Uncovering Internal Stories That Benefit Your Organization!!

 Welcome. 

This is The Public Relations Review Podcast, a program to discuss the many facets of public relations with seasoned professionals, educators, authors, and others. Now, here is your host, Peter Woolfolk 

Peter 

Welcome to the Public Relations Review podcast, and to our listeners, all across America and around the world.

Now, I said this before, but we keep growing. We now have listeners in 125 countries, and that covers 2,500 cities around the world. Now my guest today is a PR professional with 25 years of experience and has, has been a member of PR s A since 1999. Her communications career began as a newspaper reporter in Los Angeles.

Later she spent 20 years providing communications for both nonprofit and government organizations. Now, a decade ago, she launched LMG Public Relations. She has helped her clients tell their stories and build effective internal communications platforms through strong key messaging campaigns. Now the question arises, how does one identify opportunities to develop valuable internal stories that could then become media material that can then benefit the company's goals, mission, and.

So to answer that question, my guest joins me today from Los Angeles, California, and I welcome Louise Grasmehr, founder of LMG Public Relations. Louise, how are you this morning? I'm great. How are you? I'm doing just great. So let's start off, give us a little bit more about the background and how are you went about preparing yourself to launch your own.

Louise
Sure. I feel like I've always been telling stories going way back. Um, starting when I was a newspaper reporter and I went into corporate public relations and then kind of transitioned into government pr and that gave me the skillset and the client base to kind of launch my own organization, my own firm.

Peter
So you mentioned that  you help people identify opportunities to develop internal stories. How do you help them identify that? What process? What do you look for? Help me, help us understand how you go about that.


Louise
 Sure. I think that it's really unique to every organization and every client, but there are some basic rules that I think you can follow, and I think one of is listening. I think everything begins with listening, so that is really listening to your client or really listening to your workforce in your organization. This is something that I train, uh, leaders to do is to really sit down and go on listening tours and really find out what is important to their workforce, what are their values, what are they interested in?

And that becomes the starting block for telling stories. Mm-hmm. . I also think that it helps to be open-minded, so looking for stories where, They aren't the traditional places you would look. So maybe it's just getting to know people better, getting to know what their lives are outside of the workforce and how does that contribute to their work?  Is there a story there? So something like that. So being open-minded and being curious and. And kind of looking for those stories in places that are not the, the traditional places. 

Peter
Now, when you say not the traditional places, are you talking about various departments that they work in? Maybe Is there some departments that have not been covered in the past or some people you've not spoken to in the past?  How do you help us expand on different places? . 

Louise
Exactly. That's exactly right. So I really encourage organizations to listen to all levels in their organization. So I always say that starts with everything from clerical all the way up to leadership. Mm-hmm. . So, uh, listening to, you know, their unique perspective, what is their workday look like?

What are their challenges? What do they deal with on a daily basis? And then how does that contribute to the success of the organization?  So that's where you can get a lot of those success stories from and team building stories from, and peer learning stories from. 

Peter
So once you get that, then how do you begin to translate that into some outreach or other benefits to the organization? What platforms then you do you then use to do that?  Do you put an overview of this in the, in the company newsletter? . 

Louise
Yeah, I think there's a variety of ways you can do that. I mean, obviously nowadays social media is very popular, so. You know, putting out your story effectively on social media can, can be a really great tool for discussing the values and the mission of your organization.

So, you know, Instagram is a great storytelling vehicle. It's just built, stories are built on Instagram. Uh, so that's one, one way to do it. You can also, I'm, I am still a believer in the traditional, internal new. . I think that it's a very powerful and effective tool, but I think that you also need to be very strategic about how you do a newsletter and how you use the storytelling in the newsletter.

So I like to tell my clients and, and guide them in a way that everything that they put in the newsletter strategically works back to what the goals are of their organization. So it's not just, you know, random good feeling kind of stories. Everything has like a strategic purpose, if that makes sense or the range of topics, for instance. 

Peter
Cause I know, one, I recall having done that when I worked in the government, we did have an internal newsletter and one of the things that the staff liked best was when they did have an opportunity to talk about their successes and, and,  other things that they did outside of the office to show that they're  more than just a one dimensional person.

Louise
Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. That's great. It humanizes your workforce. And also, if any outside.  partners or outside entities, see your newsletter, you know, that helps to humanize your work for mm-hmm.  Force. Mm-hmm. , and show that, you know, these are real people doing this job. You know, especially in government and public affairs. 
I feel like there's a lot of misconception about who those people are working in government, and I think that that goes a long way to help with that. 

