How to make a magnificent mini-impression

People decide very quickly whether something appeals to them - usually in a matter of seconds.  If you work in communications, marketing or fundraising, it’s wise to remember to focus on that mini-impression formed in the first few instants of engagement.

You can be sure the Super Bowl advertisers knew that - heck, they were spending $116,667 a second to make a good impression.  They didn’t always do a good job, but there is a lot to learn from their successes and failures.

In the Harvard Business Review blog this week, Ron Ashkenas shares reflections on the three things needed for the best possible mini-impression, drawing on lessons from the Super Bowl.  He says to think about your favorite commercial and three things that might have made it great.  Did it:

1. Capture attention. Which part of that commercial stays with you? What technique did the advertiser use to draw you in?

2. Convey a clear message. Consider the key message for the target audience. What did the company try to convey, and how did the advertiser use that to connect with viewers? How did they frame the message to make this point?

3. Differentiate.  Think about what distinguishes your advertiser from the rest. How did the company use the commercial to portray its unique brand?

Now think about how this applies to your work.  What attention-grabbing technique can you incorporate into your next important conversation?  How can you ensure your audience walks away with your most critical takeaway? Are you making clear what sets you apart from others?

Good advice.  You don’t have to have an insanely large marketing budget to master the mini-impression - you just need to remember these basics.  In fact, if you have a small budget, these tenets are even more critical.  You want to leave a big impression right away, every time you get the chance.

 

Two things it’s easy to forget with social media

In the reactive, fast-moving, turbulent world of social media, it’s easy to be swept up with a sense of false urgency.  Yet two of the most valuable things you can do involve slowing down:

1. Pausing to think.  Before you run off to spend time on a channel, you want to figure out WHO you’re trying to reach online, WHERE they are, and HOW to best communicate with them.  A little intentionality now saves oodles of lost time later. 

2 Stopping to listen.  Really listen.  It’s so tempting to fire off a response or jump into a conversation.  But before you do, pay close attention to what’s being said and the emotional tenor involved.  Acknowledge it, respect it and then join the conversation.  You can learn far more in consciously listening to your constituency than you ever will in reading the pronouncements of gurus.  We must see and hear others with the same energy we exert on seeking recognition of ourselves. 

When it comes to connection, which social media is all about, we need the ears and eyes of others paired with our own to be complete. 

Venn Heaven: How to map your champions online

Tom Webster of BrandSavant Blog had a fascinating post this past week on the overlap - or lack thereof - of 1) your base of supporters and 2) social media mavens.  It’s important you understand how much overlap you have, so you know how to use social media effectively to build your brand.

He drew a series of Venn Diagrams, which I am showing here:

So which is ideal?

The first looks good, because you have some overlap between supporters and social media champions.  That overlapping area is a great start to a core of online enthusiasts - and it can grow as that group reaches out to their circles of influence.

The second is obviously bad, because you almost no overlap between people who love you and people who spread messages.  And if you pay attention on social media only to the people who are talking about your issue but aren’t supporters, you’ll alienate your base because the two aren’t intersecting.

The third one is interesting.  It looks great until you think about it as an echo chamber.  You just have the same champions zealously supporting your cause to each other, over and over, online.  That’s no way to grow a community.  Also, if you keep catering to this group, more and more narrowly, you’ll end up with a shrinking echo chamber, pleasing a more and more select group of people.

The trick, as Tom points out, is knowing which Venn diagram you have so you know where you have problems and where you have opportunities.  That’s the hard part.  You have to listen and engage very carefully to gain this understanding.  As he notes:

Two of these Venn diagrams could kill your business – if you make decisions based upon social data and don’t know what your diagram looks like. Luckily for you, it isn’t rocket science to draw your brand’s diagram – if you do the work. This is the kind of work I do for clients every day, but the most important thing you can do to determine these things about your customers is simply to ask them. Only when you calibrate your social data mining with other online or offline research can you know the nature of your two circles. Figuring out the size of these circles – and the extent to which they overlap – is the key to making social media data useful.

Ask you donors and champions if they are online and where - and see how they react to opportunities to spread the word online.  Do a little homework so you know where to focus your efforts.

