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With blogs, podcasts, rss-feeds, and other new media virtually bursting out of the internet, how can your organization benefit?

What makes new media special?

Four important factors differentiate new media from conventional media:

1. New distribution modes such as podcasting, blogging, rss-feeds, and via broadband. There is a worldwide on-demand audience for new media. Compared to traditional media, this audience is younger, more educated, and more urban. And new media is subscription based: the technologies are built around it.
2. New marketing methods such as viral marketing. Many internet users see it as their responsibility to pass along interesting content to their friends. Because this is immediate using e-mail and instant messaging, a piece of engaging content can develop a large audience very rapidly, a phenomena known as viral marketing.
3. Low cost of production New media cannot compete with the big budgets of conventional media, but it doesn't have to. New media uses inexpensive tools and software to give it a raw, immediate, do-it-yourself look. New media is not embarrassed to be personal: it thrives on connection and interactivity.
4. Fewer gatekeepers at distribution New media gets your message to your audience, without the financial and institutional filters that restrict the content available through conventional channels such as network TV.

Overview of new media

New media is up-close and personal: gritty and home-made, it thrives on innovation and sparkle rather than slick production standards. New media is electronic - yes - but it is freeing itself from the computer as the sole channel. New media is about new ways of making connections, sometimes among quite small groups of people. It is even finding new ways of connecting information, then connecting to people.

The Blogosphere

Blogs and blog-like diaries have changed print journalism practically overnight. Culturally they are specialized and opinionated; subscribers think of themselves as a community rather than an audience. Technically, real blogs use something called RSS so they can be subscribed to, shared, sorted, sifted, aggregated, and automatically collected while the coffee drips through the coffee maker in the morning. Or any time.

Your organization might encourage or even host personal blogs from members or field staff, or from the community that benefits from your work. We always find people ready to tell their stories. And people who want to listen.

RSS can also be used for anything that people might want to subscribe to: news feeds, press releases, or action alerts. Your site could aggregate all the humanitarian news on Darfur, or all the children's features about the environment.

Podcasts

Podcasts are like blogs - a stream of frequent, short, specialized items that you subscribe to. But you don't read a podcast - you listen to it or watch it. The "pod" comes from iPod: you take your podcasts wherever you go.

Most organizations could easily - or are already - producing short audio and video content. Podcasting is an obvious outlet, and gives you a way to connect with a new audience. Or collect short rough video clips over the course of your next project. Don't worry about the production quality - think "reality TV" on a shoestring - just get it out there.

Online audio and video

If your organization has not produced audio or video content, you might consider a few high-value opportunities: a video news release or VNR gets your message in the news, a video for donors will inspire existing and new members, a short web piece can focus attention on an important project. This effort should not be caught short: these pieces can as easily play on your website or podcast as at a policy meeting.

If you already work in conventional audio and video, it is a short jump to get these pieces on your website. For an organization that has made TV spots, PSAs, or educational videos, publishing these on your website is an inexpensive way to make your site more dynamic while extending the scope of your investment.

Q&A, comments and discussions

An often-overlooked way to make your media more personal and interactive is to include your visitors in the discussion. Many organizations will produce a FAQ (frequently asked questions) for an issue or project, but this can easily sound bland and over-produced, like a long advertisement. Conditioned by the dense advertising culture, people instantly spot this pseudo-interactive content. Collecting real questions is both more engaging and easier.

A Q&A or similar feature can be implemented instantly on your website: just put an e-mail address at the bottom of a story for readers to send their questions or comments. Make a comments page and update it with the e-mails you receive, editing as little as possible. An automated system - with or without moderation - can be easily configured and is included in most modern content management systems. (If you are still updating your site manually, for example with Dreamweaver, it is time to step boldly into the 90s.)

For an interesting variation set up a telephone number with an answering machine. People can phone and leave their questions and comments. Make this into an audio podcast, while also transcribing it for your site.

Virals and Communities

Most organizations will be familiar with the catchy Flash animations sponsored by the biggies like Amnesty, Greenpeace, and Heifer. These simple items gain their tremendous power through viral marketing: people send it to all their friends. While a typical 3 minute Flash animation may cost $10,000, you can tap this market much more easily: any short video content will work if it is both extremely engaging and easily shared.

A quick way to get started is to post your content on myspace.com and youtube.com. We find that organizations are sometimes unnecessarily reluctant to let their content leak away from their control, even choosing formats that can't be easily downloaded and shared. This conservativism can significantly reduce the impact of your media efforts by disrupting the networking channels that people use to share information with their friends and colleagues.

Mash-up

Heard of a mash-up? Many people haven't. New and largely unexplored, a mash-up (wikipedia) is a combination of two information sources to form something new and useful. A good example is housingmaps.com, a combination of Craigslist and Google maps that shows the location of available listings.

Many organizations have data that could be organized on a map, for example reports of human rights abuses or responses to an online poll. Other possibilities are limited only by the imagination.

The strategic approach

New media can open up unexpected opportunities to communicate to your audience, increase the impact of your programs, and get more exposure for less investment.

Your organization already knows your target audience and your core message - this is the heart of what you do. Our approach is to help you turn that into a mix of media items that is effective, affordable, and stands out. We proceed along two tracks: highest value and low-hanging fruit.

Targeted investment in high-value media

Each organization is unique when projecting the mission of the organization onto the opportunities afforded by new media. One organization might benefit most from a video news release or VNR, a specially-crafted broadcast-quality video designed to get your message into the world of TV news. Another may introduce blogs or podcasts from their field staff to present a personal view of the organization's work to inspire a younger audience segment. A third may automate important reports, announcements, and press statements into automated RSS feeds to ensure they are quickly picked up among a small community of policy specialists.

There is no cookie-cutter approach: the value comes from the overlay of new opportunities with existing weaknesses. Your organization may want to appeal to a younger audience, become more of a player or hub, invest in a particularly critical issue, or simply keep up with current trends.

Low-hanging fruit

New media investments need not be large. In fact the power of new media is that it uses methods and tools that are cheap... or even free.

Encouraging your field staff to create blogs of their work is zero cost if you use a free service like blogspot.com. Converting an existing video to publish on your website is typically a tiny fraction of the original cost of the piece. Preparing a video tape of high-quality clips (called B-roll) for TV reporters may take only a day or two for a videographer, yet can be the key to getting your story on broadcast news.

Finding these opportunities takes a keen eye familiar with the emerging technologies. We'll help you to not miss any of these easy chances to amplify your existing efforts and investment.

Getting it together

• Take advantage of novelty (virals or video blogs).
• Don't miss the easy opportunities.
• Recycle media for multiple uses: a VNR becomes a donor video which reappears as a podcast.
• Shoot video footage for multiple stories at the same time.
• Don't neglect your existing media investment: converting a video for your website or turning a news page into an RSS feed are small cost and large return.

Contact us to learn more about how you can effectively take advantage of new media. We're eager to help you create a strategy that works for your organization.