Peter
Well, it's also a morale booster too, because too often newsletters are about just the. Projects that might be going on in the, uh, in the organization, but when you let somebody talk about the fact that maybe they finally got their bachelor's degree or their son got their bachelor's degree or something along those lines that some outside external accomplishment that they had, they're, they're very, very proud of that. 
And the fact they're very even happy, very happy that you were able to let folks in the company know. 

Louise
Yeah, it's a, and it's a great peer learning opportunity, so you know, if somebody gets their bachelor's degree, maybe somebody else in the in the organization will be inspired to do that, you know, so it's a great peer learning and, and like you said, like motivational tool.

Peter
So what have you found to be perhaps your most, uh, I would say maybe stimulating story that you found and were able to help, uh, the organization grow that story and the various outlets you used to get the story out? 

Louise
Oh, wow. That's a great question. There have been so many stories, , um, I really would have to think about that for a second.

I think one, you know, one that comes to.  really easily for me is when I was working, uh, at the LA County Department of Children and Family Services, I did a big push on telling the stories of social workers and what they do, what they're about, what their private lives are about, what their interests are about, and I, and I met a young woman who was a social worker who came from a foster care background, but ended up opening her or, or starting her own nonprofit organization to help, you know, other women specifically. Mm-hmm. . So that was a really interesting story. I've met a lot of foster youth and former foster youth who then get involved in nonprofit because they want to advocate for foster youth and the foster care community, and they have amazing stories to. I mean, that is a goldmine of perseverance stories, hope stories, how to overcome challenges, things like that. Mm-hmm. . So there's a lot of those kind of stories now, sort of sticking with those, that, particularly one that maybe might have been homeless or whatever as you said that, and then they became, uh, social workers.

Peter
What did you do in terms of getting that out maybe to the general public? Um, could you make a news story out of it? , how did you build on that information? 

Louise
I really used that as the foundation and then kind of had the whole outreach were like the spokes of the wheel. So I really tried to create comprehensive plans that helped get that story out. So that included everything from pitching the story to news media, and that would be everything from national news media to local. TV stations to the community, newspapers. Mm-hmm.  and I would also, you know, obviously put it in the newsletter. Those stories would be very inspiring for the organization and the workforce.

I would use those stories in speeches and in talking points for the leaders, you know, as anecdotes. We'd use those in like our annual reports. Websites, things like that. Mm-hmm. . So basically there are, you can use those stories in every kind of platform if you just think creatively about it.

Peter
So, I brought that question up because a lot of times  we perhaps have, uh, we do have  listeners who are PR students and they need to hear Yeah. And like to hear these kinds of things that maybe they had not thought about. And it's more than just the fact that the company is launching a new product, so we need to get a press release out about that. It, it goes beyond that's where the skill or PR skills,  you really begin to rise to this top when you can find these things and dig deep and then show some benefit as to how they're gonna be put out to the public.

Loiuse
Yeah, exactly. And I think that, , my reporting background helped with that a lot. I know not everybody has a reporting background, but if you do have a reporting background and you go into to public relations, that helps you with the storytelling capability because I believe, you know, reporters are natural born storytellers.

They have to know how to do that. So it really gives you an edge in public relations. So I feel like in my career that has.  a huge bonus for me. The fact that I started as a reporter. Mm-hmm. , and I'm a naturally curious person, , I think that helps to be curious and, and wanna know about people and be interested in people. That helps a lot. 

Peter
You know, I, I think you hit a point of, on a very important point there, here is that don't be. Ask people questions or show some curiosity or interest in some of the things that they do, because that can maybe help have them broaden some of the experiences that they had and let you know about some things that you didn't know about or the company didn't know about, and they realize that, open door and information right there in front of you.

Louise
Yeah, exactly. I think that, you know, curiosity is one of the greatest things to have in an organization. Just being curious about how things work, about how people affect, how things work and, and how all of that comes together. Mm-hmm. , that's a really useful skill to have. 

Peter
What has been, let's say, maybe your most difficult story.

You wind up, being, becoming successful, but the origin of it, or becoming aware of it now, what has been your most difficult one?  that you run across under those circumstances and then made something out of it. 

