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Communications Strategy

This NDSA Communications Strategy begins by making a clear statement of the NDSA Mission and Vision. The Mission and Vision will guide all other activities. After addressing the Challenges and Opportunities facing the NDSA, the plan identifies a series of NDSA Objectives. The Objectives will be achieved by targeting appropriate Messages to identifiable Audiences through discrete Communication Channels. The effectiveness of these Objectives will be measured by Performance Indicators.

The Strategy document identifies two main NDSA Communication Objectives:

To establish the NDSA as the coordinated national voice on digital preservation and stewardship issues.

To establish the NDSA as the key resource for the media, industry professionals, government agencies and the general public for information on the issues of stewarding and preserving digital materials for long-term accessibility.

It will fall to the NDSA Outreach WG to explore ways to bring these objectives to fruition, mainly through the ongoing development of the NDSA:Outreach Toolkit.

NDSA Final Communications Strategy Document V9 November 2012

Background

At the 3/29-3/30 Joint Leadership meeting of the NDSA Coordination Group, the Outreach WG was charged with preparing a Communication Plan to guide the work of the NDSA. Several drafts were prepared over the next few months.

Version 5 was presented to the NDSA Coordinating Committee at their meeting during Digital Preservation 2012 from July 24-26 in Washington, DC. There was general approval of the scope and direction of the plan, and it went through several more drafts.

The final version was approved on the NDSA Coordinating Committee conference call of October 17, 2012.

NDSA News Bureau

The three prongs of the NDSA News Bureau: Content, Distributors, Contacts

Content

- Draft press release template (with rebroadcast language)
- Digital Humanities Now as aggregator of content

Distributors

- Press office participants (folks to write press releases on NDSA activities using the press release template)
- Editors who will tackle particular subject areas (State government, cloud computing, etc.)

Contacts

- Can we build a rich database of press contacts across all sectors? This includes contacts in the popular press (newspapers, national magazines, blogs) as well as contacts in more "niche" areas of particular interest to NDSA members.
- A "starter" spreadsheet of contacts is available here: NDSA Draft Spreadsheet of Press Contacts Feb. 11, 2013
- Identified NDSA expertise to offer press contacts. Leverage LinkedIn profiles and the newly created NDSA LinkedIn group.

Draft News Bureau Workflow

INTRODUCTION

The goal of an NDSA news bureau is to gather and push news out from NDSA working groups and member organizations to extended audiences that include member email lists and press contacts. An "no budget" NDSA news bureau will not be an NDSA news repository, archive, serial publication or web site, but rather will serve as a dynamic distribution hub for short news items with annotated pointers to content residing elsewhere on an ad hoc basis. Two key inter-related efforts are required to launch an NDSA news bureau are

1) workflow and methods for gathering content from NDSA working groups and member organizations and
2) workflow and methods for editing, packaging, redistribution.

This draft document lays out suggested steps and roles for the NDSA Outreach Working Group to launch a "No Budget" NDSA News Bureau.

CONTENT

Acceptable content

Small documents and content
One-pagers, primarily current news items–appropriate to be sent via email
Short press releases
Annotated links to content

Non-acceptable content

Large or complicated white papers, proposals, articles or reports
Data sets
Media files
Digital collections

Format

Text and PDF files accepted

NDSA WORKFLOW

Who's involved?

NDSA Outreach Bureau Chief
NDSA Outreach Editor 1
NDSA Outreach Editor 2

Review

Item meets guidelines and is received by Bureau Chief
Item is sent to editor 1 or 2 for editing and packaging into
- NDSA News Bureau templates for press release or small news items
Item is reviewed by Bureau Chief
Item is scheduled for distribution
Items is distributed

Distribution

NDSA list with request to reflect out further
Press list
email list
social media: twitter, Facebook and other channels that NDSA members are already members of

TIMING AND FREQUENCY

Items will be released when review and packaging is complete on an ad hoc basis

NDSA Twitter

The NDSA has established its own twitter feed. The account is @NDSA2. More information is below.

NDSA:About NDSA twitter