We love to host content from public affairs officers who are getting it done every day in defense of our nation. Thanks to Pete Nguyen for drafting this PAO salt lick. Pete can be found providing useful insight and comment on twitter @vpetenguyen.
I was once told a story about how a government agency in Wisconsin once tried to save the lives of some deer. It had been an especially harsh winter. Concerned that the deer would starve in the absence of foliage, the Wisconsin agency dropped hay in the forest for the deer to eat.
After a period of time, they found that, despite the availability of the hay, many of the deer died anyway. The animals had eaten the hay provided, but it didn’t provide the nourishment needed to sustain them through the winter.
With full bellies, the deer still died – not necessarily from starvation – but from malnourishment.
The same goes for our targeted audiences and media.
It’s not enough to be witty. It’s not enough to be funny or entertaining. It’s not enough to have amazing photography or cinematography. And no, it’s not even enough to have an “engaging” social media feed. Eventually, public affairs professionals have to provide real and meaningful information.
You can feed your audiences and media colleagues all day with hype videos and badass operations photos, but unless you provide facts and context, you’ll starve them. And, as a result, you’ll lose trust and relevance.
The first step to providing useful, contextual information is to actually know your unit, what they’re doing, and why it matters. There are a lot of ways to do this, and even more ways to learn how to do it.
The second step is to actually be your unit’s spokesperson, and not some overpaid audio/visual geek. It’s in all the regulations – we have a mandate to speak for the command. By proactively speaking for the unit, you’ll receive clarifying questions. And, in the process of receiving questions, you’ll inevitably have to do the research required to provide an effective response.
Foremost, be useful to reporters and media. Don’t starve the deer by feeding them hay. Anticipate what reporters need to tell contextually true stories. If the reporter is covering a deployment ceremony, don’t just escort them on the base so they can take a few pictures and record the commander’s speech. Try and get them a copy of the commander’s speech in advance. Give them facts about previous deployments, and then tell them how this one will be different. With careful coordination, talk about the environment the unit is deploying to and what the previous unit had been doing. If you don’t provide the reporter something to hook on to, don’t expect them to bite the next time you send them an invite.
Even our most routine and seemingly mundane events are opportunities to be useful and inform. The dreaded social media post about an award ceremony is an opportunity to talk about the origins and history of the award, to talk about the Soldier, and what it takes to get an award.
The boring change of command ceremony is a chance to provide deep context about the unit’s lineage and history. It’s a chance to talk about previous commanders, previous unit actions, and the record of excellence the incoming commander is expected to exceed. It’s also a great opportunity to talk about the future of the unit and the missions the new commander will tackle.
It’s good to have fun and engaging social media platforms. It’s good to have great writers and dynamic video producers. It’s a lot better to be useful and informative. When we feed reporters and audiences with real, substantive food, they’ll come back asking for more, and that’s the best.
