Digital Marketing for Think Tanks
Think tanks are great at well, thinking. Thinking and researching difficult problems and making suggestions for tackling them.
What they are often less great at, is communicating and distributing these suggestions. This isn’t true for all think tanks. Some extremely well funded institutions like CSIS are amazing at it, but a look at their team page will show you that they essentially have an in-house digital agency running their comms.
For smaller or mid-range think tanks, having a dedicated comms person can be a nice to have. So digital communications look something like this:
Produce research or a policy paper
Publish on website
Write a quick post about it on the organization LinkedIn page
That’s a start, but it’s not going to move the needle. We are living in a noisy world. It’s not enough to just publish the information. It needs to be distributed. The ideas and recommendations emanating out of your organization need to get into the bloodstream, the conversation.
This doesn’t mean mindless broadcasting on social media. It means assessing your overall digital presence, organizational capacity and communicating with intention and with the right people at the right time.
Here are some important factors to consider when developing a digital marketing strategy for your think tank. The level of intensity, frequency and effort will depend on the capacity of your organization, but there is a MV(C)P ‘Minimum Viable Communication Plan’ for everything on this list.
So What. Who Cares. Who Knows.
So What.
What is your message? This is based on your mission, but the emphasis is on the outcome, the result of your work. An easy way to think about this is to ask yourself ‘Why?’ Why does your mission matter? What would happen if your organization ceased to exist? How are you moving the needle forward by doing what you’re doing
Who Cares?
Who Cares? Audience definition - Who are you talking to?. You may be communicating with multiple profiles: Policy and decision makers, funders and/or the broader public. Your audience will depend on your institutional goals. The important thing is to consciously articulate who this audience is. Think about ‘who you’re talking to’ whenever you undertake digital comms tasks, whether that’s updating your website, sending out a newsletter, or posting on social media. A helpful tip
Who Knows?
Once you determine who cares about your message you’ll need to assess whether or not they know about it. Broadcasting on social media does not count. For starters, you don’t know if platform algorithms are displaying people to your followers. Social media platforms are also loud. Your posts are ephemeral blips in the eternal stream of content. That’s not to say you shouldn’t post on social media, but you should do that in combination with things that don’t scale. More interaction with (meaningful!) comments on posts of people who care or direct messaging at the right moment.
Your Minimum Viable Communication Plan
Once you clarify your key messaging (so what), put together a list of people who want to hear it (who cares). Figure out where those people are and how to reach them (who knows). This may look like:
Following peer organizations on your company LinkedIn page and taking an hour twice a week to see what’s going on and leaving thoughtful comments.
Sending a newsletter once a month or once a quarter to a vetted and curated list
Cultivating relationships with journalists on your beat and reaching out privately through DMs to let them know about your recent, relevant work
Researching, pitching and appearing on 1-3 podcasts a quarter
And of course you can (and should!) still ‘broadcast’, but that’s just keeping the lights on. Taking some time to think through how you’re going to get your work in front of the right people will yield results, like funding, influence and impact.
Want your think tank’s research to reach the right people? I can help. Get in touch below.
