We are often asked for good examples of marketing materials and strategies for river groups. Below are examples from Friends of the St. Croix Headwaters and Milwaukee Riverkeeper, and tips for successful newsletters and news releases.
Canoes
on Wheels
Friends of the St. Croix
Headwaters
Friends of the St. Croix Headwaters are offering the use of canoe equipment on a no-charge basis to local schools and youth groups. They are also providing educator workshops on a no-cost basis to instruct teachers how to manage canoe outings, and how to integrate these outings into their schools' curriculum. Their goal is that every graduating high school student will have at least one opportunity for an adult-supervised paddling experience on our local rivers and lakes.
Some of their marketing tools:
Workshop brochure
Tip: Keep your brochure
simple and create a small file size for easy web-viewing.
News Coverage
Tip:
Make a PDF and post the article on your website because some newspapers charge
a fee to read their archives.
Website
Tip: Dedicate one page for
each program on your website to keep the content on your home page brief and
current.
River Cleanup
Milwaukee Riverkeeper
Milwaukee Riverkeeper’s Spring River Cleanup was a great success, with at least 3,000 volunteers participating on a beautiful spring day.
Volunteers cleaned up trash that had accumulated along the Milwaukee, Menomonee and Kinnickinnic Rivers, working at sites ranging from the south side of Milwaukee to West Bend and Kewaskum in the north.
Some of their marketing tools:
Event Photos on their
Website
Tip: Use free websites like Flickr to post your photos.
Facebook
Tip: Have a page
for your group on Facebook and invite your “friends” to each of your
events.
Website
Tip: Acknowledge
and link to your sponsors' website.
The following advice is from David Allen, Managing Principal from Development for Conservation.
"As a consultant, I end up seeing a lot of newsletters. Many are excellent. Some are good. A few need help. Along the way, I have assembled the following list of aspects I find common to many newsletters I consider excellent.
Excellent newsletters use line drawings of nature and photos of people. Don’t waste space on landscape or nature photography unless you have the budget to do it really well (think National Geographic). Your audience wants to see photos of themselves, or people they know/recognize, or people like them doing things with the organization.
Excellent newsletters report on activity that
has already happened, not activity that is going to happen. Your audience
has invested their money in you, and they will respond when the wisdom of that
investment is reinforced. It is reinforced by accomplishments more than by
plans.
Excellent newsletters publish the Board of
Directors. Your Board lends the organization credibility – use them.
Excellent newsletters carry a call to action. Invite feedback, encourage communication, advertise field trips and gatherings, and make it easy for the readers to find more information about things they find interesting. An easy way to do this is to place longer articles on your website and reference the site at the end of each newsletter story.
Excellent newsletters carry a request for financial support. Use the Director’s letter to request funds for a specific project, print a clip-out membership form, pitch your organization’s planned giving program, and/or fold in a response envelope. In many cases, returns from these solicitations more than cover the costs of the entire newsletter."
The Knight News Release Workshop, provided by the Knight Foundation, is designed to teach people to write effective and readable news releases. The site offers tips, model releases, a press release worksheet, and a set of polishing tools to create a press release that has all the essential elements. This is a nice review even for skilled media folks because it reminds us what elements should be in the release and what pitfalls to avoid.
In This Issue
Canoes on Wheels
River Cleanup
Newsletter Tips
News Release Tips
Read the latest issue of our quarterly print newsletter
