Annual Reports: Public Relations Committee

Co-Chairs: Deborah Ginsberg and Kara Young

Liaison:  Stephanie Crawford

Members:

  • Emily Barney
  • Ella Delaney
  • Carolyn B. Hersch
  • Lyonette Louis-Jacques
  • Sharon Nelson
  • Sean Rebstock
  • Scott Vanderlin
  • Joanne Vanderstreek

Meetings

In the 2014-2015 year, the Committee conducted five meetings.  Most were a hybrid of in person and online (many of our members would have to travel far to meet up in person).

Public Relations

The Committee continued to seek opportunities to promote CALL and its members to the public and through AALL.

CALL at AALL/AALL Marketing Award

CALL-er ID
CALL-er ID

Member Scott Vanderlin set up a unique and engaging table display at AALL’s 2014 Annual Meeting.  He created an iPad game called “CALL-er ID”.  Players lifted a flap on a “Guess Who?” game board to reveal a picture of a CALL member.  The player then answered questions on an iPad to find out who the member was and learn a factoid about them.  CALL’s table was often crowded with attendees playing the game.  We received lots of positive comments about how much fun the game was.

We nominated the game for an AALL Excellence in Marketing Award for best use of technology.  We were pleased to learn that our nomination was accepted – meaning CALL has won this category 2 years in a row.

Pictures at Events

Member Emily Barney and other members took many pictures at CALL business meetings in 2014-15.  These pictures were used in social media, the Bulletin and other CALL projects.

CONELL/Give-Away

CALL participated in the CONELL Marketplace at the 2014 Annual Meeting.  Members were on hand to answer questions as well as give away brochures and lip balm.

Plans for the Future

We’d like to continue to expand how we handle the public relations aspect of our committee.  We are waiting for the report from the Content Committee to see what changes need to be made in the website.  We’d also like to streamline the backend of our website.

Social Media

Facebook/Twitter

Two PR committee members were charged with tweeting CALL news and events and re-tweeting posts by organizations and people in the CALL and AALL communities on a daily basis. We have focused on retweeting information posted by members, those charitable organizations CALL supports, other regional AALL organizations, and tweets posted by AALL special interest feeds.

Because the feed has been consistently updated, the Twitter subcommittee requested that the feed be added to the CALL home page so that the latest three updates are displayed there, and available for those who don’t have Twitter accounts. The Twitter feed is now available on CALL’s website.

The subcommittee also requested that CALL meeting speakers be live-tweeted, as a way to share speaker content with those members unable to attend. At this year’s final meeting, AALL President Holly Riccio’s remarks were highlighted in a series of tweets using the hashtag #CALLmeeting, so that those who wanted to follow the meeting events via Twitter were able to easily locate relevant tweets.

The Twitter subcommittee has also recommended that the Twitter feed be deployed during the AALL conference in conjunction with the CALL Bulletin and PR committee table to share events and introduce attendees to CALL followers. The PR committee is currently working on how to deploy this during this year’s conference.

Website

Bulletin

Members of the PR Committee worked closely with the Bulletin Committee to design and implement a WordPress version.  Emily Barney was instrumental in this.  The new version of the Bulletin has been very popular, and also won an AALL Excellence in Marketing award for best newsletter.

Training

In November we held an in-person training on WordPress to help committee chairs and board members refresh their website editing skills. The session was well attended and we also provided a brief instructional guide via email for attendees and non-attendees.  The questions and discussions that arose as a result of our collaborative learning session were very valuable, leading us to request further review of the website by the greater CALL community. That request was granted and a web task force comprised of members from across CALL was formed in spring 2015. The results of this task force will undoubtedly help the PR committee to identify areas of improvement to be addressed in the coming year.  We would also recommend that the WordPress training be repeated every year, ideally closer to the leadership orientation in the fall. Although the session had good representation, scheduling it as part of the orientation process would likely ensure increased attendance.

Website Updates

We have updated to the current version of WordPress and also updated our plugins.  We are working on removing plugins we don’t need.

Listserv

Sean Rebstock monitored CALL’s listserv and made changes as needed.