Friday, August 31, 2018

7 ways to get out a Labor Day message

Hang on—summer’s ending already?

While many of us have been distracted making barbecue plans or scrambling to get the kids off to school this week, a perfect communication opportunity has arrived with Labor Day weekend.

Have you prepared a tweet or a post thanking your hardworking staff, warning customers of closings or celebrating unions for the advances they brought to working-class lives?

In a tight job market, Labor Day can offer an easy communications win, showcasing your staff or positioning your organization as a generous employer for offering a day off on what is, after all, a federal holiday.

[RELATED: Discover the secret to creating workplaces employees love]

Here are a few ways to note the occasion:

1. Raid your archives for vintage ads or photos.

We working stiffs at Ragan Smelters & Boilermakers Inc. have noted before that old photos and advertisements are a great form of content. Several years back, Coca-Cola celebrated Labor Day by posting an ad from 1941, along with a few paragraphs of background. (“The first Labor Day was celebrated on Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City, and it was declared a national holiday in 1894.”)

The original ad strove to make a gal or a fella proud to be a working stiff and, by extension, to make a high-sugar beverage seem every bit as patriotic as a frosty mug of beer.

Johnnie Walker had a similar idea at the start of the summer, tweeting a vintage ad . This week an Ohio library turned to its archives for a photo and a glimpse of history.

2. Piggyback your message on Labor Day travel.

Seems like everybody in the U.S. and Canada plans to jump in the car to visit everybody else this weekend, meaning a lot of us will find nobody home when we knock. A firm called My Credit Focus links travel to the idea of fixing your lousy credit. (Did you really need that trip to Bermuda last winter?)

The company posts an article from Nerd Wallet warning that this will be the busiest travel weekend in history. Uh-oh. Message: Better stay home and pay off that credit card bill, I guess.

WAFF 48 in Huntsville, Alabama, warns about traffic deaths on Labor Day weekend. Mississippi and ’Bama top the list. Let’s be safe out there, guys.

3. Thank your working stiffs.

TaylorCraft, a cabinet maker, produced a tweet that artfully thanks its workers while visually conveying the quality of its woodwork.

4. Tout a nonprofit partner.

If you handle social media for the U.S. Labor Department, you’d better not forget Labor Day. A tweet Thursday touted Hope for Prisoners, a nonprofit that “facilitates reentry and reintegration services to men, women, and young adults who are exiting various segments of the judicial system.”

The department also got in an inartful plug for the president, but the tweet still highlights a serious obstacle that released prisoners face: How do you get a job when you’ve got a criminal record?

Labor also extolled a new website with information on federal laws, while touting health coverage through Association Health Plans.

5. Promote your cause.

The Labor Department can tweet about the holiday all it likes. Public Citizen, a nonprofit advocacy group, found irony in President Donald Trump’s scrapping a planned pay raise for federal workers as the nation heads into Labor Day weekend.

6. Remind your stakeholders.

Fairfax County Public Schools does not want you to drop off the kids outside the schoolyard and zoom off on Monday. ( Mom, Dad—wait! I think they’re closed!)

If your cow gets sick, don’t expect VMRD, a Washington state manufacturer of veterinary diagnostic test kits, to helicopter an emergency shipment to your barn. Sorry, Bossy. Gotta wait until Tuesday to sniff out the cause of those methane rumblings in the tummy. (Tummies, actually. Cows have four.)

Elsewhere in animal land, 1-800-PetMeds would like to ship a care package to a lucky dog out there.

Stunt cyclists, if you were looking forward to pedaling to Pittsburgh’s first bike park on Labor Day, don’t. Their employees are probably wheeling over to visit you.

7. Tout an event.

Planning (or sponsoring) a Labor Day Reggae Fest? A Facebook event page is a good way to do it.

If you’d like to switch from your humdrum communications job to a career of tackling runaway bank robbers and granny kidnappers, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department would like you to drop by its Labor Day weekend recruitment fair.

Chicago’s North Coast Festival has been stacking up tweets for days, touting music makers (Dancing Astronaut?), liver-assailing beverages , and exuberant youngsters in excessively colorful scarves. (Woodstock lives.)

And hey, that event you are sponsoring or hosting? Watch for posts by participants, and retweet them, as Philly’s Made in America festival did.

Now quick, get that tweet up, and go enjoy a hard beverage on a beach in Bermuda.



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