State Public Relations Chair

Brad Smith
Bucyrus #156

E-mail Brad

Public Relations Overview

Who is your Public?

·         Non-members in your community. Members are an important public, but not the focus of your PR efforts

What can you realistically expect your PR efforts to accomplish?

  • If you were survey 10 random people in your community and ask them what they know about the Elks, most would likely say “not very much”.

  • Your public relations efforts are be aimed at moving the awareness needle toward having more non-members say “not very much, but I know they are an asset to our community”

  • We do that by telling PR stories that emphasize the essence of the meaning behind “Elks Care, Elks Share.” Elks care about making our community a better place by sharing their time, talents, and money to make life better in your area.

  • That’s it. That’s all you can do. But it’s vitally important to our future.

How do you do that? Here’s how to get started.

1. Find a PR Chairman and form a committee. Maximum of three people. Your newsletter person, your social media person, and your new PR chair. Why? Because all the stories generated by PR should also be used in your newsletter and social media.

2. Here’s the committee’s first job. Create a list of all media outlets that cover local news in your area. Newspapers aren’t as big as they used to be, but many still exist in print or digital format. Get a lodge subscription. There are many newer online local news sources. Get a lodge subscription. You probably have a radio station. A lucky few have a TV station. The importance of local news will always be important to people. Who won the football game? What’s the news on the latest local scandal?

3. Find out who the contacts are at each outlet, and give them a call.

“I am from the local Elks Lodge and the reason I’m calling is to find out how we can get you newsworthy stories about what our Lodge is doing… But don’t stop there. They don’t care what your lodge is doing. Finish the sentence with “what our lodge is doing to help improve our community and make it a better place to live.” That’s what local news is all about, and that will get their interest.

4. Practice the “Relations” in Public Relations

The reason you ask the above questions isn’t because you want the answer. They’ll tell you they’re busy, short-staffed and won’t be able to cover your events. You’ll have to provide your stories to them, digitally, by email.

The real reason you ask the question is the “Relations” in public relations. You want to create a relationship with your local media. When you submit PR stories to your local media you want yours to get attention. Out of the dozens of mails they receive daily, you want yours to be one they look at. You want to build a strong enough relationship where you can call them sometime in the future and say “we’re having a fish fry at the lodge this weekend and we’d like to invite you and your family to join us for a free meal. Sort of our way of saying thanks for your support.”

You have a multitude of PR story opportunities.

You have so many story possibilities you’ll have to cherry pick the ones that best communicate how “Elks Care, Elks “ at your Lodge.

1. Make sure you apply for an Ohio Elks Community Service Grant – that’s always a great story.

2. Get every penny you can from ENF – many great stories there.

3. You have the community donations you make with the money your gaming generates.

4. Plus, all the unique Elks activities like Hoop Shoot, Drug Awareness, Americanism Essay contest, etc.

Preparing your PR Stories

It starts with writing the story. Don’t let that scare you. It’s basically just who, what, where, when and why. The ‘why” is what drives how Elks Care, Elks Share. Always spend time with your donation recipient to learn how they plan to use the money. That’s the “why.”

1. The Story.

“The Marion Elks Lodge #32 donated $15,000 to the local food pantry. According to the pantry’s chief executive, they will be able to provide 20,000 wholesome meals to local residents this year. The donation was presented by the ER on date.

Your short story will need a headline. Think of it as the email subject line. This is where Winston Churchills famous quote, “If I had more time I’d have written a shorter letter” comes in. The subject line for the above story goes something like this:

Elks Donation will feed 10,000 families in Our Town.

No lodge number. No recipient name. Emphasis on how the donation helps the community. True meaning behind “Elks Care, Elks Share.” See what I’m getting at?

Spend the time with any donation recipient to learn how they plan to use the money

2. The photo

Whenever possible include a photo. Try to make your photo support the story. Take a picture of the ER presenting the check to the food panty CEO in their storeroom with stocked shelves of nutritious food in the background. Better yet, skip the check and have the ER handing the food pantry person foodstuffs that she’s putting on the shelf. Demonstrate the story with the photo. Donating new gizmos to the fire department? Do the photo of the gizmos in front of a big shiny red fire truck.  Get the picture?

The end of your story needs to identify everyone in your photo. For example, “Pictured Left to Right are NAME TITLE. For heaven sakes pay special attention that the titles and especially about the names are spelled correctly. Few things miff people like having their name misspelled.

More photo suggestions

1. Just one Elk per photo, two at most.  Fewer people make more interesting pictures. People and backgrounds are more prominent. Shouldn’t always be the ER pictured. Spread the photo ops among the officer core and committee chairs. Get them used to participating in your PR efforts.

2. Be careful of your background. A picture in front of a mounted Elks head can make a person look like they have antlers growing out of their head.

3. Smile for crying out loud. Elks are happy, positive, up lifting people.

4. Multi donation recipients. Some lodges prefer to do one story and photo about all their local donation recipients. That’s fine. I suggest you they pick 4 or 5 with the greatest community stories and do follow up news releases on what they did with the money.

5. No alcohol in the photos. Grand Lodge frowns on that.

Final thoughts

1. Send your stories to the Ohio Elks News and the National Elks magazine.

2. When you donate money, make sure the recipients know it comes with no strings attached. Then smile and say you do have one favor to ask. That they like your Facebook page and have them ask their staff like it too so they can see the great story you’re going to post. This helps expand your social media reach to more non-members.