Visible achievements of the projects to the general public and stakeholders are the challenging task. It was a key theme of the Latvia-Lithuania Programme Communication Conference "Be visible – tell about your project achievements!" held on 16 May 2012 in Šiauliai. It is not possible and there is no intention to reflect all ideas on to how to ensure project visibility, yet we would like to provide some notions of this event shared by the participants (expert and moderator Ansis Bogustovs from Latvia, expert Paulius Milčiūs from Lithuania, Information Manager of the Programme Laura Melne, representatives of  3rd and 4th Call project partner organizations of the working with the project communication issues).

Concrete, Relevant and Attractive Message to the Targeted Auditory

Before starting to communicate it is worth to find answer to the questions: who do you want to reach? what do you want to tell and achieve? what is the best way to do that? Targeted auditory, adjusted message and right tools to spread it are the key factors to successful project visibility. Projects would definitely be more successful if they use different tools not only the currently so popular press releases, articles or radio / TV broadcasts.

One should avoid the usual practice of starting a message with formal data – a long project title, Programme title, approval date, project duration, budget etc. Such a beginning kills the interest, yet the task of the beginning is opposite – to engage and make care! Official data of the project are in some case obligatory, yet they should be diminished to minimum and moved to the end of the message.

Message should tell about what benefit project has brought to the local community, how it has made life of the local population easier, healthier or more attractive. It should tell success story, be about important changes made in a very concrete and attractive manner. Taking into account that a lot of good works are done by the EU money it is worth to seek and find what is so special, new, successful about your project. Avoid excerpts from the descriptions of the work packages of the application form as they are too complex and are not adjusted to the specific auditory.

Visibility

The importance of the visibility and its quality was also stressed by the experts. And it is understandable as far as people are used to catch mostly what have been seen and only very little part of information what have been heard and read. Yet in order to make it work, visual materials have to be of a very good quality both technical and content wise. It is crucial considering limited resources of the TV journalists.  For instance, if a project has good visual materials (qualitative videos, photos etc.) together with the attractive message they are much more likely to attract the attention of media and general public.

Communication language

What is the aim of the communication? To be understood. Therefore reasonable attention should be devoted also to the language used. Messages should be concrete, easy to read and understand especially taking into account that territorial cooperation issues are quite complicated. How to reach that?
Avoid complex sentences and phrases – be as short and simple as possible. Delete all words and phrases which are not needed and do not change the essence, avoid EU, Programme and project jargon, specific area terminology, repetitions, logical in-consequence.

Cooperation
 
Last but not least issue to consider. What are the Latvia-Lithuania Programme and projects about? Sustainable socio-economic development of the border region by cooperation means. So we should not forget the essence of the message – share experience and benefits of the cooperation.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Presentations, videos and pictures of the Communication Conference are available here >.