The communication revolution How Denver Water is using TAP to tell our story to employees and customers

Our business case for Content journalism Staying at the forefront

Evolve our communication strategy to: Be the trusted source on all things water. Showcase our expertise and our people. Increase our share of the conversation. Build community with our customers. Enhance our reputation, build our brand, and prepare for the difficult conversations ahead.

How it works

News team Generate stories from around the organization. Filter those ideas and decide the best way to report them. Assign, produce, edit and review content. Publish and deliver through all channels. Comprised of our public affairs team It’s about the stories/content, not the channel.

11/12/2018

Where does our content go? Strategic w/our approach of when employees/internal know; that it works into presentations; Water Trailer; customer care; stakeholders – it’s an all-in communications approach.

https://denverwatertap.org/

11/12/2018

WaterNews

Conduit

Traditional channels incorporate content journalism stories

Examples (always the best part)

Creating our own content … This video story on ASR was produced in-house by Jay Adams in 2015. And we were able to use it over the past three years in various ways. It’s a perfect example of how and why we’re using this approach to communications. (PLAY VIDEO) https://youtu.be/ytuEWuJRhDM

… results in media coverage A few years ago, it would have been unheard of for a news outlet to take our footage and use it in their story, but that’s exactly what happens today. Stations will not only use video and interviews we shot, they also will embed our videos in their entirety in news stories on their sites. While we still offered a traditional media “photo opp” for this, in the end the stories that aired on TV were the footage and interviews from our story. 2016 - Successfully pitched the story to the 9News morning show (ran two live interviews with Bob and a recorded segment later in the day): http://www.9news.com/money/business/denver-water-exploring-underground-storage/350702620 (They linked to our story in their online story) 2016 - Next with Kyle Clark reached out for a story about ASR (is that fracking?) and used information/b-roll from our story. They got everything they needed for this piece from our story. (PLAY VIDEO)

Using our stories to respond to questions 2016 - 7News asked about ASR and we sent them b-roll from our story and provided them with an updated interview with Stacy. 2017 - A TV station in Houston reached out about ASR and we sent them the story along with b-roll and interviews from it, which they used and embedded our video in their online story.

New ways to share old information

Get creative

Parody & humor https://youtu.be/NoWPdyTojn8

Doing more & and having a bigger impact 180 stories published through November 124,867 views (85,998 total in 2016) 2,317 news stories about Denver Water (644 more than 2016) When we started this new way of communicating through stories, the views of our stories increased 324% (from 2014 to 2015). Then, with the launch of TAP at the beginning of this year (2017), where we have an actual news site and newsletter, we’ve seen a big increase again. Through November, we posted 180 stories, 61 more than we did in all of 2016. Through November, we’ve had 124,867 TAP views. We had 85,998 all of last year (2016). Through November, Denver Water has been mentioned 2,317 in TV, radio, publications and online news – 644 more than we had over the same timeframe in 2016.  

Questions? Stacy Chesney stacy.chesney@denverwater.org denverwaterTAP.org @DenverWater