 All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Everyone okay? Appreciate you guys being patient with the technical difficulties. Thank you so much for being here. My name is Todd Hunter. I'm one of DAB's assistant national communications director. Marine Corps veteran was a combat correspondent in the Marines, who got out, went to grad school in Washington, D.C., where I got an internship, worked at the White House Office of Digital Strategy, and then came over to DAB. And with me today, Mary Dever, Air Force veteran, who's broadcast journalist. We go way back. Certainly classmates together at MOS School in Fort Mean, Maryland. And now we both are part of the team that is in Washington, D.C., the communications team. So anyway, we are here, obviously, for the media outreach and social networking seminar. I'm going to go over, I hint, our media relations. So I'm going to go over the media outreach aspect of it. And then when I'm done, Mary here will go into detail about social networking and so forth. So that's our quick introduction. I'm going to go over some tips on media relations. And then, like I said, Mary's going to get into the social networking, give you some tips, tricks, reminder, and then we will wrap up. Please ask you all to save questions, comments for later as best you can because we're going to have a question and answer period toward the end there. So we're going to go in and get right away. What is media relations? Before I kind of give you guys the textbook definition of media relations, I want to hear from you guys. If anyone wants a razor hand and kind of give me what you think that is. There's one. That's pretty good. But it's not only before the stuff hits a fan, it's while it's hitting the fan and after it hits a fan and gets thrown all over the room, right? Which is a really, really horrible visual. So, no, that's spot on. That's in a nutshell, you nailed it, ma'am. What's your name? Sandy. Sandy. Everyone give a hand to Sandy. And that's how you know. That's how you know. Yeah, you've dealt with the stuff hitting the fan and getting thrown around the room. Alright, so the definition is working with the media for the purpose of informing the public of an organization's mission, policies, and practices in a positive, consistent, and credible manner. So, typically when we're talking about media relations, it means coordinating directly with the people responsible for producing the news. That is, a lot of times, news directors, assignment, desks. It can be individual reporters, and so forth. That's who we're talking to and granted there's social media, which, like I said, Mary is going to get into, but when we're talking about traditional media, those are the folks we're really aiming to get the attention of because they're basically the gatekeepers of what is going to be on their platform. And so, a couple reasons to... Why do we talk to media? I'm going to throw this out there again. Not you, Sandy. You already had your turn. I might give you one later. But what's a good reason to talk to media? So, the public might understand who... Bingo. I don't know if everyone heard he said, so the public knows who DAV is beyond just our transportation network, although there's nothing wrong with counting the transportation network. And we do a lot of it, and it's good to highlight every bit of it we can. So, some things that, like for an example, some of the services we... Actually, let me go forward. We also want to establish DAV as a trusted source on veteran-related issues and generate among our own community so they can campaign individually and collectively for the betterment of our organization. So, some items, for example, are women veterans report. Granted, DAV as a national organization, when we publish those reports, we reach out, we'll publish some on a news wire and so forth, but it doesn't preclude any department or chapter from basically repurposing that same press release to their local media to get more eyes on it. The same thing with our vision for veterans report that came out at the beginning of the new Congress. And what's a good topic to shore when it comes to veteran-related issues is burn pits or not just burn pits, any sort of toxic exposure, Agent Orange and so forth. So, for example, you have a veteran in your chapter who has been negatively impacted by that issue. It's a good connection to basically sell... I don't want to say I did say sell, but a lot of media outreach in a lot of ways is a bit of salesmanship in a way when you're reaching out to folks because you want to get their attention and explain to them why it's important to get coverage of a certain topic and if you can use a veteran who's affected and has a personal story and can share their personal story, that's really how reporters like to report on stuff. It's one thing to say, oh, here's the burn pits have been hurting our nation's heroes, right? It's a completely other one for them to be able to tell that story through someone else's experience. So tips for good media relations. We want to make a local connection to anything it might be that we're reaching out by. I think I kind of just went over that one. We also want to engage on social media, get to the point and follow up when once a story does air. Nothing journalists like more than to see their work recognized, praised when it deserves praise and echoed and disseminated out further, right? So we really want to show the folks our appreciation for what they've done to help us. So another one, it's really important that you get the timing of any distribution out correctly. This kind of goes without saying but you follow the news cycle, right? You're not going to want to get out of press release or send an email pitch to news desks on Friday at 1600. It's just going to get lost over the weekend. Monday morning is a good time. Monday and Tuesday mornings are good times to really reach out to folks so they can kind of plan the rest of their week. Sounds like someone's trying all the doors over here. Hopefully they get the right one, right? Let's see if they can go for number three next. I'll get it here. Okay, okay. Sorry, I