For many years, I always kept my political preferences to myself. I didn’t tell people who I was voting for in upcoming elections because I was afraid I would be judged negatively. However, everything changed during the 2016 presidential election cycle. I supported one of the candidates wholeheartedly. Because I felt this person could make a positive difference in my country, I shared my support of him on social media outlets. I encouraged my family and friends to vote for him. I even wrote blogs outlining my preferred candidate’s strengths. On this blog, I hope you will discover the importance of publicly supporting a political candidate. Enjoy!
If you are a leader of your local municipality, chances are good that you value the input of your constituents highly. They are the ones who are going to tell you which roads need to be redone, what changes need to be made in schools, and what companies they'd like to see the city try to woo. However, one of the main ways that the people are able to tell you what they think is through town hall meetings, where everyone comes together and talks it out. This is a problem because town hall meetings are relatively inaccessible. They have space limitations and require people to find sitters or take time off of their evening jobs. One way to get around this is to hold a town hall that is teleconferenced so that those with a phone line can join in and participate. Here are some tips for conducting a teleconferenced town hall meeting.
1. Create Your Call List Randomly But Based on the Demographic You Are Trying to Reach
As a leader in your local government, you have banks off telephone numbers that connect you with everyone in your community. Search through those numbers and isolate only the ones that are part of a demographic your particular town hall event is trying to target. For example, you might be trying to target parents when you are talking about making changes to the Board of Education. Once you have a specific pool of people in the requested demographic, choose a random sample using a random number generator found online. You should try to make sure that you give everyone an equal chance of being selected in order to get an unbiased sample.
2. Make the Invitation Short and Snappy
You personally want to record the message, or the most visible member of your local government should, in order to entice people to participate in the town hall event. Calls will be made automatically to everyone on your specific call list and a message inviting them to participate will be played. They can then choose to accept or decline the invitation. If you talk too long about the importance of the town hall meeting and the unique opportunity they have, people are going to hang up the phone. Keep it short and snappy.
3. Integrate With Social Media
Finally, make sure that you integrate with social media and set up a way for people to interact with the town hall meeting in that fashion since not everyone is going to be able to accept the invitation to the town hall meeting.
For more information, talk to a company that specializes in teleconferenced town hall meetings.
For telephone town halls, click the link or do an online search.
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