Louise
Oh, wow. There have been so many difficult stories because I've worked a lot in the realm of child welfare, so you hear about a lot of tragedy and you hear about a lot of despair.  But the opposite side of that is the hope and the perseverance and the coming out of that whole situation triumphant. Um, I think that, you know, one of my most difficult stories, um, involved.  actually, um, the death of a child. And we had to kind of do a deep dive as an organization and look at how the organization was involved in that child's life.

And, and it was a tragedy. But what ended up happening, it was, is it was an educational tool and a soul searching kind of tool for the organization and for the community. And it ended up being a very good educational tool actually with the media. . So I worked a lot with the reporters so they could understand what was involved, when the system becomes involved in people's lives.
.
 So I would say those were the most challenging stories. Not to get too dark, but , those were kind of the most, the most challenging stories. 

Peter
You know, one of the things that, from a PR perspective that I, I think more people who are going into this business and, and even reporting business should do, is look into things.

You know, because, well, you know, as I, I do is that sometimes reporters just show up and start asking questions and because they're not familiar with it, uh, the questions can go anywhere. So, and yeah, and from a PR perspective, you might not want that. You want to have something controlled that really focuses on the information you want to get.

 Sometimes reporters,  and, and I make a distinction, and I'll, I'll say this, between beat reporters and general assignment.  From, from my point of view, sometimes I really did like general assignment reporters. Why? Because a lot of times they don't know the information. That gives me more control over it because I can give you the information that I want you to have.

Louise
Yeah! Exactly. So yeah, I think that also there is a responsibility among PR professionals to tell their own story. Mm-hmm.  and to make sure that reporters are educated right about what their organizations do on a daily basis and how complex it is and what that looks like. So what I do with my clients and a lot of their training is, Training them on how to build the foundation with reporters so when the crisis hits, the reporters already kind of know how the organization works.  Nd they have an understanding of that and they are actually more understanding of the organization. Mm-hmm.  because they understand that there's real people involved, real people working in the organization and they build some sort of, um, understanding and compassion for what that work looks like on a daily basis.

So I think that's really important. I think a lot of times PR people don't take that responsibility on themselves, but it is our responsibility to help educate as well, not just to. 

Peter
Well, and, and I have seen that done in different ways. I've done some work, here for our, airport here in Nashville, Tennessee, and I knew annually the reporters would invite them out there to talk about, here's what we do, here's how we do it, here's what this department does, those kinds of things.

So that it helps them understand the, the, you know, here's what, here's what we are looking at. It's more than about airplanes coming and going. It's about security. It's about, uh, you know, a lot of other things that people perhaps not had, not even, uh, thought about. 

Louise
Yeah, exactly. And that's, you know, I feel like law enforcement has a good opportunity for this, um, to do, you know, ride alongs and things like that to kind of really show what the work looks like. I did that a little bit. Um, I've done that with social workers, so I've paired reporters with social workers to do ride alongs. That was not the easiest thing to do.  to convince, you know, social workers to have a reporter go along with them. Mm-hmm.

I'm gonna tell you those were some of the most successful stories that came out were the ride along stories. Mm-hmm.  because it was a deep dive into the everyday work and everyday challenges that, you know, children, families, and workers go through. So it was really helpful. So pretty much the bottom line here that, uh, there should be some sort of a hand in hand in that reporters and PR people can work together because we can help each other be successful in what it is that we are trying to get. 
Exactly. Yes. Yes. 

Peter 
Well, let me ask you now, you've covered quite a bit. Has there anything been left out that you think that we should know about in terms of helping organizations, uh, get their stories out? 

Louise
Yeah, I mean, I think that it's important to come from a position of empowerment in an organization as well.  I feel that a lot of times, a lot of organizations come to kind of an an attitude of, of disenfranchisement. So they feel like they're not a part of the community. They're not empowered. But I think that if you come from a position of empowerment and what you're doing to assist the community, how you're working with the community and that you are part of the community, I think that goes a long.
too. So a lot of what I do is empowering or organizations and empowering leaders and empowering clients to tell their stories. 

Peter
Well, Louise, let me say thank you so very, very much for sharing this information. Uh, I certainly have learned some and I'm certainly, uh, our listeners have learned quite a bit.

So my thanks to Louise Grasser. She's the founder of of LMG Public Relations, and she joined us today from Los Angeles, California. And to my listeners, I hope that you enjoyed it, and if you do, we'd look for a great review from you and also share this with your friends. So we look for you on the next edition of the Public Relations Review podcast.  Thank you.

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