apologize. Even though I'm wearing glasses, I have absolutely horrible eyesight so I'm trying to read my next notes here. Okay, so what makes a good story, right? Current events and issues, those are the things media is looking for. Originality, novelty, uniqueness, anything of that sort. Personal achievement, right? A lot of times we have members, a volunteer driver who has just driven his or her 50,000th mile on behalf of veterans. That's something that will win pitched correctly to media outlets. That's something they're going to want to grab onto there. Anniversaries, landmarks, dates, anything like that. PTSD Awareness Month is June. Suicide Prevention Month, things like that. D-Day, the Ujima flag raising, stuff like that. It goes under the Holidays and Awareness Days. So I want to give an example of some successful media outreach. I'm not sure if anyone here has heard of the Claremont Sun. It is a local paper in Ohio that the Department of Ohio Commander John Fahabnisek. Is he in here? I'm sorry, are you the AchaTender or Commander? Okay. Past Department Commander John Fahabnisek. He's going to come up here in just a second to tell his story, but this is a good example. He basically has a running column in that local paper with basically taking all of DAB's critical policy issues or issues of the day and runs every week. I mean, we get it, John. Look at all these placements. He's going to come up here and tell you how the sausage was made in getting all this done. But what I think is kind of overlooked in having something like this is the tertiary benefits of it, because not only is he getting out there establishing DAB as a thought leader, but by harnessing that relationship, he's getting more coverage with DAB Chapter 63, right? So it's more than one placement by getting these. And John, what do you mind coming on up and giving these folks some insight on how you established that relationship with the editor of the Claremont Sun and so forth? So, ladies and gentlemen, Past Department Commander, Past Department of Ohio Commander John Fahabnisek. Some of the other people in the audience might be aware I'm an army, just an army soldier. What I learned to do is that there's a lot of information put out on the websites that the military has. You can go to military times, you can read things, you can read things in stars and stripes newspapers. You can read press releases from the VA. And I'm trying to focus primarily on disabled veterans. Now, I look at disabled veterans because I am one. And when I run across some information, and I look at it and I think maybe other people might want to know this information. And for the past year, I've been seeing a lot of stories dealing with disabled veterans, but it just stops at the press release site. So I contacted the local newspaper. The local newspaper service is an area of about 75,000 people. In a three-county area. And I touched base with the editor. I contacted, first of all, I looked at the newspaper, saw what the newspaper was, stories they were carrying. And I noticed that they do have something called an op-ed page, an editorial opinion page for that. And they had things in there from recipes to cooking to forum live, to other things like that. So I contact, I found out when his publishing deadlines are I called him when he wasn't busy. And I asked him if I could send him a column, just one column dealing with disabled veterans if he would be interested in it. I tailored the column as an opinion column. I took 75% of it was information news. The first one dealt with the two decisive victories that the disabled veterans had. One on the 20th of December. And also one on the 5th of January of 2021. Which really didn't receive that much publicity on that. I did the article, 75% of that article was basically information that I picked up from reading stories in the news media on it. I tailored that article and I put my opinion on it. My opinion was about 25% of the article for that. He ran with that, he liked it, he gave me a call, asked if I could do another article. So I said okay, I did another article for him on hypertension, why hypertension was not included on the presumptives that we want to get for our disabled veterans. Spin back on that, he liked that, he asked me if I would do another column for that, the third column and finally he said could you do one on every week on disabled veterans. So I said okay, so brain surgeon or a writer going to journalism school or anything like that. It just goes through the internet, hit stars and stripes, hit the other media outlets. You run across topics that are current and that's what they want to see. I basically followed the tip line that Todd had in doing that, find out number one who the editor is, look at the newspaper so you can talk intelligently about the newspaper. And I'm not going to make the New York Times or I'm not going to make the Cincinnati Inquiry the big newspaper. I'm looking for the small, rural, community-based newspapers. And Cincinnati is a city of about 300,000 but we have four small community-related newspapers that just take care of the neighborhood. Editors are looking for current information. They're not worried about what happened five years ago. They're looking for something that's current for a specific audience. And we do have a lot of veterans in Claremont County, Highland County, Adams County. They like reading about that. The third article I did on hypertension, on the bottom of the article I put my name and my email address for that, I was contacted by a lady in Upstate New York. And she said she saw the article when she had hypertension. That article came up. She had some questions on hypertension and I explained to her what I was doing. I found out that she was working at a hospital and she was primarily working with veterans in terms of filling out paperwork. So I asked her, is she getting any recognition for her work? She said no. I explained to her what the LVAP program was. She liked the LVAP program. So now I signed her up for the LVAP program for my chapter. And she sent me an email every month about the number of hours she