I have great news — I’ve completed the draft of the article on our corporate partnership, and it’s gone over really well with my colleagues at BBBSCM! The only thing I’m waiting for now is official permission to publish quotes with names. Here are some parts that I’ve been working on.
When Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Mass/Metrowest (BBBS of CM/MW) was contacted in the Fall of 2013 by Avidia Bank, the agency was immediately excited about the opportunity to partner with them. Avidia Bank, a well-established, mutual community bank with offices all over Central Massachusetts and Metrowest, wanted to get involved but wasn’t quite sure how. After meeting with BBBS of CM/MW Chief Executive Officer Jeff Chin to hear more about the agency’s mission and various mentoring programs, Avidia Bank and BBBS of CM/MW began the new year with a partnership of six volunteer staff members from the bank to be matched with local at-risk children who would be their mentees (“Littles”).
This is the introductory paragraph to the article. I basically just began chronologically—answering the who, what, when, where, hows of the partnership coming about. Something that Jeff helped me with was making this part a bit more “outsider friendly”, in other words, getting rid of some of the BBBS-specific jargon that makes sense to us, but may not make sense to others. Jeff made sure to define “Littles” by adding “local at-risk children who would be their mentees (‘Littles’).” I also think this section is particularly important to lead in with because while most people know BBBS partners with many colleges, it is lesser known that BBBS also partners with local companies and communities as a whole.
Perhaps Avidia Bank’s dedication originates from their belief in the power of mentoring and their own personal connections to the cause.
The work of BBBS of CM/MW struck a chord with [Name], [Position] for Avidia Bank. She describes her own turbulent childhood…one all too familiar for many of our Littles:
“I grew up very fast in life, having my mom abandon me at the age of 6 years old with my two brothers. My dad […] was a heavy drinker, [but we did] have our step mom since I was six years old. […] She was always there for us, but I always felt [like] a burden to her. […] It was difficult at times.” So [Name] thought, “What better way to deal with it than to be a role model for a Little Sister. […] I believe a positive role model in a child’s young life is extremely important for a good base to become a successful adult.”
I really like this paragraph, I think I was really lucky to get such an intimate story from one of the staff member volunteers at Avidia Bank. I love this quote and I think it could be very persuasive for some of the 4,000 people that get our e-newsletter to maybe get their own company involved with BBBS—perhaps they have a similar story and never considered that BBBS could be a great way to give back.
Here’s hoping I get permission from the bank to use full names and quotes! I’m really excited about posting this article, my first article, on both our blog and in our e-newsletter!
Today I began working on the article about one of our corporate partnerships! I’m really enthusiastic about this project because believe it or not, I don’t think I’ve ever written a full article before! I do social media, I blog, and I’ve written headlines and article snippets for e-newsletters, but I’ve actually never written a full-fledged article before!
For this article I emailed a list of questions to three staff members from the corporate partner, as well as some questions to our own staff member who manages the partnership. To the staff members at the corporation, I asked:
What do you enjoy about being a Big?
In what ways has being a Big impacted your life – or have the potential to? Have you learned anything about yourself through BBBSCM?
What kinds of things do you do with your Little?
How do you think BBBSCM has impacted your Little’s life – or have the potential to?
Why do you think mentoring is important? Why partner with BBBSCM? Did you have a mentor when you were a little?
To our Program Coordinator, I asked:
When was the partnership was formed?
Why/how was the partnership was formed?
What kinds of group activities or outings have they done so far (if any)?
Any other notable information about the partnership?
Overall, my hope was to get a full range of information. From our Program Coordinator, I would get the basic facts, the who, what, when, where, why, how, and from the corporate staff, I would get quotes, stories, opinions, etc. Together, I would marry the two pieces of information and create a solid article.
Well, so far so good, because our Program Coordinator’s answers to my questions actually ended up going above and beyond the facts. She talked about why this partnership was so special and unique, she provided me with really good quotes. Right now, the article starts with the story of how the corporate partner reached out to BBBS, then why this partnership is special (quote from BBBS), followed by why the partnership is special from the corporation’s point of view (more quotes), and then I mention the kinds of things this partner has done with their bigs so far. I think it’s really coming together, even though it’s just the first draft! I’m waiting on question responses from the CEO, because hopefully that will make for a really nice addition to the article.
