Cultivating Civic Engagement and Awareness w Young Old and More - Episode 9

We explore how to turn quiet indifference into active pride by telling simple, true stories that travel across the community. 

From teens and parents to seniors and visitors, we lay out a repeatable content process that equips residents to share and show up.

• defining civic pride as caring, involvement, and action
• using everyday ambassadors like rideshare drivers
• overcoming “nose blindness” to local assets
• choosing content as the core engagement tool
• turning students into creators for resumes and impact
• engaging older residents through offline channels
• partnering with service orgs to widen reach
• attracting visitors by featuring their stories
• building a monthly, repeatable storytelling process

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Transcript

Uber Drivers As Community Ambassadors

Overcoming Local “Nose Blindness”

Content As The Core Solution

Inclusivity Through Real Stories

Reaching Teens Beyond Facebook

Turn Students Into Creators

Activate Parents As Multipliers

Engaging Seniors With Offline Tactics

Attract Visitors By Sharing Their Stories

Make Storytelling A Repeatable Process

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome back to Marketing from the Car. This is Brian Ostrovsky. And in today's episode, I want to talk to you about cultivating civic engagement, uh, community pride, and generally overcoming indifference. We uh had a a webinar recently where we asked this question what's your number one challenge? Um, in our Take Back Local Facebook group, we asked this question and someone said, uh, civic pride. I don't necessarily know exactly what they mean, but I'm gonna I'm gonna project, I'm gonna share a few examples and hopefully help you see that there's a lot that you can do, and um, maybe that there's a lot you should do that you're not. So there's a little bit of tough love here. So civic pride usually means something the effect of that people care about where they're from, that they're proud, that they get involved, that they uh don't just complain. We all have those Facebook groups for our community, right? And I want to share an example. I was at this uh conference a year or so ago, and the Uber driver is taking me uh from the airport, and we're chatting, and he's telling me about how in their area they have this really unique uh soil formation or something. I didn't fully track what he was saying, but it basically there's two places on earth there's their little area and uh in a place in China based on all the tectonic activities and whatever. Uh that's cool. I'm I'm kind of a geek. I didn't understand all the nuance. I don't know that they understood it, but he thought it was interesting to share out, you know, probably shared it with a lot of writers. And I'm at the conference and someone else shared the same sentiment. That's interesting. I didn't ask in either of those cases, just you know, chatting. And yet they shared something about the community, which means they found it interesting, that they knew enough to talk about it, means they've heard of it to begin with, and that's powerful. I think this notion of uh the ideal state to be in if you're a local leader is that if you have Uber drivers, that they are tour guides. Not literally, but effectively, because you equip them with enough know-how about interesting things that they want to share it with people. Obviously, it's not just Uber drivers. You want you want everyone to be interested. And some of the challenge is we take things for granted. You probably have a museum, probably have a library, and yeah, most parents have never taken their kids. Uh, we homeschool and we don't get to the library nearly enough. It's here, we take it for granted. Uh, we'll get to it later, and then we forget, right? It's it kind of the the civic version of going nose blind to something, it just ceases to exist. So you need to overcome this by sharing examples. This is why we talk about the fact that I don't know what your problem is, but the solution is content. If you want people to be involved and to care, give them a reason. Talk about other people who are involved, who do care. And in a lot of cases, folks are trying to expand uh who's involved. Inclusivity, I think that word is taken on a mind of its own, but um, really trying to make everyone in the community feel like it's for them and that they should be for the community, then tell those stories. Here in where I live in Tennessee, uh, there's a leadership program that my son's a part of with the Main Street, and uh Amy was saying that they want to get more high schoolers involved, but it's hard to reach high schoolers, they're generally not on Facebook, they're doing their own thing. While TikTok is where they all spend a lot of time, what's Main Street gonna do on TikTok? That's very interesting. The answer is not very much, probably not worth your time in most cases, unless you have everything else buttoned up. But um, I said, Well, why don't we highlight the leaders? You got a dozen kids here, they're taking time. Why are they doing it? And they went around the room. Why are you here? Well, you can earn a scholarship. Okay, motivation matters. Um, some people said, you know, I want this town to be great. I plan to go off to college, do my thing, and come back and have family here. Uh awesome. Uh, one kid said, I get out of school to come do this. You know, maybe not the thing we would have guessed at, but I wonder how many other kids would make a difference if they knew they could get out of school. So tell these stories. Literally ask them, why'd you participate? What do you hope to get out of it after they do some stuff? What surprised you about this process? Did you know everyone here? Did you make new friends? Did you meet new people? What have you learned about the community you didn't know before? What difference have you made that you're proud of? And real quickly, you know, you give them value for what it's worth. This can be done by one of them. So now they're building their resume and their college application by creating content for their community. And every time you promote it, you're gonna share it. So even if you don't reach your target audience, how many of their parents are following you on social or subscribe to email? And they pull open their phone and they're like, Oh, look, Johnny's involved. Hey, and they're calling to their kid, Hey, do you know Johnny's involved at Main Street? Did you know they had this thing that you could volunteer for? Do you know that you can get a scholarship? Check this out. All right, so it might be a second degree of separation, but that's pretty cool. And in another event, we were at a conference and they were talking about how it's hard to get older people involved, and they were talking about some of the things they do. And you know, 2011 was the year of the grandmother on social. So to a great extent, older people are on social and online, but it's not always true. And as a as a generation, they're probably least connected, and so there's some practical things like well, hang flyers at the civic center and the community center and the banks and the senior center and the places they physically go. What sort of partnerships do you have with folks who work with them that you can equip? But it still comes down to tell their story because they have friends, and their friends are going to talk about even if only one of the seniors in the senior home are on social, but they have friends who are there, they might share the word, right? So there's no magic wand to reaching people, but when you talk about real people in your community making a difference, doing things, you're getting new perspectives and the word will spread. The same is true if you want to tap into visitors. If you got that town 30 miles away and you want more people to come visit, when someone does, tell their story, parachute into their feeds, into their uh Google results based on those keywords. So reaching people can be done by sharing these stories, and it can be done over and over and over again. So make it part of your process, and you and your community will take back local.