puts it in and I just put her down for our chapter for the credit for the LVAP hours. But that's at least reaching out and getting that information. That somebody is helping disabled veterans and we're being that. Now the first series of articles that Todd showed dealt primarily with the op-ed pieces. All I'm doing is taking newspaper articles that I read online, tailoring them to a specific community and then regurgitating that information out in the local newspaper for our people in the rural areas or in the community areas to read. And a lot of people read it because number one, the small newspapers contain OVITS for the local people in the area. They contain people graduating from high school, graduating from college, being in the military, local news whereas the big city newspapers don't carry that information. The second vein that I talk about is what my chapter does. And whenever my chapter does something, I just write it up in three or four paragraphs. I send it to the editor. He saves my butt by fixing up all the wrong grammar that I use in the articles for that. And he publishes and if I get a picture, it's even better because he's looking to fill space every week. He has a pressure line for doing that. Now the op-ed pieces, I don't focus on the DAV too much. I focus on other aspects of being a disabled veteran because if I start focusing on the op-ed pages, on the DAV, it's going to look like he's showing favoritism for that. So that's why I try to keep it as general as possible. I touch bases like on the situation with banished veterans who are now being looked at about being called back into the United States and having their discharges looked at for that. So that covers a lot of people, not only disabled veterans. I also try to be as non-biased as possible. I'm also a member of the VFW. Now the VFW has something called call to action. And what they do is that they do identically what we do with our commander's action network. So when I did an article about how on Memorial Day people usually say, you know, thank you for your service, I put in the article about you could ask them to do something more than just saying that they could go either for the commander's action network or they could do the VFW called action. And that generates support for the VFW and also support for the DAV. Now the bottom line is getting legislation passed for those two VATES. So if I do service for the DAV it's also doing it for the VFW. It's showing that we're non-partisan for that. But the main purpose I'm trying to do trying to relate to is there are a lot of veterans out there looking for information, primarily for disabled veterans and also for active veterans. What I'm trying to do is take that information that's available and putting it down at local level because they're the ones who bought the newspaper for that. You don't have to be, as I said, a great writer or anything. I just scribble notes and in fact I handwrite all my articles before I type it in my typewriter. For now we've got a computer though that does that, I guess. But I transmit it to Brent Milam who's the editor of the newspaper. He likes what he sees. It helps him get his paper filled with news that's current, not related. And he likes what he sees and because he does that he likes to continue reading about the DAV and what we do in terms of some of our activities. That's my driveway back there that we met for a meeting like that. Just a little cut line that he put in there for that. But I got information that the DAV was meeting for it even in the middle of the pandemic. The other one is we participated the secretary's second call to duty program for that. And we helped get recognition of what the DAV was doing in terms of the election for that. So you don't have to be a great writer. All you have to do is put words together in a sentence and somebody's going to save your butt that wants to get the newspaper out and it doesn't want to look like a dummy. And I'm fortunate enough that I do have an editor like that from the newspaper and I imagine you probably have the same type of editors that come out with community newspapers so that is a perfect example I think what he noted is it's not going to get in the New York Times but it's going to get in front of these folks in the local communities and that's who you folks at the chapter in department level should be targeting. One more thing that John mentioned was in the op-eds he keeps it not so much DAV centric rather disabled veteran centric and that is perfectly fine but the other part of that that was kind of glossed over a little bit is at the end of on every single one of these articles it's called a boiler plate where at the bottom it says John is a past department commander of disabled American veterans and that's all we might need for someone to see because that really helps establish us as thought leaders in the veteran community I don't want to go over my time here too much with I want to give Mary some equal time here and have some time at the end for questions but real quick some interview tips for when you guys are having clothing or food drive or fundraiser whatever it might be in a local chapter that you're able to get media out to one always make sure you got some sort of DAV gear on preferably a shirt or a hat because most times when a cameraman is setting up for an interview they're going to do what you call a bust shot which is from bust up so make sure you got something with a DAV logo on if you can we're going to establish some ground rules right you know just real quick with the reporter hey we're here to talk about this fundraiser whatever it might be that's going on because you know that's really kind of not the place to be talking about what you know we think of the vaccine mandate that's going on at BA or what not I mean that's got nothing to do with a DAV fundraiser so establish those rules with them and most importantly I think on here is to stay within DAV's resolutions and remain nonpartisan you know sometimes reporters will you know just in there questioning will try and try and get something out of you that maybe isn't and that's why