Also, I’ve been lucky enough to get lots of photos to compliment this article. I can’t wait to continue improving, adding, and editing it!!
It’s Monday, spring break is over, and today I felt the urgency of both academic and professional responsibilities.
I worked on a bunch of things today:
I created/updated a long excel list of media contacts (e.g. online local newspapers) and uploaded them into Constant Contact over break, so today I spent a good chunk of time adding the appropriate geographical information to each contact (Worcester, Sherborn, Shrewsbury, Dover, etc.). This will make it easier to select addresses when we have news particular to one geographic area.
I drafted interview questions for an upcoming article on one of our corporate partners.
I drafted interview questions for an upcoming video for National Women’s History Month.
I tried to plan site visits for footage for the video for National Women’s History Month.
I embellished and established our YouTube and Google+ pages.
The most exciting part of my work today was probably making preparations for the video. This video is going to be more creative than I’ve ever done, and so I was watching some videos by Mass Mentoring to get brainstorming. These are some of the cool things I noticed they did (and it’s important to note that they obviously have expensive video cameras, perhaps lighting, and definitely mics):
extreme closeups
photos
half of face crop
two different shots side-by-side (not sure if can in iMovie)
slow mo
black and white
walking b-roll
filming from behind walking
urban / POV footage
quick jump zoom on photos
logo full screen at end and beginning
look up straight into cam, smile
I definitely plan on incorporating the extreme closeups, quick jumps and crops, and I also liked some of the POV / walking footage they had, and their utilization of slow mo. One little idea I had, since this video is for National Women’s History Month, was to give my camcorder (a scary decision for me) temporarily to a Little and Big, and let them film each other, film “selfie”-style, film whatever they want, even fumble around with the camera while it’s rolling, as a means of visually showing female agency (and also their laughter and personality). I also liked when the interviewee looked directly into the camera and smiled, I think I may outright take this idea for my own video. This would be a nice way to show power, agency, and strength; direct “eye contact” (or camcorder contact) is always a signifier of such.
I’d also like to share some of the interview questions I’ve planned that correspond to National Women’s History Month. I aimed to formulate questions that focused on female mentoring and role models (for obvious reasons) and tried to come up with questions that could elicit a story, memory, or aspiration:
why do you think mentoring is important for young females?
to Bigs: did you have a female mentor or role model growing up?
what kinds of qualities does a female mentor/role model possess?
to Bigs: in what ways do you strive to/attempt to be a female role model to others [young females]?
to Littles: what do you want to be when you grow up?
Lastly, I wrapped up the day with some embellishment of our Google+ and YouTube pages. Both accounts were created in haste just to get last month’s Match Spotlight video up, and were lacking basically all other information. Today I added descriptions, addresses, contact info, social media links, cover photos, cover videos, playlist set-up, circles—the whole nine yards. The Google+ page desperately needs followers, so if you’re reading this, maybe you could create a circle in your Google+ account called “Best Nonprofits in the World” and add us. 🙂
I’m working from home this week because it’s spring break!
We have a few new positions opened up, and we’d like to market them. To do this, I’m creating another e-newsletter, but it’s going to be very aesthetically different from our monthly one. Considering our monthly e-newsletter is set up with side panels (1/3 width) and “main” panels (2/3 width), I chose a more consistent horizontal layout for this newsletter. The currently layout consists of a header, social media footer, and three horizontal strips of content in the middle. Each “strip” contains a preview or snippet of the 3 different job positions, with two links, one being “Apply Now” that links to an email address, and the other being “Full Job Description” which I’d like to be a downloadable or viewable PDF of the extensive job description document.
This newsletter is a challenge because there is a lottttt of information that needs to come across in a succinct way that doesn’t put people off from reading our email. My task is to piece out the most important bullet points from each job position so as to not overwhelm the reader.
Here is the preview/draft of the e-newsletter:
I will say that I really like this project because it’s an opportunity for me to learn Constant Contact from scratch. The monthly e-newsletter was just a matter of customizing a format we already had laid out. This is 100% started by me.
