Nonprofit communications professionals need to get their message across and they know they have to compete to make that happen. Of course that competetition is apparently quite fierce. By some estimates, the average consumer is innundated with about 1 million messages annually. If you do the math, that comes to about 3000 messages per day!
And these messages are seemingly everywhere. From the moment you wake up to the radio and open the day's paper, you're bombarded with messaging. Don't turn on your tv or your computer, they're definitely there...in full force. You certainly can't escape them when you step out the door to begin your morning commute, they're on billboards, buses and store fronts along the way to work. If you've seen a blimp lately, you'll know that advertising is now plastered there too. Someday ads might even orbit over our heads in space.
Now, before you get worried that it's hopeless to compete with all this, we want you to know that it can be done.
Roy H. Williams, a.k.a. the Wizard of Ads, states on his popular Monday Morning Memo that more than anything, salience times repetition will determine if your message is remembered in the future.
Sure, surprise and shock factor can sometimes garner attention as well, but sometimes you might not receive the positive reaction you expected with this approach. The bottom line is that you don't have to have a huge budget, shock value or thousands of messages to create an effective campaign. Here are three lessons learned from Care2's campaigners, who send out hundreds of thousands of emails a year, to help you improve the response to your messaging:
Lastly, though nonprofits are competing with for-profits for attention, it's important to use one of your most valuable assets: stories. Identify the compelling human interest and heroic stories that result from the work of your organization, then use them to convey the complex issues you deal with. Appeal to the creative right brain and the analytical left brain. Keep it simple and personal, and write from the point of view of an individual, not an organization.
And a note about technology... don't be afraid to use interactive online tools such as discussion forums and blogs. And capturing stories on video, such as this one, can be very powerful.