Share Your News with the Public

Develop a distribution list in advance

To reach the broadest audience, your list should include local newspapers, radio stations, television stations, and online news services. If there are reporters who already regularly cover the work you do, be sure to include them on your distribution list? Depending on the subject area your work covers, address the release to the relevant editor, e.g. education editor, tech editor, etc.

Prepare a Press Release

The basic way of communicating with news media about your grant is with a press release. An effective release provides the “who, what, when, and where” of your news announcement and contact information for someone at your organization who can provide additional information. One strategy for getting attention for your release is to tie your announcement to a relevant event or to a current news issue. Is your institution planning a community day, a major announcement, or an anniversary commemoration? If you can link your announcement with other activities or events, you increase the chances of capturing media attention. Similarly, you can package your story in the context of other local or national issues by including a quote that ties your grant award to a larger issue.

Issue Your Release

Email the release to your distribution list, sending to one person at each outlet at a time. Do not copy others on your email and include a personal note above the release to let the recipient know how it connects to the type of news they cover.

Remember timing. There are a variety of factors that determine whether your story will receive coverage. If there is an urgent news event, hold your release for a quieter news day. The time of day and the day of the week are also factors to consider. Remember that morning is often the best time for television, and avoid releasing news on a Friday afternoon or over the weekend. Likewise, Monday mornings can be crowded with big news that was not covered over the weekend. Some papers and TV stations require a few weeks’ notice to prep the piece for publication or air time, so give them as much advance notice as possible if you have a specific date in mind.

Pitch the Story

Follow up your release by emailing key media contacts to confirm their receipt and to pitch your story. Present the facts quickly and emphasize why this would interest the outlet’s audience. If there is interest and relevance, you might offer to set up an interview with the director or show them your work in person. The most important part of an email pitch is the subject line. Your message will be reviewed along with hundreds of others in the course of a day, so yours must stand out. Think in terms of why someone in your community would care about this news – what’s in it for them?

Social media sites are powerful tools for sharing news of your institution with a potentially large number of people and engaging them in an interactive way. Using social media can be economical; the sites require only an email address to establish your presence. To maintain them, however, requires an investment of time because visitors expect content that is timely and new.

If you already have a social media presence on at least one platform, use it (or all the ones you have) to amplify your news to a broader audience. The Internet Society Foundation will be sharing your award on our social media platforms. Consider commenting on and sharing our posts, as well as creating your own native content to share. Be sure to let key groups in your community know about the news so they will like and share it with their followers. Use pictures and videos often as they create higher engagement. Consider shooting a quick, one-minute video to announce the grant, the work you’ll do, and thank everyone involved.

In addition to using traditional media and social media, your stakeholders – the many groups on whom your success depends – can help get the word out. Sharing the news about your grant with different audiences will help more people understand the importance of your work and how it benefits a given community.

Every grantee will have different groups and organizations that are stakeholders in their grant. Before you even applied for this grant, you probably already thought about groups in your community that would benefit from your grant or be interested in your work. Be sure to reach out to those groups and let them know about your award and what you plan to do with the funding.