ABSTRACT
Your health and safety communications efforts are often done in a quiet setting-your office, your home or as you travel. Much of your work will be conceptualizing and planning, thinking of ways to best reach your audience with your messages. Your creative work may just evolve passively given the luxury of time. Further, your work style may be such that you work better in groups, or it may be that you work better when you are alone. Much of your work will be “behind the scenes,” drafting content for resources, writing PSAs and designing materials. In any event, the preparation of your health and safety communications efforts, to be done well, requires careful and thoughtful planning. While some of your efforts will involve face-to-face interactions, many will not. Ultimately, you want all of your health and safety communications efforts to be publicyour materials will be seen, the posters or billboards you designed will be viewed and your PSAs will be seen or heard. Further, you will have a public presence with your use of social media, whether through Facebook, Twitter or even your organization’s website (see Chapter 12 on social media). There are even times when you will have a face-to-face presence with your communications efforts; an obvious one is with a workshop, addressed thoroughly in Chapter 11. The focus of a public presence, as described in this chapter, emphasizes your active engagement. Specifically, it involves you making the case for your topic or issue in any of a variety of settings. This public presence may involve you directly in the “limelight,” or it may be you working behind the scenes. Through this, it is important to be ready for having a presence of which you are proud; good planning and preparation can help in this regard. Further, some insights and tips about how to maximize the delivery and potential impact of your message will be helpful. What are some of these opportunities? You might have the opportunity, or be asked, to make a presentation to a local government committee or governing body, such as a town council. You may also have the opportunity to make a case for your initiative with a smaller leadership group, such as the executive council of an organization, agency or campus. This may involve offering some brief remarks at a public event, such as when a keynote speaker is invited; or it may be that you are that keynote speaker! Consider also being interviewed for an article in a newsletter; it could also be for something in a newspaper or a magazine, whether at the local or national level. You may be called for an interview or an appearance on a talk show, or with the local or national news. And, some of these can be on the radio, on cable or on broadcast television. The opportunities abound for having a public presence and for getting your message distributed more widely. Much of this is beyond what you expected; much of it may be
more than you actually want. In any event, it is important to be prepared for the opportunities and even to seek them out should you desire them.
