Re: [Wiki Loves Monuments] [WLM announce] WLM 2016 results are announced

On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 1:41 AM, Saqib Qayyum <saqib.qayyum(a)hotmail.com> wrote: great! Do you know that there were no efforts made? If you're not sure, please ask. We're happy to explain what has been done so far. Here is a list of things that have been done that I had visibility to: * You were contacted on Dec. 4 and you were informed that 3 out of the top 15 photos are from Pakistan, we also told you which photos those were but we didn't tell you their rank. We shared this information with you under embargo and encouraged you to reach out to your local news outlets to get coverage. Note that WLM is a global effort and you as the local organizer have a lot of power over the global coverage of the event. (Other organizers of the contests with photos in the top 15 were informed as well.) * On Dec. 9, https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/12/09/wiki-loves- monuments-human-heritage/ was published by the WMF Communications team to set the stage for announcing the results. The blog post could help us create some excitement around publishing the results in the news outlets/circles. * We worked with the WMF Communications team to write https://blog.wikimedia .org/2016/12/15/seventh-annual-wiki-loves-monuments/ which was published on Dec. 15. This blog post, before it was released, was used as a pitch to more than 40 news agencies. (Daily Pakistan was one of the news outlets who agreed to the embargo of 19:00 UTC signalling that they may write a story about WLM 2016 results). * After the blog post was published yesterday, the WMF Communications team contacted all those 40+ contacts to let them know that the story is out and they should consider covering it. They also have been putting substantial amount of effort on social media in the past almost 24 hours. * This is not something WLM international team did but is worth mentioning: Seddon tested a banner that is being shown on (at least some of) Wikimedia projects to certain portions of the traffic to those projects at a rate of 10%. The banner encourages the reader to click on the banner and see the results of the biggest photo competition in the world. The reach of these banners is high, so we know that we get non-negligible or even sometimes substantial views from them, even with all the limitations of this test. * I know that WMIT, WMDE, and WMUK were at least considering to reach out to their local news agencies. (Unfortunately I don't have visibility into the status of their efforts, simply because there was a lot to be done in the past week on my end.) * UNESCO and Europa Nostra, our two partners (UNESCO via unite4heritage), tweeted about the results. These tweets brought a lot of views to the photos. At the very least, we know many people have seen the results which is great. So it's fair to say that at least some work has been done trying to coordinate and encourage organizers to reach to news outlets and help the news outlets pick the story up via central pushes. The main question I have for myself is: Could we do more? Here are a few steps that I'd like us to take to answer that question and do better next year: * The announcement of the results is still relatively fresh for news cycles so all of you still can reach out and do a few more pushes to potentially get more coverage. * The planning for WLM 2017 will need to start way earlier than WLM 2016. We are planning to start that process in the middle of January 2017 for next year. This will give us enough time to plan and set the stage and breathe. :) * The WLM international team will meet with WMF Communications team some time in the coming weeks to reflect: what worked well? what can be improved? The WMF Communications team helped us a lot this year, and we want to understand how to improve this collaboration. * There will be a survey out by the international team to all local organizers soon. This will be the chance for the international team to understand better how to collaborate more with the local organizers regarding press coverage and more. Please engage in that survey. * If we have some cycles, I would love for us to compare the coverage of this year with the previous years more systematically (if we have data to do so). * And last but not least: we need one person with communications expertise/passion working very closely with the international team. We knew this is a need all along and we looked for filling this position in August with no success. I would like to see this changed for next year. I hope this helps. Best, Lily -- User: LilyOfTheWest