Part 6: Shining a National Spotlight on Your Endangered Place
The following tips will help guide you through shining a spotlight on your endangered place using free tactics.
Your Fundamentals
A major component of raising awareness for a place at risk is media coverage and social media engagement.
Often, saved sites attribute their success to the national attention received through their campaign.
Through this attention, local community groups working to save places that matter to them have found champions, donors, partners and other forms of support.
Having done your homework on understanding the issue and developed the key messages on your position, you are now ready to share them widely.
Using a consistent message across all platforms will help reduce misunderstanding, and keep the focus on what’s most important to you.
Engage the Media
Send a news tip, news alert, or press release to print and online newspapers near you. Include the five Ws (who, what, when, where, and why), but keep it simple – journalists appreciate factual, easily digestible information to decide whether they want to pursue a story or not. Make yourself available for an interview, and be prepared to back up your key messages with a short, concise summary of the relevant facts.
Get Talking on Social Media
01. Engage your community
Engage your community on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and get people talking about your historic place and the issues surrounding it.
02. Twitter
Twitter is a powerful social media platform that makes advocacy easy, and facilitates reaching influencers such as journalists, politicians, and advocacy groups. Paired with relevant hashtags (your town/city and key terms), your tweets can be effective in getting people talking.
03. Expand your reach
Identifying any nationally prominent individuals that may have a connection to the place, and asking them to share your story can exponentially expand your reach.