I recommend reading and subscribing to BrandSavant for more on how to draw a picture of your online brand - and how to act accordingly.

It’s good advice.

Jobs at Network for Good

  • Fri, February 03 2012
  • Filed under: Personal

Network for Good, where I work, is hiring.  Among the positions is a business development position for those interested in cultivating corporate cause partnerships.  Next week, we’ll be posting an additional position in marketing.

Check out our job listings here.

Brick wall redux: Practical tips for leading change

Today, I finished reading John Kotter’s book, A Sense of Urgency*.  It’s full of good advice on how to spark a burning desire for your agenda.  If you are frustrated, you should buy this book and read it right away.

What I learned was complacency and “false urgency” are the biggest barriers to getting things done.  Complacency is comfort with the status quo, generated by past success or perceived success.  False urgency by contrast comes from failure.  It’s essentially unproductive panic and activity.

True urgency, on the other hand, is a very good thing.  It is the visceral, highly motivated urge to do something important, day in and day out.

So how do you create that?

The single most important thing you can do is to appeal to the heart not just the head of your colleagues.  (This reminds me of the elephant in Switch.)  As Kotter says, “Excellent information, by itself, with the best data and logic, can win over minds and thoughts but rarely increases needed urgency… A logical case that is part of a heart-engaging experience can win over hearts and minds and increase needed urgency.”

He then told the story of a corporation spending months on strategy and consultants and committees to make his point in terms both vivid and scary.

He offers four key tactics.  Here they are with my commentary:

1. Bring the outside in: Don’t just navel gaze!  Reconnect internal reality with external opportunities and risks.  Bring in emotionally compelling data, people, videos, sites and sounds.  Put front and center stories of your customers, competitors, donors and beneficiaries.  Send out scouts to experience front-line, real world circumstances.

2. Behave with urgency every day: Don’t be content - or anxious.  Show the real sense of urgency - fire in the belly for a worthy and clear aim.  Free up time in your day to think straight - because clutter and fatigue undermine urgency.

3. Find opportunity in crisis: Handled right and with caution, a crisis can destroy complacency and inspire sound action.  But remember: Crises alone don’t create urgency - in fact, they can create paralysis.  And manufactured crises create resentment.  If you have a crisis, use it as a rallying point.  If you don’t have one, don’t stand around waiting for one!  Create urgency through other means.

4. Deal with the Nonos: Remove or neutralize those who are complacent or creating destructive, false urgency.  The NoNo is ready with ten reasons why the current situation is fine, why your problems don’t exist or why you need more data before you do anything.  A skeptic is fine - even good.  But NoNos aren’t about healthy questioning.  They’re about automatically shooting down change.  Kotter says not to bother co-opting a NoNo - it won’t work.  Nor will ignoring them, because they are good at creating mischief, not to mention organizational civil war.  So what do you do?  He offers three options:

NoNo Option A: Distraction.  Send the NoNo on a special assignment suited to her skills or give them lots of other work.  Or get them riled up about something else.
NoNo Option B: Removal.  Fire the NoNo.
NoNo Option C: Immobilization.  Kotter says “lightweight” NoNos can be exposed in public and social pressures can be used to neutralize their behavior.  But calling out someone only works if they aren’t powerful or hard core.

Of course, if you do all of this, you will be successful - and generate a new round of complacency, Kotter points out.  So you have to keep working the tactics, again and again.  Urgency is needed all along the way.  Sigh.  The work of a change agent is never done, my friends!

A Sense of Urgency by John P. Kotter - Free videos are just a click away

*Hat tip to birthday girl Jocelyn Harmon for giving me a copy of this excellent book!

When you hit the brick wall before you leave your own building

I get a lot of email from people who are trying to better connect with their supporters, but they encounter resistance to new approaches from within themselves or, more often, from within their own organizations.  If you’re hitting a brick wall, this post is for you.

It’s not easy to turn the focus from your own perspective to that of your audiences, but turn it, you must.

When you hit a brick wall before you even leave your own building, don’t give up.  Don’t stop pressing for taking the perspective of those you must reach.  Don’t abandon the quest to do things differently and better.  Because it’s the only way forward.

No one ever built a great organization by navel-gazing and never changing.  Ever. 

