communicate the exact same message to each audience. As we’ve mentioned before, however, audience is important. A better solution is writing one customizable message and then spreading it across several different media to several different audiences.
What do we mean?
So let’s say you have an event coming up and you need sponsors, merchant participants, volunteers and attendees. You have the tools of press releases, enewsletters, a printed newsletter and social media. Here’s where you’d begin:
Super Great Event Announcement Template:
Hey, ya’ll! We’re having a Super Great Event! This is the fifth year of the Super Great Event and this year is set to be superer and greater than ever. Whether you attended/sponsored/volunteered/participated in last year’s record-breaking superness or are thinking about visiting/being a part of the event for the first time, you won’t want to miss this year.
The first day of Super Great Event will feature the Super Great Circus and the Super Great Band playing live right here in Downtown Superville. More Super Great details about the event would be good here too. We invite you to help make this Super Event happen/enjoy this day of fun!
The Super Great Event will happen on this Super Day at this Super Time and at this Super location. Here’s how you can be a part of the day:
List: events/volunteer opportunities/sponsorship opportunities/how to participate
For more information visit www.SuperGreatEvent.com or call 888-SUPRGRT.
Copy and paste, copy and paste, copy and paste. Then:
- Add a catchy narrative lead-in sentence for a press release and public newsletter.
- End with “We will follow up with you!” for sponsors and merchants.
- For social media, release the whole thing, two sentences at a time, spread out over a week. Edited to make sense, of course!
With all the spare time you have now, you’ll probably have time to sit at your desk before your next large task and read a book. Or a magazine. Or maybe a comic strip. But at least you’ll have time for that!