I now present you to the second/final draft of the Match Spotlight: Colby & Wendy video! I spent basically all day fighting with technology. But after long last, it is here.
Key edits in this video:
added title introduction
replaced “she was new” with “Wendy was new” in the beginning
ended the video sooner than before
Not too much to report! This is BBBSCM’s first Match Spotlight in the form of a video and it will be the first, main content in the e-newsletter that goes out tomorrow (Friday) so I cannot wait to see what kind of response it gets! Everyone is super excited about it!
As I mentioned in my last post, today was all about VIDEO CONTENT for the upcoming e-newsletter!
I have been SO excited to make a video for BBBSCM because I’ve never made a video for anyone other than Clark University or myself! It will be a milestone for me to create video content that is used by a new organization. Also, when I started making videos for Clark University, I knew HOW to make videos because I didn’t really know how to make GOOD videos, I was an amateur and ended up learning a lot of skills on the job. Which is great, but what’s more exciting is being able to come to a new organization like BBBSCM and be able to say “I have experience making high quality, professional YouTube videos and have made around 50 for Clark University”.
Anyway, because I now have video content, I will blogging primarily about the construction of this video over here.
However, I can certainly talk about the experience here. For the video, Junior and I went back to Plumley Village—one of the sites I visited in my first week. The best part about this experience was not making the video, but the enthusiasm and friendliness the Littles had upon seeing me again. I didn’t do much except stand around, smiling, filming, and towards the end I worked with a girl on a valentine. But still, girls asked me: “Do you want to be a Big?”, “Will you be coming every Monday?” It was really sweet! I found myself much less awkward around them this time than the last.
As I mentioned, I worked on a valentine with one girl, it’s for the February e-newsletter; we want to have a sidebar section recognizing Valentine’s day. One thing Jeff and I talked about was making sure this section wasn’t just “fluff”, but connecting Valentine’s Day to BBBSCM in some way. What we settled on was using this holiday of love as a way of saying “thank you” to our sponsors. I thought this was a perfect solution—it took the theme of love from Valentine’s Day and repurposed it in a way that was actually important. When I was doing research on our social media strategy, a common thread I found was the importance of saying “thank you” to your customers/fans/likes/subscribers, etc., so I truly think this way of looking at Valentine’s Day is perfect. In the end, we’ll use a photo I took of the girl who crafted the valentine today and include a message of thanks to our sponsors—problem solved.
Today was a very exciting day! It was my first time: shooting a video for BBBSCM, interviewing a kid, and returning to the Plumley Village meeting site. In this blog post, I will be describing the process I’m currently at with creating a video: coming up with a concept, writing interview questions, conducting the interview, collecting b-roll, and wrapping up the shoot.
Concept Creation
Jeff and I knew we wanted more video content, and BBBSCM has a tradition of creating “Match Spotlights” but they are usually in the form of written blog posts or articles. These “Match Spotlights” highlight a certain Big and Little match that has been together for a while, shown significant growth since being paired, and/or has been successful in making both the Big and Little very happy. Since Jeff and I were brainstorming content for the main panel of our February newsletter and I had already spotted a match or two that would be good for a video, I suggested we embed a Match Spotlight video (not a written piece) into our e-newsletter. When trying to come up with a concept for a video, I would encourage people to think about 3 things: their audience, their message, and their purpose. For BBBSCM, our purpose is to gain brand awareness, which we will do by engaging our audience which is mostly online (video as a our preferred medium) and largely youth, and we aim to spread the message that BBBSCM can change lives. This Match Spotlight aims to spread this message by choosing interviewees that have had life changing experiences with BBBSCM.
Writing Interview Questions
Once you’ve figured out what your message is, you’ll want to 1. not solely think about questions to ask, but 2. write them down. I always ask questions that cover the basics but then probe about the most interesting parts of their experience that pertain to the message we want to send. So for example, basic questions could be: how did you first hear about x?, why did you decide to join x?, how long have you been doing x?, what do you like about x? Furthermore, probing questions are usually like: how has x impacted your life?, how did x compare to your initial expectations?, what was your best memory from x?, etc. The basic questions are necessary for getting the viewer acquainted with the interviewee, and the probing questions are essential for getting the intended message across.
