In this video, we'll be talking about the strategy of communicating across platforms. We'll return to the connected stakeholder model to explain why this is such an effective and important strategy. If you look again at the connected stakeholder model, you'll remember that the big circles are the policymakers. These are the people that are deciding the policy and they come from a range of different perspectives and they are trying to work together to find out what policy will be the best for promoting the goals of the people that are connected to their networks. If you are an advocate, say you're the red dot in person, your goal is to try to influence that network and the network matrix and influence, preferably all the people that are in that room making policy. You will do that by getting your idea, your perspectives, your priorities, into as many networks as possible so that the chances are increased that all of the people that are in the room making policy have been exposed to your perspective and your priorities. There are a number of different ways that you can think about this communication strategy. One way is to think about the different audiences that you might want to connect with. You can think about how different media platforms can get you to connect to different kinds of audiences. Some different audiences that you might think about are the general public, so ordinary people that are out in society operating. Elite actors. These might be the people that are in the room making policy, academics or policy professionals, business leaders, thought leaders, politicians, bureaucrats. Those who are working in the government, in the policy area is of interest to you. Business leaders that are working in the business world, in the area that's close to the policy that you care about, supporters of yours. Whether these are working for NGOs or whether they are in the business side, whether they're working for think tanks or other areas, or whether they're just citizens that are supporting your idea in your policy priorities. You also want to connect with and if possible, persuade people that might be on the other side. But that might be reluctant to support your policy agenda, or who might actually even oppose it. Another group of people you might want to try to influence are those who are influencers of other people, so celebrities or other opinion influencers. Another way to think about how you want to communicate is not just about the different audiences that you are trying to reach, but also the various media platforms that you might use. Some of the media platforms they might come to mind are peer reviewed academic journals like The American Journal of Medicine or others, you might think about working through NGO publications or their website, their mailing lists. Think tanks also often have a very broad reach and are considered to be a very high-quality ways to get your message out because they are respected voices when it comes to policy making. Industry reports, if you can get your policy ideas into an industry report that will be influential in the networks connected to the business community. General interest magazines can help you access the general public as can newspapers. The full range of social media can also help get your idea in your policy interests out to more people. Once again, the reason for this is not just to get the number of people exposed to your idea to be very large like what would happen if some tweet goes viral. But rather that you get as many people connected to the networks that are linked to the policymakers of the policy that you care about, those are the ones you want to influence. The best way to do that is not just to have a Tweet that goes viral, which will connect to lots of people in the public, but may not connect to the policymakers themselves. But rather to use diverse platforms and multiple ways of communicating your message so that the various networks are all getting exposed to your ideas. In the next video and in the activity that you'll have for this unit, you'll find out more about a practical example of a case study of how a particular message can plug in to the ecosystem of messages that are out there related to your policy area and how one message can be used and changed slightly so that the essence of the message is transmitted across different kinds of platforms.