it's important to establish your ground rules but you know we got to stay focused on what the purpose of the story is that they are there for if you can try and anticipate the questions I know all your moms scold you this always be truthful and you know it's okay to say you don't know something but definitely don't ever say no comment because you are always on no comment is a comment so just remember that you're you're always on the record and with that I'm gonna give up the microphone here and let Mary get into the social networking aspect and we'll have questions when she's done so thank you very much folks introduction earlier I'm Mary D where I was in the Air Force for 10 years doing public affairs and over that time the whole communications realm changed and that's kind of what I wanted to talk about for social media a couple of years ago Todd and I kind of merged our briefings because they overlap so much now it used to be to reach that media you had to call them though the office things like this now you can incorporate that with your social media strategy I'll talk a little bit about that but by that I mean you can get your news out there you can get your name and you can get the ideas out there just from social media as well so that's what we're gonna talk about so what is social networking two way form of sharing information it's free I mean it might cost you a lot of time sometimes we all go down that rabbit hole but it is free who in here has a smart phone not have a smart phone exactly it is rapidly becoming rarer and rarer to find somebody that does not have some sort of way to connect on social media so if you put your departments and your chapters out there in the ether world chances are you're gonna get a following of some sort so why use it this is where I was talking about some of the overlap this makes sure that the people that follow you are and I'm not talking specifically Facebook, Twitter I mean all of these platforms or one of these platforms whatever works best for you in your community you know your community better than we will so whatever works for your community so it lets them know that we are staying up to date it lets them know what's going on legislatively local and national it lets them have feedback it lets you as well it opens up that conversation and makes it very easy to learn from them and to teach them and to engage the community around you it can act as a motivational tool you know we have what we call campaigns, social media campaigns calling people to action calling people to get on the commander's action network or again something that's specific to your community or something that your chapter or your VA needs it's also a way to influence and it helps you reach a target audience what do I mean when I say a target audience well it includes as Todd's presentation was about that media you can get the attention of local reporters people like that John was saying who care about the people in their community their birthdays and the obits and who joined the military you can physically reach out and tag them in your social media posts and get their attention so it's a great way to kind of be an influence in your community as well as just have the most up to date information as possible social networking helps promote DAB's voice and content one thing to say here whereas we do recognize how important social media is in today's communication we do want to keep in mind that as a page on behalf of our chapter or our department we are representing and speaking for DAV so whatever you post or however you interact as an admin of that page or as a representative of DAV must be in line with our Constitution and bylaws just something to remember you are DAV's voice when you're on social some of the different platforms Facebook, Instagram, Twitter YouTube, LinkedIn we even have a Pinterest so if you have one of those for your local page or all of them it's a quick easy share from national as well so like Todd, I have glasses but sometimes it's hard to read these notes regular management is vitally important so if you do go out there and start up all of these different accounts make sure you're staying on top of it if you're not sure if you can do that start with one and then branch out designated account managers are responsible for the content so again make sure whatever is being put out as DAV falls within our Constitution and bylaws and any page left open for more than a year with no activity should probably be deactivated because again that page is going to serve as a it's going to serve as how they see that DAV and so if they don't see the social aspect having any updates they are going to be less inclined to get involved because they're not going to feel like you're involved whether you are or not so perception is reality remember that old adage who has downloaded the convention app oh that makes my heart hurt thanks boss man boss man downloaded it so new this year we have a convention app but we're actually trying it out and this is just kind of pushing forward with our social strategies because we don't want to overwhelm all of our platforms with all convention all the time because we have a lot of followers who are not here right so we have other information on our twitter and our facebook going out about job pairs legislative things stuff like that so we're trying out this app and if you just go to your app store for android or apple it's DAV national convention and you can find it and it has our fancy little logo so don't feel like you have to you know do this or anything but what we're trying with it is again it allows you to post those real time updates and it allows you to make sure that everybody who is invested in the success of DAV is aware of what DAV is doing and it really builds that trust between the two also just a note about the app because we're trying it out and I have kind of taken it on as a pet project if you do find anything any glitches or any issues with the app please email me my email is going to be at the end of this because we want to I'm compiling a list of any issues we run into so that we can address it so just heads