Conducting the Interview
I always give a little spiel at the beginning of every interview that has three purposes: to make the interviewee comfortable, to orient the interviewee, and to teach the interviewee how to speak in the interview. You always need to make the interviewee comfortable—many interviewees have never been interviewed before, let alone on camera. Ask the interviewee how their day is going, make them laugh or smile, and essentially act like you’re two friends hanging out. Being interviewed on camera can be absolutely terrifying for some people, even if they signed up for it thinking it’d be a breeze. It’s important, as the interviewer, to set the tone of the interview and get the interviewee feeling as comfortable as possible. The more comfortable they are, the more they’ll talk, the more compelling things they’ll say, and the better footage you’ll get.
Secondly, it’s important to orient the interviewee. Tell them who you are, tell them a bit of your background, tell them why you’re interviewing them and what’s going to happen to the footage. This builds trust between the interviewer and interviewee, and it gives the interviewee a better idea of what kinds of content you’re looking for.
Thirdly, there are certain things people who are getting interviewed need to know. I always ask or tell the following things:
“Have you ever been interviewed before? Were you filmed?”
If they have, they may already know the following. If not, the following is important.
“I’m going to set the camera here, but let’s just pretend we’re having a casual conversation and you can look right at me.”
This eases them (“casual conversation”) but also tells them that they don’t need to look right into the camera lens.
“I’m going to ask you questions, but when I edit this, I’m going to completely edit myself out, so the viewer will only see your answers. That means, when you answer, please try to answer the question by repeating the prompt”
I usually give an example: “If I ask you what your favorite color is, don’t just say ‘blue’, because the viewer won’t know what you’re talking about. It’s better to say ,’My favorite color is blue’.
I also always say: “Sometime I may ask you a question, and you will suddenly forget to repeat the prompt. If that happens, don’t worry, it happens all the time, I’ll just interrupt you and ask you to answer again, no worries”
“Also, remember to speak more loudly and clearly than usual. Some people trail off in volume when they’re talking, and that’s totally normal, but if that happens while we’re filming I may ask you to repeat your answer.”
I’m including the raw footage from today’s interview to show how a nine minute interview will get condensed into two minutes for the final product. Some things to note in this interview:
Colby is an amazing interviewee—articulate, well spoken, and remembers to repeat prompts.
I don’t interrupt or interject my interviewee unless it’s absolutely necessary.
I listen and respond to her answers, saying “awesome” or “that’s great” after every answer. Luckily, Colby was very thorough and I never had to probe her further. But sometimes you’ll get an interviewee that will say something like “I had the pleasure of working with Professor So-and-So on my research project in Brazil and it was absolutely amazing,” and you need to be paying attention to then ask them, “why was it amazing?”, “what exactly are you researching?”
You can’t see in the video, but I’m maintaining eye contact with her, nodding my head, and smiling when she speaks. I’m reinforcing that we’re having a conversation, and that she isn’t at a podium in a daunting auditorium.
At the end of the interview I ask: “Is there anything you want to add? Something I didn’t ask about?” I always, always ask this because sometimes the interviewee will remember something about their experience while answering another question, and won’t get the chance to elaborate on it unless I give them the floor.
This isn’t pictured, but always thank your interviewee when you’re done. I also always have my interviewees write down their name for me “as they want it captioned”, because you may get their name from a roster when they actually prefer to be called something else.
This is raw footage from the same interview, but this time with the Little, Wendy, as the interviewee. ALL of the things I’ve mentioned before are the same in this video, however, you’ll notice that I did have to interrupt Wendy a few times to remind her to repeat the prompt. Eventually, she remembered, and she did an awesome job. Another important thing is to read your interviewee. After Wendy proved to be a bit, well, concise in her answers, I decided not to probe her too, too much. I think Wendy would have lost her enthusiasm if I pushed her to give me “more thoughtful” responses. You’ll also notice that when I asked Wendy questions, I elaborated a bit more: “How has being a little impacted your life—have you become happier, healthier, more confident maybe??” This is important; a younger person is not going to be able to think profoundly about that question without a bit more to go on. At the end of the video, I realized I didn’t get much content from Wendy, and I asked her if there was a specific memory she had. I was thrilled that Wendy was able to share a time they went to one of Colby’s field hockey games.