Advocate for meeting the needs of your donors and your beneficiaries and your customers above all else.  It will lead to success, I swear.  As a wise CSO recently put it to me: “Meeting the needs of the customer is always the winning hand.  Always.”  The best companies in the world get that.  And their stock prices show there is positive payback.

If you do right by your donors, the money will come.

If you do right by those you serve, the mission will come.

If you do right by the status quo, nothing will come.  And that has to be more scary than trying to make things happen.

Don’t turn back at the brick wall.  Find a way around it, over it or under it.  There’s usually a secret passageway - in the form of a different messenger, a different message, or different positioning.  And if you can’t find that, there’s always the fallback: Do it right and then seek forgiveness, not permission.  More likely, you’ll get more than forgiveness.  Perhaps even applause - because the results will be something to celebrate. 

Impact - not ideas - should be the star of your story

While I was living in Ukraine, the government tax authority launched a campaign to motivate taxpayers to stay honest and continue paying their taxes. The tax authority developed several ads. One was a cartoon illustration of a bee in front of a hive with a slogan celebrating the fruits of a collective contribution to the government. It looked like an ad for Honey Nut Cheerios with worker bees starring as the cereal mascot.  Another was a photograph of a new well and water pump where city residents could fill containers with fresh water from the well. An accompanying slogan thanked taxpayers for making the well and other city improvements possible. In one of my trainings, I placed the ads side by side and asked a roomful of Ukrainians which was more effective given the tax authority’s marketing goals. Not surprisingly, they were unanimous in their judgment that access to fresh water was far more personally relevant, and therefore motivating, than a role in building a metaphorical hive.

This example seems obvious, yet in our communication we often focus more on hives than on wells. We talk about saving the earth, ending poverty, or creating a great society. Every day, we have to remind ourselves that the hive is what we’re building; the well is what our audience needs to see.

At this week’s Social Media for Nonprofits conference, Paull Young of charity:water shared what he’s learned about digital engagement in his work over the past two years, and it reminded me of my story of the hive and the well.  Charity:water has done 6,165 water projects over the years - which is a lot of wells - and the exceptional job they do in talking about their work holds lessons for us all.

Paul shared five keys to success:

1. Be positive: Inspire and create sense of collective impact.  Don’t lead with guilt and sadness—it is not the stuff of a long-term relationship, nor the kind of content people will want to share with others.

2. Focus on stories not money: You do better as a fundraiser telling great stories about your work rather than spotlighting the dollars.  (Charity:water never asks for money on social media or in their emails.  I wouldn’t go that far but agree with the overall principle that you should focus on the good you do rather than what you get.

3. Do it wrong quickly: Try a lot of things - with the Internet economy, it’s quick and affordable to test.

4. Be personal - and that doesn’t just mean using a donor’s name.  Charity:water made videos singling out and thanking 250 supporters - each staff member participated.

5. Focus on impact - wells, not hives!  This is where charity:water shines.  They have great photos from the field, GPS coordinates for donor projects and an overall amazing donor experience.

No doubt about it - charity:water is well worth emulating.  Think about them when you’re gravitating toward the hive.

Six lessons in successful social media use

I heard a great presentation yesterday from DonorsChoose at the Social Media for Nonprofits conference.  Marketing Manager Anna Doherty shared six lessons her organization - which is fantastic at engagement - applies to its social media work.

1. Join the conversation around the cause: She listens first - always a good rule for social media - and chimes in on conversations others are having about her cause.

2. Share content and collateral that’s unique to the organization.  One of the strengths of DonorsChoose is its stewardship.  When you donate more than $50, you get wonderful thank you notes from students helped by your contribution.  She posts some of the best (and cutest) notes on the DonorsChoose Facebook page.

3. Celebrating big news.  Don’t be meek about posting good news - like crossing fundraising milestones.  Give your community cause to celebrate.

4. Share staff culture.  DonorsChoose staff tweet each other messages about birthdays and other events to reflect their fun, tight-knit culture.

5. Remember the medium.  Think big picture – people on Facebook respond to different things than Twitter.  Anna tried trivia questions on both, and they were popular on Facebook but flopped on Twitter. 

