Seattle Pride Communications Program
Amplifying the Seattle Pride Parade
My Role
Client Management: As Program Manager for Seattle Pride’s communications and marketing efforts year-round, I work closely with a multidisciplinary team of partners alongside the client to identify and amplify their organizational and project-specific key messages to the LGBTQIA+ community and allies within the Greater Seattle Area. I serve as an advisor and partner to my clients, offering recommendations, ideas, and helping them solve problems.
Strategic Planning: I manage the annual communications planning process and day-to-day client communications, including monthly content calendars for owned channels. I make project-specific recommendations to ensure we meet our goals; examples include creating telegenic moments or recognizing a timely cultural topic.
Project Management: I orchestrate and execute communications projects in partnership with my team with projects ranging from developing a new website from concept to launch to managing the content calendar and development for their quarterly Seattle Pride Magazine. My projects begin by outlining goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics, and then incorporating the plan into a timeline with milestones and deliverables. I then manage regular check-ins with my internal team and the client.
Writing: I write content for blogs, social media, the website, Seattle Pride Magazine, and news pitches, op-eds, and other stories for this program.
Media Relations: I identify relevant topics and potential story angles; develop pitches and news release materials; research and identify key targets; and pitch and coordinate with local media to see news stories come to fruition.
Social Media Management: I manage the development of content calendars, leveraging the organizations’ creative assets, expertise, and relevant moments within the community. I then oversee the writing of the proposed content and associated creative assets, their implementation, and ongoing community management of the accounts during select times of the year.
The Program
Seattle Pride is a non-profit organization that produces the Seattle Pride Parade, Seattle Pride in the Park festival, and other year-round LGBTQIA+ events and promotions. The parade attracts an estimated 300,000 community members who support diversity, inclusivity, and equal human rights for all.
The annual communications and marketing program aims to enhance Seattle Pride’s brand awareness and attract participants to the organization’s various programs and events. Through the communications program, we work to elevate a diverse set of LGBTQIA+ voices and stories that ladder up to the organization’s mission of creating unity, celebrating diversity, and achieving equal human rights throughout the region and the world.
To amplify the organization and its work, we started by redesigning its website to better convey its brand and clearly communicate its mission – we maintain and regularly revisit the website to identify updates. We then implemented a regular cadence of content, developing calendars for blogs and social media that are optimized for SEO, relevance, and engagement. In addition to online content, our team develops and writes content for the organization’s quarterly Seattle Pride Magazine in partnership with a team of journalists. We are also deeply engrained in the organization’s program planning process to identify story angles within the organization and community to share with local media outlets, ensuring they make appearances in event roundups, socially relevant stories, op-eds, playful TV segments, and onsite stand-up interviews at events.
Results
We successfully positioned the organization as a go-to authority on LGBTQIA+-related stories and issues. In 2022 they became the go-to contact for local news stories and events, and we successfully delivered over 600 news stories with over 52 million impressions and over 200,000 website sessions.
Key Takeaways
Programs Cannot Remain Static: Having worked on this program since 2019, we’ve had to be flexible and make changes to achieve our client’s goals through the COVID-19 pandemic during which their Pride Parade was cancelled, our recovery from it, and now in the “new normal.” The world is constantly evolving, and the same old tricks become irrelevant, requiring us to revisit our strategies and tactics and tweak them to help us achieve our goals.
Systems are Necessary for Efficiency: The first year of a program is always the hardest because no systems are in place. But after that first year, the program becomes more efficient as systems are simply tweaked. Suddenly work that took you 3 hours previously only takes 30 minutes with a simple update.
SeattlePride.org Website | Developed in Collaboration with Antarctic Agency
KIRO 7 Story PR Event Sample | Pride Month kicks off in Seattle as one of parade’s grand marshals is named
Seattle Pride Blog Content Sample | Frontline Workers Celebrated as Our 2022 Seattle Pride Parade Grand Marshals
The Seattle Times Story Pitch Sample | Seattle Pride Parade returns in person with focus on abortion ruling
Seattle Pride Magazine Story Writing Sample | The Queer History of Pioneer Square
Instagram Post Sample | High-Performing Educational Content