Collecting B-roll
“B-roll” is secondary footage, it’s background footage, miscellaneous footage, extra stuff. B-roll is great to have because it adds more visuals and content to a video, it can pose as transitional footage when you need to cut a piece of audio abruptly, and much more. I try to get a mix of b-roll media: photos and videos. Here are three sections of b-roll from today’s interview. You’ll notice that they are from varying angles and varying distances.
Wrapping up the Shoot
Before you go, don’t forget to thank your interviewees again. If possible, shake their hand and tell them that you’ll contact them when the video is finished. Tell them again that they did an awesome job today.
Want to see the finished video? Well you better follow me then!
At my internship today I got to work on content creation and the layout/compiling of BBBSCM’s February e-Newsletter in Constant Contact that will go out next Friday (last day of the month!). While I’ve worked in Constant Contact before, I mostly used the tool for holding distribution lists and for sending out company holiday cards—not e-newsletters.
However, I was largely in charge of the e-newsletter for the I&E program at Clark; I would create content as well as design the newsletter and customize it’s HTML—it’s part of how I started learning HTML, actually.
Back to BBBSCM! We’re working with a layout where there are 3 consecutive narrow sidebar blocks, and 2 consecutive “main” blocks. Here’s what we brainstormed for content today, all pertaining to February of course:
Black History Month – tie into the national organization’s programs for African Americans
Valentine’s Day – get a Little to craft a holiday card that we can photograph
written content – the blog post I just posted the other day on BBBSCM’s blog
video content – a video highlighting a notable match
events – a preview/promo for our annual event in May
sponsors – two sidebar blocks about sponsors and new community partners
Two other big things from today: I made an OFFICIAL BBBSCM YouTube channel, which also meant creating a Google+ page, and I set up a video interview with a match for Monday! I will link to the YouTube and Google+ accounts once they’re all set-up — I didn’t have time to add cover photos, company information, syncing accounts, etc., so once I do that I will be able to promote them more. And part of why I made this YouTube channel is in preparation for a video, and hopefully series of videos, on Big & Little matches (“Match Spotlights”) as well as other promotional material as part of BBBSCM’s new video content strategy (and our overall social media strategy).
Videography is one of my areas of expertise; when I was a videographer for the Marketing & Communications Department for nearly 4 years I would interview and film students about various subjects and then edit the footage and b-roll down to about 1-2 minute clips that would go on YouTube and into other admissions materials. So naturally, I’m very excited about our video content strategy. I have my own Kodak camcorder and associated software to make high quality videos for BBBSCM, and it gives me more real-world experience in videography as well as interviewing skills with children. I’ve never interviewed children before, but I am good at connecting with people (why do you think I’m a communications major?!) so I’m excited instead of nervous about it.
Did you know Monday was President’s Day? Because I sure didn’t! Oh well, I got a coffee out of my trip down Main Street.
Today I had my first direct connection with BBBS’s followers—I posted a blog post on BBBSCM’s WordPress, Facebook, and Twitter that I edited and reviewed! The blog post is by Katie Roy, a new Interview Match Specialist, and she explains how powerful it is to see the positive impact of mentoring and BBBS just in her first week on the job.
As I’ve mentioned in past posts, I had to review her writing for clarity as an outsider; as someone who may not be familiar with BBBS or their terminology. The key changes I made were: changing “sites” to “meeting sites” and capitalizing “littles” and “bigs” to “Littles” and “Bigs” to make it clear they are BBBS jargon.
The next step was to add hyperlinks wherever possible. At one point, Katie mentioned “statistical evidence” that proves BBBS has a tangible, positive impact on Littles. Here, I hyperlinked “statistical evidence” to a page on the national BBBS site showing statistical data from a study that was done recently. Another key area for hyperlinkage was where Katie noted that some matches had been together for “twenty years”. In this text, I hyperlinked to an article posted not too long ago from the national BBBS site profiling a Big and Little who had actually remained friends for about 40 years! Impressive!