6. Balance quality and frequency.  Don’t just post for the sake of posting.  Anna learned the hard way that if she posted because she felt she must and the content wasn’t meaningful, it lowered engagement levels.

Good advice.

And although this wasn’t on Anna’s list, she was doing it, so I’m adding it:

Set a goal and test and measure against it.  DonorsChoose counts conversion to donations - with followers or likes secondary aims.  That helps them know where to focus, what to do and how to measure. 

The 6 absolutely essential keys to influence

One of the best books I have ever read to strengthen my marketing skills was Influence, by Robert Cialdini.  If you’ve never read this book, you really should.  In the book, Cialdini covers six principles of persuasion:

1. Reciprocity - People tend to return a favor, thus all those annoying address labels charities send out as a fundraising ploy.

2. Liking - People are easily persuaded by other people whom they like. That’s why you want your champions spreading the word about your cause among their friends and family.

3. Scarcity - Perceived scarcity fuels demand. “Only four memberships are left” prompts action!

4. Authority - People will tend to obey authority figures.  Just check out the well-dressed man in a suit jay-walking in the below video.  Everyone on the street corner follows.  When he wears a sweatshirt, no one follows. That’s the principle of authority at work.

5. Social Proof - People will do what other people are doing. That’s why it’s great to show who is taking action for your cause - others are likely to conform.

6. Commitment and Consistency - If people commit to an idea or goal, they are more likely to follow through.  I’ve covered that several times on the blog lately.  It’s why pledging is a great option for people who aren’t ready to take action.

If you don’t have time to read the book, watch this wonderful 30 minute interview with Cialdini from Swedish television (don’t worry, it’s in English).  He walks through each principle, with vivid examples of these ideas being used for social good, for manipulation and for propaganda.  It’s well worth your time.

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Are you treating your donors right?  The quiz.

With the Network for Good team, I just created a mini-course on thanking donors.  It’s a self-guided tour to writing great thank-yous and treating donors well all year - so they will give again!  (It’s not free, but I immodestly think this guide to stewardship is worth every penny.  Learn more here.)

So do you treat your donors well?  To figure it out, take this quiz.  (It’s free.)

And remember the rock bottom, bare minimums when it comes to donor stewardship!

1. ALWAYS THANK YOUR DONORS: Always.  No exceptions.
2. THANK THEM EARLY: You should thank your donors within a few days of their gift. 
3. THANK THEM OFTEN:  Thank your donors several times, over time, and keep reporting back on the difference they have made.
4. THANK THEM ACCURATELY: Make sure you have correctly spelled the donor’s name, stated the amount and date of the donation, included appropriate language for taxes and carefully noted if the gift was made in honor of someone else.

If I had a dollar for every charity that didn’t do these four things when I gave…

5 Things you need to know about marketing to millennials

AdAge had a very useful article last week that summarized new millennial research from ComScore, based on nearly 1,000 TV tests and 35 digital advertising tests.

The key finding? Millennials react to marketing differently.

Here were the takeaways:

1. Millennials don’t respond to TV ads as much as their elders. Younger people have always measured as less responsive to TV ads than older people, but the gap has grown with Millennials.

2. With digital, you don’t see that difference.  Millennials are about as responsive to digital ads as other generations.

3. Millennials respond to the same advertising approaches as prior generations. They care most about what makes a brand unique or better - and they react best to the product and brand shown clearly.  In other stories, they’ve also been shown to put a premium on trust.

4. Millennials are more engaged in all kinds of media than older folks. For example, millennials had engagement scores that were 22.2% higher than boomers with digital media.

5. Millennials may respond less to TV ads, but at least they remember them longer. This finding was amusing to me - as someone with a fading memory, I think that’s just the gift of the young—total recall!

So what does this mean to you?  If you’re seeking to engage younger supporters, the digital avenue is the best.  Make clear what makes your cause special.  Be authentic.  And don’t be so creative you forget the basics: clear, simple communication and a memorable messaging wins the day, whatever the generation.

Why you need someone else to be your messenger

Edelman’s 2012 Trust Barometer is out, and the biggest finding is the increasing stock people put in the recommendations of their peers - who surpass nonprofit staff in terms of their trustworthiness as messengers.

