06 Apr Thinking Outside the Box During COVID-19 Pandemic
As the situation around COVID-19 continues evolving, we are all making necessary changes to face this challenge head-on. But what won’t change is K&A’s commitment to colleagues, clients, teaming partners and friends. K&A is sending a series of blog posts with advice and guidance for digital public outreach and community engagement using a variety of formats, methods and platforms. We hope these tools will help you continue to communicate about things that matter.
We can – and will – get through this together. We may feel isolated physically, but digitally, we can stay more connected than ever. As Public Participation experts, K&A has developed and implemented outreach and engagement plans that solve for myriad issues across the spectrum – and adjusting to a socially distanced world is certainly a challenge we can meet.
And we’d like to give a huge THANKS to you! For providing critical services, keeping communities informed and engaged and for staying connected with us!
Build trust and understanding within your community.
Showing, rather than telling, can be as powerful a tool as in-person interactions. And in our digital age, there are so many options!
Show Progress: Use drone footage or photo montages to show movement or progress on construction and project sites.
Explain Further: Develop an animated video or implement mapping tools to describe a process, show a potential work site, or explain the design and placement of a project.
Get Feedback: Use survey tools (like Typeform, Google forms, or SurveyMonkey) to help you gain additional insight into the thoughts, opinions, and sentiment of your community. To increase participation, inform respondents of the estimated time to complete the survey, and follow up with an email.
Make Connections: Conduct an “Ask Me Anything” campaign. Ask the community to submit questions, then record a prominent representative of your organization to conduct a Q&A using questions selected from the submittals. You can also do this as a live event on Facebook or YouTube!
Remember to say Thank You.
Many of our organizations still have staff that are out in the field, working at facilities, and continuing their projects as essential employees. Now is a good time to show your appreciation to those who play a huge role in the successful functioning of our basic infrastructure. Some fun and unique ideas to say “thank you!” include a video montage of Operators or Construction teams, or clips from staff working remotely compiled into one gratitude video. Other tokens of appreciation such as signage and posters in front of facilities, newspaper and digital ads, or even a newsletter, all help to shine the light on essential service operators and their continuous hard work during this time.
And we’d like to give a huge THANKS to you! For providing critical services, keeping communities informed and engaged and for staying connected with us!