Lastly, I searched through the company server to find photos to add to the post. Jeff and I managed to find one of Katie (placed at the top of the article) and two other photos: one of a Big Brother and Little Brother candidly embracing and another of a group of Big Sisters and Little Sisters from one of Katie’s sites (actually both were from Katie’s sites). I made it a point to select photos that were 1. recent (anything more than say, three years old was off the table), and 2. relevant. In terms of relevancy, I wanted the photos to be from Katie’s sites (every Interview Match Specialist regularly visits specific meeting sites where the Bigs and Littles meet up). This meant searching through many, many albums of photos to find ones that were from Katie’s sites. Also, I used the photo of two boys embracing inside Katie’s paragraph where she mentions a Little that welcomed her—literally—with open arms. This only seemed natural. The group photo of the female Littles and Bigs was chosen and placed in a paragraph that spoke about the importance of mentors, and how they create great bonds with mentees. This context seemed fitting for a group shot.
Lastly, posting the blog post meant: using BBBSCM’s WordPress blog for the first time, using BBBSCM’s Twitter account for the first time, using BBBSCM’s Facebook account for the first time, and figuring out how to properly embed and resize captioned photos into a WordPress blog ten minutes before I had to go catch a bus back to Clark. These were no easy tasks, but luckily I have experience using all of those networks and utilized Bit.ly to keep my posts succinct.
Today I worked on two things, the blog post I’ve been editing and preparing, and best of all, I’ve begun working on BBBSCM’s social media strategy—which I’ve been really, really excited about.
I’ve never crafted a social media strategy before, but when I worked for the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Department at Clark University for four years, we developed routines on-the-spot for posting on Facebook, Twitter, and other Clark channels, and I’ve always thought how satisfying it would be to have a concrete, written plan for how, when, where, why, and what posts should be posted. I knew we weren’t getting as much mileage out of social media as we could, so I’ve been really excited about this project for BBBSCM since I got the assignment my first day.
I jumped into the project by pretty much researching everything under the sun, my google searches included the following: “social media strategy”, “best times to post social media”, “different posts on each social network”, “how to use social media”, “social media for business”, “social media template”, “social media scheduled”, and so much more. I took a ton of notes and figured out what kinds of things were pertinent to BBBSCM.
Some of my considerations:
Our main goal is creating brand awareness. Promotion, storytelling, getting volunteers, and getting donations all came secondary or were a means to an end.
Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are our most important networks. We’ll use YouTube and our blog for content creation. Instagram and Vine will be used as necessary.
We’ll post and track engagement daily.
I also found that each network had it’s own “peak” time for postings. Thus, I thought it would be best if we posted at three different times of the day, once per network, to get the best engagement and visibility possible. I began to write up rules around what kinds of posts are best for which network (Facebook and Google+= “long content”, Twitter= “short content, quick announcements, quick responses, sharability as key, etc.). I began to think about how we would handle positive and negative feedback, how we would vary our posts, and where we would get our content from. While it’s important for the majority of content to be original, it’s good too to post industry news, community news, worldwide news, or post things from other regional BBBS programs.
I am still in the process of my making my Social Media Strategy document clear, easy to understand, and comprehensive. I want to have examples for every kind of post (or near every) we can make, and I want there to be a solution for/reasoning behind every social media decision we make. My biggest goal for this Social Media Strategy project is that BBBSCM will have a template that can be longstanding, and of course developed and changed over time, but over all will be the framework for their social media for years to come. And also, I hope that I can truly create an increase in brand awareness and engagement. This would be a great feat for me because as a entrepreneur, creating buzz is essential for success, and social media is paramount for creating buzz. If I were to have a real impact on BBBSCM’s buzz, I feel like I would be able to apply this strategy to the business I’m launching, or some other business I’ll be working on years down the line.
Tomorrow I’ll be working more on this strategy document. I really could not be any more thrilled to do it. Here’s to my second true love: social media.
I'M A MKTG INTERN! 