Author: patrickboldbison

Patrick Williams, Director of Creative Services, Bold Bison Communications & Consulting
Workshops

Fall 2023 Webinars

Bold Bison is excited to offer some of our most popular workshops as webinars this fall. In this series, we’ll address some of the common and pressing challenges nonprofits are facing today. Our first session will cover the basics of branding, explore strategies to refresh your brand without a total overhaul, and offer considerations on when it might be time for a full rebrand.

In October, Shouting Into the Void will take a deep dive on why your social media reach isn’t what it used to be and brainstorm strategies for where you can rebuild community offline. Finally, our November session will share some tools for helping your readers and listeners better retain the message at the heart of your stories.

There is no charge for these – we hope to see you at one or all of them this fall! Register for each below.

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: Making the Most of Your Brand
Wednesday, September 27 | 1-2:30pm (CT)

Register

Between the impacts of climate change, a focus on equity, and the ongoing pandemic, many organizations have fundamentally evolved how they approach their work. As a result, they’re often left feeling like their 10+ year-old branding just doesn’t quite reflect what they do for communities. Sound familiar? This thought-provoking workshop will unpack the basics of branding, help you assess your own brand, and provide a frame for considering a brand refresh within your organization.

Shouting Into the Void: Why Social Media Is No Longer Working For You and What to Do About It
Tuesday, October 24 | 1-2:30pm (CT) 

Register

For nearly two decades, social media has been an invaluable asset for nonprofits to evolve the way they communicate, and many of us have invested years of our professional lives honing our social media skills to increase our reach online. But lately, those tried and true strategies don’t seem to be working; the audiences you’ve amassed don’t seem to be engaging with posts. 

It’s not just you. Everyone is seeing it because the platforms are rotting. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok have gotten us this far, and while it’s not yet time to say goodbye, it’s definitely time to consider deprioritizing your social strategy – and imagining what you could do instead.

Telling Memorable Stories 
Wednesday, November 29 | 1-2:30pm (CT)

Register

In our work, we’ve all heard some inspiring stories – and thought, “why can’t we do that?” But what makes a great story? And more importantly, what makes for great storytelling? This workshop equips you with strategies for engaging listeners with great storytelling.

For more information on our workshops or to book a workshop(s) for your organization, please contact our team!

Workshops

Bold Bison’s 2023 Workshops

Bold Bison’s workshop schedule for 2023 is coming into focus! We love facilitating hands-on, engaging, and skill-building workshops as a way to support both organizations and coalitions, and help build talent in the nonprofit sector.

We hope to see you at some of our upcoming webinars and conference workshops, and be sure to subscribe to our newsletter as we announce more self-hosted sessions!

Learn more about our facilitation and workshop services.

Texas Land Conservation Conference | March 1-3, 2023
Austin, TX

Texas Communicators Network: an Opportunity for Greater Statewide Collaboration

Thursday, March 2 | 1:30-2:30pm CT

The Texas Communicators Network is creating greater coordination and collaboration between land trusts in our state, and we want to share that opportunity with you during this highly interactive session! Bring your questions about marketing, communications, and fundraising at your land trust to get advice from the experts in the Texas Communicators Network. In facilitated large- and small-group discussions, we’ll unpack the challenges facing Texas land trusts and brainstorm recommendations together to better articulate our message as individual organizations and as part of coordinated statewide outreach campaigns.

Maine Land Conservation Conference | March 2023
Virtual

TikTok, YouTube, Instagram Oh My! Making the Most of Videos to Tell Your Stories

Wednesday, March 22 | 9:30-11am ET

You already know that video is an incredibly effective medium for telling your story, but the challenge is what to do about it. When we talk about video today, we’re talking about so much more than reusing the one you filmed for last year’s fundraiser. From the explosion of video content online to the demand for virtual programming during the pandemic, every organization has needed to rethink its approach to video.

The first workshop of this two-part series is designed for anyone who tells your story – from executive directors to interns, development pros to program managers. In this highly interactive session, we’ll start with a primer on how you can think about video before exploring the ways it can be an asset throughout your organization. Learning from each other’s experiences, we’ll develop recommendations for how you can incorporate video more frequently in your storytelling. This facilitated discussion will help clarify and simplify what can often feel like an enormous project of using video.

