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Advanced Communications Tim Ganger Information & Communication Committee Chair Kyle Leigh Avery ASME Staff Communications Coordinator, Communities & Services
Advanced Communications Tim Ganger
Information & Communication Committee Chair
Kyle Leigh Avery ASME Staff
Communications Coordinator, Communities & Services
Session Objectives
• Gain perspective on your audience
• Plan for gaining their attention
• Identify topics of interest
• Learn the best media for your message
• Discover upcoming features on ASME.org
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Providing targeted, compelling messaging to your audience that encourages them to take action, learn more, and become more involved in the ASME community
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What Is Advanced Communications?
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Why do we communicate?
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Who is your audience? • Define your primary target audience—group it into
no more than three or four distinct segments. • Outline everything you know about each one. • Reach out to one or two representatives of each
segment to learn more. • Build a list of those you know within each segment. • Reach out more broadly via online surveys,
informal focus groups and/or brief phone interviews.
• Craft personas—detailed profiles, including a photo—of imaginary representatives of each group you hope to engage.
• Shape your marketing messages and delivery to these personas.
By Nancy E. Schwartz
Publisher – GettingAttention.org / President – Nancy Schwartz & Company
Know your target audience
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Frank
Age: 53
Mechanical Engineer
Situation: Works full time, kids are in college
Online Habits: Frank uses e-mail at work and surfs the net. Since Frank’s time is limited between home and work, he does not have time to sit around to watch videos on YouTube or care to go on Facebook or Twitter.
Communication Plan: The unit produces a monthly newsletter and sends the link to Frank by e-mail.
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Know your target audience
Lisbeth
Age: 26
Mechanical Engineering Student
Situation: Works part time, goes to school at nights
Online Habits: Lisbeth uses e-mail for work, school, and entertainment. She frequents Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other popular sites.
Communication Plan: The unit tweets about activity, puts together YouTube videos of design competitions, and has active Facebook and ASME Groups pages.
Breakout
• Take 15 minutes to consider the audience for a group of elves at the North Pole who want to recruit volunteers to work for Santa.
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What’s News?
• Use your personas to identify topics that interest your target audience.
• Reach out to your fellow members for ideas. More knowledge is always better.
• Make it actionable. Your audience should be able to take the next step and know exactly what that step is.
• Make it engaging. Keep it to-the-point, leave out any unnecessary details, and stay as brief as possible. Keep your personas in mind and focus on what they want to hear.
Getting the Word Out: E-mail
• Don’t water down your message. Contact your members consistently but not constantly, and consolidate when you can.
• Get to the point as quickly as possible, both in the subject and in the body.
• Be clear; use bullets to organize your points.
• Collect stories together in a newsletter—keep it short, keep it pertinent to your readers, and remember action items.
• Need to get the word out to more than just your group? Contact your ASME staff liaison.
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Getting the Word Out: Press
• Have a story that should be shared with newspapers, television, or radio? Contact Deborah Wetzel at ASME’s Public Information department ([email protected]).
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Getting the Word Out: Social Media
Stay brief.
Stay engaged.
Stay professional.
Go multimedia to grab people’s attention.
Share links.
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• Instant, to-the-moment updating (“live tweeting”)
• Share pertinent info from others easily
• Great for sharing links and single photos
• Direct followers to ASME online Group
• Opportunity to engage with your audience long-term
• Conduct and share conversations with members and non-members
• Promote your Group’s online activity at ASME.org
• Professional space • Ask questions about
the profession • Share job
opportunities or job-hunting tips
• Direct followers to information located in online Groups on ASME.org
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ASME.org—What’s New
• ASME is launching new online community features to:
– Enhance your Group’s communications and knowledge-sharing
– Help you promote your Group and attract more participation
• The new features will allow Group Leaders to:
– Send messages to Group’s participants
– Post announcements and updates
– Share documents and links
– Stimulate conversation and debate
ASME.org Participant Profile Page
ASME.org Directory – People
Group Search in DirectoryG
ASME.org Directory—Groups
Benefits of ASME.org Community Strategy
• Provides mechanical engineers with a targeted community where they can interact and collaborate with other mechanical engineers just like them
• Makes participation in ASME activities convenient and easy
• Fosters communications, networking, and making new connections
• Places ASME in a strong position to attract and engage a larger and broader range of engineers—younger, more diverse, and more geographically spread
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ASME.org—What Group Leaders Should Do The new community features will be launched soon. Group Leaders will be able to participate in a Private Preview.
Look for the invitation emails and information about the Group Leader orientation webinar
During the Private Preview:
Register to become an ASME.org Participant
Create an information-rich personal profile
Become familiar with the social networking features that will support your Group’s online activities
Questions? E-mail [email protected].
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Group Learnings
• What are communication methods/plans you are using that are working?
• What are communication methods/plans you are using that are not working?
Special Thanks to
Eduardo Barrientos and Marianne Chan
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Effective Unit Communications
For questions or comments: Tim Ganger
Kyle Leigh Avery
Presentation available at events.asme.org/LTC13/
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