16 Identifying emergent opportunities
Within public interest communication, it is important to have clear goals, clear outcomes, and to baseline or benchmark your indicators, so you can measure the progress you make towards your goals.
However, in the course of a campaign, sometimes ‘low-hanging fruit’ or other opportunities may be revealed. Especially for low income communicators, grabbing these opportunities may be important. But how do we tell the difference between an emergent opportunity that is worth pursuing, and a mere distraction?
This is where your communication planning comes in helpful.
Imagine you notice during a social media campaign that one piece of content is generating significantly more engagement. This is useful to boost your visibility numbers, so maybe you double down on that piece of content and remove the other.
But take a moment to think about why it’s generating significantly more engagement. Is it funnier? Is it more relevant to the current situation? Or is it just a better piece of content? And is that extra engagement generating greater impact? Or is it just being seen more? Sometimes the thing that generates the most engagement might not always generate the greatest impact overall. Go back to your planning pages to think about whether this greater engagement also contributes to greater impact.
A common mistake among public interest communicators is to speak to people who already support our position, and encourage them to take action. That’s because, on the Stages of Change model, these people are easier to motivate. This is true. But what if the decision-makers of the day are more likely to listen to voices other than those who agree with us? What if young people on social media are more likely to take action, but the government is more likely to ignore them, and instead listen to older voices, or experts? It’s worth identifying ‘low-hanging fruit’ to decide whether it suggests a strategy that’s worth following, or if there are better ways to use our resources elsewhere.
Other emergent opportunities might lie in a cultural trend which influences audience perceptions.
Maybe there’s an election happening, maybe the country has recently become obsessed with a new TV show. In your strategic and creative discussions, it’s worth thinking about the things coming up that you can plan for (e.g. an election, anniversary or celebration) and having communication plans or creative ideas ready to go when it’s time.
It’s also worth identifying unexpected emerging trends and going back to your strategies to think if there are ways for you to capitalise on that. Perhaps you can shift your creative a little, or boost visibility of your creative by aligning it with the cultural movement, through hashtags or other media formats.