Details, Deadlines, and Debuts: Unpacking the Ins and Outs of Video Production

Thursday, March 23 | 9:30-11am ET

Building on the high level learnings from the first session, this Q&A-based workshop is designed as a deep dive for those involved with the nuts and bolts of video production at their organization. Participants are encouraged to bring their technical questions about video production and strategy, as the workshop will be responsive to the needs and concerns of those in attendance. We all bring different levels of experience with video, so no question is too big or too small for this session!

The team from Bold Bison are prepared to cover a wide range of topics on video, from filming techniques and equipment recommendations, to editing demos and software tips, to content strategy and key considerations when hiring contractors. Please bring questions about your current or dream video projects!

Conference attendees can view the recordings here until summer 2023.

New York Land Conservation Conference | May 10-11, 2023
Saratoga Springs, NY

Shouting Into the Void: Why Social Media Is No Longer Working for You and What to Do About It

Thursday, May 11 | 8:30-10am ET

For nearly two decades, social media has been an invaluable asset for nonprofits to evolve the way they communicate, and many of us have invested years of our professional lives honing our social media skills to increase our reach online. But lately, those tried and true strategies don’t seem to be working, the audiences you’ve amassed don’t seem to be engaging with posts.

It’s not just you. Everyone is seeing it because the platforms are rotting. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok have gotten us this far, and while it’s not yet time to say goodbye, it’s definitely time to consider deprioritizing your social strategy – and imagining what you could do instead. Join Bold Bison for a thought-provoking session where we’ll explore what’s changing on social media; evaluate strategies to lighten the load of account management; and consider new ideas to rebuild community with our audiences in a post-social media world.

Land Trust Alliance Webinar | June 20, 2023
Virtual

Shouting Into the Void: Why Social Media Is No Longer Working for You and What to Do About It

Tuesday, June 20 | 2-3:30pm ET

For nearly two decades, social media has been an invaluable asset for nonprofits to evolve the way they communicate, and many of us have invested years of our professional lives honing our social media skills to increase our reach online. But lately, those tried and true strategies don’t seem to be working, the audiences you’ve amassed don’t seem to be engaging with posts.

It’s not just you. Everyone is seeing it because the platforms are rotting. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok have gotten us this far, and while it’s not yet time to say goodbye, it’s definitely time to consider deprioritizing your social strategy – and imagining what you could do instead. Join Bold Bison for a thought-provoking session where we’ll explore what’s changing on social media; evaluate strategies to lighten the load of account management; and consider new ideas to rebuild community with our audiences in a post-social media world.

Register Here

Land Trust Alliance Rally | September 6-9, 2023
Portland, OR

The Monster Under the Bed: How to Overcome Your Fear of Your Website

Saturday, September 9 | 1:30-3pm PT

Does the thought of updating your website give you anxiety? Maybe you think you’re going to break something because you “don’t know code.” Maybe you always put it off because even small changes take so much time. Maybe, no matter what you do, it never actually works right, so it sits there tormenting you with its problems. Because it’s a burden, it goes unmaintained and slowly starts to fall apart, and then you don’t know how to start fixing it. The reality is that when you have the right tools, there’s nothing to be afraid of.

Managing a website can not only be very easy, but also very fun when you have the confidence to keep things up to date. And we’ll prove it by building a website on the spot during this workshop. Join Bold Bison for this engaging, skills-based workshop where we’ll unpack some of the common challenges land trusts face in maintaining their websites. We will learn how to evaluate your website not only for the quality of its content, but also for the tools you need to run it. We’ll learn about some of the many tools that exist to make your life easier because they’re designed for non-technical web managers. Finally, we’ll spend time reviewing the pros and cons of building a new website and how to get the process started.

Learn more about Rally

Bison Trends

Most Nonprofits Don’t Need to Be on Twitter

By now you’ve most certainly heard of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter late last week, and in the subsequent melodrama, many of you may have probably paused to consider your organization’s engagement on the platform – and possibly remind yourself how to log back into your account.