up tips and tricks engage who is active on social media not as an admin but as your own personal account okay so if you post something reach something comment on something share an idea and you don't get a response how does that feel feel like they don't care again perception is reality so if your social accounts aren't active they're not going to believe that you're active you might be the most active member we have but from what they see their tunnel vision on your social account if you're not engaging with them they're not going to feel like you are actually engaged in real life either don't be a robot I think that's pretty self-explanatory but I put that in there as far as don't just give a copy and paste to answer okay thank you for contacting DAB blah blah blah again it hurts that perception of how engaged we really are and it kind of defeats the purpose of having that two-way communication tag tag tag verify with a blue check mark is everybody familiar with the blue check mark feel okay the blue check mark is how twitter, instagram and facebook legitimize professional accounts so you have to jump through hoops to get one so ending Joe Schmo can't say that they're DAB so when you are tagging a reporter or a local veteran leader or your city government or your national government there's a lot of fake accounts for national government officials make sure it has that blue check mark before you just tag it otherwise you might end up going down a rabbit hole with someone who is not who they say they are so just kind of keep that in mind look for the blue check mark the check mark means it has been authenticated clear and hashtags I'm going to plug the app one more time in the app under the twitter function you can actually search for DAVTampa21 all you do is click on it and it will show you everything that anyone has posted with that hashtag so here's some more to how twitter, instagram, facebook, linkedin all work by following the hashtag a hashtag really is it's an organizer for your post you'll notice a lot of our DAV posts have keep the promise especially it has to do with legislation if you go under one of those platforms you click on keep the promise it's going to show you everything that has ever been posted with that hashtag that's the purpose of hashtag disabled veterans hashtag disabled veterans just keep it consistent you know and don't be one of those that hashtag DAV is for all veterans we love you all let's keep going we'll see you at next convention all one hashtag that's not going to work but veterans hashtag DAV hashtag DAVTampa21 those are the kinds of things that you want to put because again if somebody's going through and they happen upon your twitter account and they like what they saw and they click that hashtag that says DAV Chapter 38 and then they see everything that's ever been hashtagged with DAV Chapter 38 it's an easy search function so take advantage of that while you're on there I'm going to go back to the engagement soapbox make sure you're checking these accounts daily you don't necessarily need to carve out time to respond in detail daily you should do that every couple of days though but make sure that you're going on there daily multiple reasons for this again that whole engagement with your followers if they don't feel like you're engaged on social they're not going to feel like you're engaged in real life the other thing is negativity inappropriate comments or an emergency believe it or not some people will take it to social emergency get on there and check it make sure that you're involved with it check your messages, check your inbox and delete anything that's inappropriate or against our constitution and bylaws that's not censorship they're using bad words and things like that if it's ugly just take it off but check it otherwise you can go unchecked and we all know where that can go that can go down really quickly in the social media world there's tools that we have at your disposal on DAV.org we have the DAV publicity guide that has information on pods briefing, information on my briefing it really lays the groundwork if you need to go back and check something it's a guide though so again if you have specific questions you might want to reach out to us an email to remember that I'm making a mental note to add to this presentation at DAV.org maybe it isn't here it is there it is thank you past me social at DAV.org that goes to anybody with access to that account basically our department so then you know if I'm on PTO or you email Todd and he can't answer it's a group thing so when and out now this guidelines and code of conduct for social media communications if you've been to one of these or you know that we've been working on this for a while it's almost across the finish line so look for it soon we will have it online when it is and it has all kinds of details again kind of covering yourself legally with IG all those things so once that's out we'll probably make an announcement about it and so when it is download it save it, refer to it make sure everybody else reads it and it's really just going to keep us all on the same page our voice consistent there's rules to everything isn't there again you're a representative of DAV so your opinion on something isn't necessarily the place to put it when it's on the DAV social okay so just keep that in mind obviously we want to advocate for veterans issues but again we're going to go back to the constitution and bylaws whenever it comes to what exactly we are saying about those issues okay so resolutions are very important to know and understand we don't get political we don't get partisan we don't my brain just drew a blank on we don't campaign for particular individuals or groups so just remember that from your social aspect and don't get argumentative if somebody is being ugly and coming at you just sorry you feel that way and walk away there's no need to get into a battle with it if they've brought you a problem and you've tried to fix it and they still want to argue with you just leave it at that it's probably good advice outside of social too but I'm not anybody's mother in here Q&A time