Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Love Your Audience

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Do you know what hurts me?Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev in the Ukraine, used to say that he had discovered the meaning of love from a drunken peasant. The rabbi was visiting the owner of a tavern in the Polish countryside. As he walked in, he saw two peasants at a table. Both were gloriously in their cups. Arms around each other, they were protesting how much each loved the other.

Suddenly Ivan said to Peter; “Peter, tell me, what hurts me?”

Bleary-eyed, Peter looked at Ivan: “How do I know what hurts you?”

Ivan’s answer was swift: “If you don’t know what hurts me, how can you say you love me?”

Love your audience.  Know what hurts them.

Know what excites them, frightens them, makes them happy, makes them proud.  Know what they want and what they detest.

Love your audience and you will frame messages just for them.  They won’t read your messages if they don’t feel the love.

5 Ways Your Nonprofit Can Use Communications Advice Written for Business

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Perhaps you’ve already noticed: most articles about communication are written for businesses.  They use a business vocabulary.  The writers assume you’re looking to make a profit.  A nonprofit professional reading these articles can feel like a deaf person attending an event with no interpreters.

Good new: with a little practice, you can be your own interpreter.

For practice, let’s take a look at an article that American Express recently published.  It’s entitled “5 Common Brand Messaging Mistakes Marketers Make.”  That may be a puzzle already.

  • What’s a nonprofit’s “brand”?  Your brand is not your logo: it’s the overall impression people have of your organization before and after they’ve met you.  Think “reputation, public awareness, visibility.”
  • “Messaging” is not just anything you say.  It’s your deliberate attempt to shape your reputation.
  • “Marketers”: that means you!  Marketing really just means communications with a purpose.  If you put out a newsletter, send an email, or give a talk and you’re trying to win support for your agency, you’re marketing!

So, for a nonprofit audience, the title of this article could be “5 Ways of Communicating that Don’t Work (and What You Can Do Instead).”  Now, doesn’t that make you more likely to read it?

Please do read the article and comment about it here.  When you get beyond the title, what makes sense from a nonprofit perspective and what needs interpretation?  We can puzzle it out together.

Here’s Your Communications Strategy. Fill In the Blanks.

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Your organization needs a communications strategy.  Why?  For a lot of the same reasons why Kivi Leroux Miller recommends having a content strategy:

  • To focus on your supporters’ goals.
  • To make your readers think of you as a welcome guest who shares expertise.
  • To take your random content and turn it into a larger story.
  • To make your communications boost your programs and your fundraising.
  • To get results.

Developing a communications strategy takes time and patience.  But who has time these days?  And patience, too, is rare.  So, here are seven statements that make up a communications strategy.  Read them.  It will take one minute.

  1. A key audience we’re trying to reach is ___________.
  2. If we engage with that audience successfully, they will do ___________.
  3. A typical member of that audience has these characteristics __________, and cares about __________, and their favorite way to get information is _____________.

Therefore:

4. Our key message to this audience is __________.

5. We will communicate with this audience primarily through __________ and secondarily through __________.

6. The resources we will use to put this strategy into action are __________.

7. We will measure our progress by __________.

Are you aiming at more than one key audience?  Rinse and repeat.

What It Takes to Fill In the Blanks

Seems simple, right?  And it is.  But surprise, it will still take time and patience!  Chances are, people inside your organization have different ideas who the key audiences are.  You’ll have to list your audiences (current and desired), then discuss them, in order to make one or two your priorities.

What do you really want from the key audience you have in mind?  Do you want them to be your brand ambassadors and spread the word about your good work?  Are they potential volunteers?  Are you looking for major donors among this audience?  “All of the above” will not do.  What’s the first step you want them to take?

And so on.  To fill in the blanks, you may need to do research.  (Who are these people, anyway?)  You may need to shift time and money away from some other project to make your communications strategy feasible.  It’s a big undertaking.  But when you can write a strategy statement like this one  you will have taken the crucial first step:

Example: A key audience we want to reach is grandparents of children in our school.  If we engage them successfully, they will make annual donations and meet with us about including  the school in their wills.  A typical grandparent is Janice, 68, a widow and recent retiree who’s active in her church, rides a bicycle everywhere she goes, and cares about leaving a healthy planet to the next generation.  She keeps in touch with her family via Facebook but hasn’t followed any organizations on Facebook yet.

Our key message to Janice is that she can involve her grandchildren and their friends in learning about the environment through our school.  We will post photos of children engaged in learning, recycling, and gardening on Facebook, along with links to relevant policies, curriculum, and publications.  We will also include these themes on our website and regularly scheduled emails.  We will need teachers and aides to take photos, and the development director will work with the PTA president to produce other content.

We will measure our results this year by how many grandparents follow the Facebook page and comment on or share posts.  By next year, we will measure the number and amount of this audience’s donations to the annual appeal and the number of in-person meetings to discuss planned giving.

Does your organization need help to fill in the blanks in its strategy?  Please pose your questions in the comments section, and let’s see how we can help each other.

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