And no doubt many of you who manage your organization’s social media accounts will have a conversation in the next week with your executive director wherein they will casually ask, “Hey, what are we doing on Twitter these days?”

So before you get “develop a new successful Twitter strategy” thrown on your plate, we want to offer you some encouragement and send a reminder that most nonprofits do not need to actively maintain a presence on Twitter.

Where to spend your time online

Don’t get us wrong: we strongly encourage you to engage with audiences on social media. It’s an invaluable tool for communicating. However, given the limited capacity of many nonprofits, we would advise you to focus on platforms that expose you to much broader audiences, especially Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

According to Pew Research Center, just 23% of American adults use Twitter. By contrast, Facebook is used by nearly 70%.

Elected officials, policy professionals, journalists, and members of the media, however, overwhelmingly favor the platform, which is why Twitter drama gets amplified into our national discourse and why we’re so often led to believe that most of us are supposed to care about what’s happening there.

But for most nonprofits, it’s just not worth the time invested.

Twitter’s pros and cons

So why might you want to use Twitter?

There are definitely a few instances when Twitter has been a reliable tool for nonprofits. If your organization engages in legislative advocacy, if you’re plugged into policymaking or academic research, or if high-profile earned media is an essential part of your communications strategy, then you should be on Twitter. (Not sure what your communications strategy is? We can help with that!)

Remember though that these are trade-offs. Take for example earned media: Twitter has been a great resource for connecting with journalists, following their interests and beats, and discovering which organizations end up quoted in their stories. Spending time on Twitter can help you hone the perfect pitch that becomes the best headline you’ll receive all year.

But getting there takes so much time and energy.

You have to continuously feed the beast with new content and posts so that your organization shows up in the feeds of journalists and you have to continuously scan the platform to see where conversations are headed. This is certainly the case for many social media platforms, but again, you’ll very likely see better returns engaging on other platforms.

How to evaluate your Twitter presence

Let’s talk briefly about how to evaluate your organization’s performance on the platform.

First, take a step back and assess the return you’re seeing. How are your posts doing in terms of generating likes, retweets, and follows? Are they getting meaningful engagement at all? More importantly, do you see traffic from Twitter on your website, and is it generating email sign-ups, event registrations, donations, etc.?

Next, think about how you personally interact with the platform. Do you regularly scroll through Twitter to check the news or is it an after thought? Do you craft posts specifically for Twitter or are you copying them between platforms as part of your social media spray-and-pray?

You might be doing great, and if so, congratulations! Consider presenting at your next nonprofit conference and share what your doing and why it’s working.

But if you have no evidence to substantiate that you’re seeing positive results, it’s probably time to disengage from the platform. And if you pull up your organization’s page only to see no one has posted to in in 3-4 years, it’s definitely time to disengage.

Best practices for hibernating your account

We’re not saying you should log in one last time to delete the whole thing. The truth is, no one knows the future of any social media platform and five years from now, it may be the place to be. Hibernating your account is the right move, especially if you control a good handle for your organization or have the name directly (such as @BoldBison).

Here are a few steps to take before going into hibernation:

  1. Block a few hours on a Friday afternoon for this because you’ll need a little time.
  2. Feel free to delete your old posts – years old content is irrelevant. But, as you read through old posts, make note of ones that generated particularly high engagement and see if there is any reason why it performed so well. Was it retweeted by a popular account, did it have a good photo or caption, did you tag other accounts?
  3. Be sure to copy down any compelling messages or captions you see and download any good photos you don’t already have saved.
  4. Check the accounts you’re following and make sure you’re not following anyone who’s a red flag (they might have been fine years ago and have since… drifted).
  5. Once everything is cleaned up, edit the account’s bio to let followers know that you’re taking a break, that they can find you on other platforms, and that they can sign up for your newsletter on your website. Add your website URL and logo, so folks know this is your organization’s official account.
Remember: you’re the expert

So, we at Bold Bison give you permission to disengage from Twitter if it’s the right call for your organization. Please understand that we’re not anti-Twitter, per se, nor are we inherently pro-Meta platforms. We just approach this from a pragmatic cost-benefit perspective and we encourage you to do the same.

