In turbulent social setting, civil society organizations and media organizations face crisis which require specific set of knowledge and skills in crisis communication in order to properly handle crisis. Apart from that, in order to get recognition, civil society is struggling to present the results of its work in the best possible way, both - to its narrowly defined target group and to the general public. That's why they need copywriting skills.

Representatives of 11 civil society organizations and media had the opportunity to acquire the necessary crisis communication and copywriting skills within the three-day training called "Strategies and tactics in communication and media relations" held in Vrnjačka Banja. With the help of our lecturers Nikola Parun and Jelena Simić, civil society organizations and media improved their skills and got prepared for future challenges.

Media and crisis communication

Increased number of internet users, their diversity and interests show that we live in a time when trends are changing rapidly. Therefore, it is very important that civil society organizations and media quickly respond and adapt to new trends and needs of their target group. Special challenge for civil society organizations is to create unique, attractive and relevant content for their target group in their media campaigns.

The crisis in civil society organizations and media can be caused by reasons of internal (management problem, disorganized communications, poor internal relations, etc.) and external nature (competition attacks). The goal of crisis communication is to defend the reputation of the organization. The biggest challenge in crisis situations is unpredictability.

Copywriting

Copywriting is writing in order to promote a product, service or idea, or writing that should attract attention. In today's digitalized world, we fight for attention with great competition, dealing with the aggravating circumstance that this attention lasts shortly, for only a few seconds. Therefore, carefully designed content and creative messages is an indispensable part of any successful marketing.

Successful communication and presentation must be in line with the values ​​and characteristics of a particular civil society organization or media. In order to be more successful in promoting messages that we consider important, it is necessary to think about our characteristics and how other people see us. Understanding the local context and putting in someone else’s shoes is an important part of the research work that precedes writing successful messages.

Since the training was in the form of an interactive workshops, participants were encouraged to think about their organizations as brands and the ways in which the values ​​of the organizations can be best presented.

The training was organized by the Belgrade Open School within the project "Civil Society as a Force for Change in Serbia’s EU Accession Process", which is supported by the Kingdom of Sweden. It was held in Vrnjačka Banja from March 24 to 26, and was attended by representatives of partner organizations.