There's no doubt that bicycling, walking, and public health all go together. But how can biking and walking advocates better engage with the health community to bring robust biking and walking networks to our communities?
Over a picturesque sunny weekend, nearly 50 advocates gathered together for the Alliance’s Winning Campaigns Training in Oakland, California hosted by Bike East Bay.
February and March has been a busy month with Advocacy Advance. In addition to all of the great energy at the National Bike Summit and fun at the Alliance’s Advocacy Awards, Advocacy Advance has been on the road. We recently held our first two Navigating MAP-21 Workshops in 2014: the first in Orlando, FL; and most recently in Concord, NH.
Welcome to the Alliance's weekly roundup of state & local biking & walking advocacy news. Every week, we crawl the blogs of our member organizations and bring you the most interesting tidbits.
Welcome to the Alliance's weekly roundup of state & local biking & walking advocacy news. Every week, we crawl the blogs of our member organizations and bring you the most interesting tidbits.
Facebook is the place to be if you want to boost your advocacy efforts and build a network of supporters. But what is a "like" anyway? And how is this useful for my organization?
Twitter is useful for fueling engagement with your supporters and getting the word out about your issues. But it can also be a helpful tool in another communications arena: media relations.
On a recent webinar with the League of American Bicyclists, we shared tips on how biking and walking advocates can use Twitter to connect with reporters and get active transportation issue in the news. This was the fourth session in a series of social media webinars we're doing together. For background, check out Twitter 101; Facebook 101; and Vine, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr 101.
Check out the recording below, and keep reading for some key takeaways and insights.
A blasphemous idea is taking hold in media relations work: press releases are terrible. See Chris Cassidy’s excellent Prezi for more on this, but the gist is that reporters get so many press releases that may or may not be relevant to their work that the mechanism has become all but useless.
So what’s a communications person to do?
Forget the properly formatted press release blasted out to a thousand media contacts. Instead, focus on relationships. Twitter can help.
Before you even need to blast something out, get to know the reporters who cover the issues you work on. This involves good old-fashioned press tracking, good ol’ email, and Twitter.
I use Talkwalker to track press mentions of the Alliance and Advocacy Advance, then compile them in a spreadsheet that looks like this:
Note that I keep track not only of the article, but also of the author, their email, and their Twitter handle. When a reporter writes a story about our issues, I add their Twitter handle to the Alliance’s private media list – a list I maintain within the Alliance Twitter account. This list is close to the front of my Tweetdeck and I look at it often to see what reporters are talking about and connect when stuff in our wheelhouse comes up.
When you’re pitching something, it’s ideal to have an existing relationship with the person you’re approaching. Be a known quantity to the reporters who cover issues your organization cares about. Introduce yourself – maybe on Twitter! Make plans to grab coffee and ask more about what they’re interested in. Liz had a great suggestion, gleaned from a reporter for an alt-weekly in DC: offer to take a journalist out for a bike ride or walk in a particularly problematic area.
It can help, too, to make it clear to a reporter that you’re sharing their articles. When a story comes up about your organization or your issues, tweet it to your followers and include their handle in the message. This shows the journalist that you’re paying attention and that their work is resonating.
Chris also suggests having a separate press list where you track contact with individual reporters:
Creating press lists is something I end up doing last minute when we have something to release, but it’s certainly smarter to track systematically.
Then, when you do need to release something, consider writing a blog post instead of a press release. Use real-person-speak to write it, not stuffy press release language and odd formatting. Write about the issue the way you would explain it to a friend.
Share the blog post with reporters in your network on Twitter. And do use email – just not a giant, faceless blast. Use language from your blog post to assemble a short email explaining the issue, then customize that message for each of the reporters you want to reach out to. Include a reference or two to their latest work so that they know you’re listening.
This isn’t to say that press releases don’t have a place. Sometimes you need to send out a big, un-personalized email to a lot of press contacts. But those moments should be few and far between. Unless you have a huge report, individualized outreach will probably serve you much better. And even when you do send a big release, breaking out of the press release format is never a bad thing.
What are your tips for using Twitter in media relations? Share them in the comments.
Last year we launched Citi Bike, the largest bike share system in North America, in New York City. Weeks before the system opened to the public, thousands of members had already signed-up, and eagerly awaited the chance to be among the first to take a spin on one of the big blue bikes. Less than a year since Citi Bike opened, our system has seen over 6.7 million trips; during the summer and fall we saw an average of 31,000 trips every day.
Citi Bike has proved a big success in New York City. Photo courtesy NYC Bike Share
There’s no one single thing that guarantees a successful bike share program. Many factors play a role: political leadership, decent bike infrastructure or the commitment to building it, sponsors or charitable foundation support, and an experienced operating company that can be nimble and adaptive are all important.
But having a strong local non-profit organization that is invested in making bike share a success is a crucial piece.
Welcome to the Alliance's weekly roundup of state & local biking & walking advocacy news. Every week, we crawl the blogs of our member organizations and bring you the most interesting tidbits.
Advocates from Bike San Diego, Transportation Alternatives, Bike East Bay, WABA, and WE Bike NYC added 8 pounds to their luggage by winning Alliance Advocacy Awards on Monday night.
On Tuesday, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto publicly nominated Bike Pittsburgh's Scott Bricker to the Southwest Pennsylvania Commission.
How can public agencies and biking and walking advocacy organizations set themselves up for success in the TIGER 6 program? 
There's no doubt that bicycling, walking, and public health all go together. But how can biking and walking advocates better engage with the health community to bring robust biking and walking networks to our communities?
Over a picturesque sunny weekend, nearly 50 advocates gathered together for the Alliance’s Winning Campaigns Training in Oakland, California hosted by 
Facebook is the place to be if you want to boost your advocacy efforts and build a network of supporters. But what is a "like" anyway? And how is this useful for my organization? 