You only have so much capacity, and too often, the latest fads and trends become a distraction that keeps us from focusing our time on what’s effective and what’s most likely to help us actually articulate our message.

Most of all, if this comes up, don’t forget that you’re the communications expert in the room.

And we at Bold Bison are always happy to back you up on that.

Workshops

Lights! Camera! Action! at River Rally 2022

Thank you so much to the 40+ participants of Lights! Camera! Action!: Let’s Make a Video – Bold Bison’s workshop at River Rally 2022! It was amazing and inspiring to see such energetic engagement with our goal to create a video that would connect new audiences to water conservation.

We’re thrilled to share the final result of what we produced together – and please feel free to share with your own networks:

Please do reach out if you’re looking to connect with us – we’re always looking to continue the conversations we start at River Rally. You can find Brandon and Patrick on LinkedIn.

Thank you again for a great session, and we’re looking forward to River Rally 2023!

Brandon & Patrick

Uncategorized

Summer 2022 Upcoming Workshops

We’re thrilled to share that Bold Bison will be on the road this summer at some of the country’s top conferences. Be sure to catch our session at the following!

River Rally | June 4-7, 2022
Washington, DC

Lights! Camera! Action!: Let’s Make a Video – In this highly interactive, hands-on workshop, we will together make a complete 3-minute video from start to finish. Throughout the session we will work as a group and in teams to create talking points for the video, film the video right there in the room, supplementing what we shoot with some pre-recorded footage and images, and finally edit the video projected on the room’s screen so that everyone can see how editing decisions are made.

Sunday, June 5 | 9:30am (Workshop Block A)

Register for River Rally

Land Trust Alliance Webinar | June 8, 2022
Virtual

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: Thinking Creatively About Branding – Between the accelerating impacts of climate change, a greater focus on equity, and the impacts of the pandemic many land trusts have fundamentally evolved their approach to their work. As a result, they’re often left feeling like their 10+ year-old branding just doesn’t quite reflect the work they’re doing for their communities today. Sound familiar?

Join us for a highly interactive and engaging workshop, where we’ll take a close look at what branding is (and isn’t); think through strategies to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your brand; and share a perspective on how to approach the idea of a brand update within your land trust.

Wednesday, June 8 | 1pm EST

Register Here

Northwest Land Camp | June 28-29, 2022
McMinnville, OR

Lights! Camera! Action!: Let’s Make a Video – In this highly interactive, hands-on workshop, we will together make a complete 3-minute video from start to finish. Throughout the session we will work as a group and in teams to create talking points for the video, film the video right there in the room, supplementing what we shoot with some pre-recorded footage and images, and finally edit the video projected on the room’s screen so that everyone can see how editing decisions are made.

Tuesday, June 28 | 1:15pm (Workshop Session 2)

Register for Land Camp

Land Trust Alliance Rally | September 15-17, 2022
New Orleans, LA

Storied Landscapes: What Making A Video Can Teach You About Your Land Trust – In November 2021, Bold Bison hopped in a car and traversed the Lone Star State, from Dallas to Houston to Austin to San Antonio to El Paso. Charged with the task of helping seven land trusts better understand how they can tell their organizations’ stories through video, we spent 10 days filming dawn to dusk with these land trusts, capturing just a snippet of their programs.

But in this brief moment, we heard incredible stories about the work of land trusts: how a land trust uses its access to real estate to support food justice in communities of color; how a community garden helped a family get back to normal after a years-long battle with cancer; how a preserve became a frontline for the humanitarian border crisis.

The stories speak to organizations that are so much more complex and intentional than a buy-protect-sell model for land trusts – and those are perspectives that must capture in our storytelling to connect with new audiences. In this thought-provoking workshop, participants will hear from their Texan counterparts to gain an understanding of how this video production process increased their storytelling capacity; boosted their communications confidence; and bolstered relationships with their partners and landowners.

Saturday, September 17 | 1:30pm

Register for Rally

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