In speaking about this finding, David Armano of Edelman notes, it is important that we “share the stage with ‘regular’ people who have a voice via a variety of social channels,” as well as to be “in tune with the topics and issues they care about and discuss. Last year I speculated that the decline in attention given toward people like ourselves—our friends and peers may have been related to social media fatigue. This year, it’s possible that many of us who make social networking part of our digital routines have gotten a bit better at filtering the signal from noise, thereby being both more generous but focused with our finite attention spans.”

From my perspective, this is just one more piece of data illustrating the importance of third-party endorsement in all of your outreach and engagement.  (More evidence is here.) You can’t be your own, only messenger.  You need respected authority figures, experts and definitely, everyday champions - who are more powerful than ever.

Take two minutes and look at your latest outreach piece or your website or your organization’s Facebook page.  Who is speaking for you?  Where are they on the trust barometer?  If it’s your CEO or ED, you may need additional voices.

(Hat tip to Caryn Stein here at Network for Good for the data!)

Stuck on how to make a video?  The experts weigh in.

  • Tue, January 24 2012
  • Filed under: Video

The folks over at YouTube just sent me a free e-guide on video.  It’s called Playbook Guide: YouTube for Good, and you can access it for free here.

The Guide walks you through how to create effective videos on a shoestring - and how to use YouTube for Good to engage your community.

If you’re looking for inspiration, here is one shoestring video I really like.  It connects, tells a great story and shows where the money goes.  That’s how it’s done - and done well.

Department of inspiration: 2 causes getting their stories right!

Today, I want to share two causes that are doing a great job turning their issues into stories.  It’s so important to bring a human face to our organizations and our work.  Without stories, we are simply abstract words and ideas.  With stories, we become a part of our audience’s lives.

The first example comes from Crisis Control Ministry.  They wrote me a little while ago asking for input on their website, which they are about to revamp.  They also sent along an example of some of their new materials.  What an improvement!  They are absolutely moving in the right direction.

Old website home page:

Sample new collateral:

Here’s what I’d change about the website:

-Choose a picture and tagline that tells a story - the photo of the boy looking down and the generic language could represent any nonprofit
-Remove the mission statement and replace it with a great quote from a fan or beneficiary instead - mission statements belong on About Us pages
-Make a clear case for giving

What I like about the current site is the big Donate button, the email signup and the endorsement by Charity Navigator.  You always want a prominent way to give, a way to get in touch and a third-party endorsement.  However, the Donate button has dollars on it - bad idea.  Images of money typically prime people to be selfish.  If you use imagery, use a picture of a person being helped or other generous image.  Also, the email signup could be stronger - “sign up for updates” is not extremely compelling, though it’s better than “join our mailing list!”

I love the look and feel of the new collateral - I imagine this is a flyer - and can’t wait to see that take shape on the website.  That photo and tagline instantly engage me and inspire me to help.  Lutricia will take the new home page by storm.  So will the vastly improved tagline: Strengthening Our Community … One Neighbor at a time.

Now on to my second example - an incredibly moving take on those with special needs, via Joe Pulizzi’s Junta 42 blog.  Go HERE on the below story - you will be moved and experience the issue in an incredible way.

When your audience thinks it’s superhuman

One of the biggest barriers to getting people to take a protective action is their own sense of invulnerability.  While people may perceive a risk, they don’t think they’ll ever be a victim.  They are Superman and Wonder Woman.  Others are stupid to text and drive, but they can handle it.  Disability insurance?  Eh, probably not needed.  Bicycle helmets?  Important for everyone else!

So in a recent blog post neuromarketer Roger Dooley posed the question, what do you do to market protective measures to the many people who think they are invulnerable?

He found the answer in a hospital, where health care professionals don’t always wash their hands.  Penn psychologist Adam Grant did an experiment with two messages placed next to a hand cleaning station.  One sign read, “Hand hygiene prevents you from catching diseases,” while another said “Hand hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases.”

Guess what?  The superhuman health professionals didn’t pay much mind to the first sign - because they won’t get sick! - but they were more inclined to act when thinking of other, vulnerable people. In fact, the second sign increased the use of soap and sanitizing gel by 33%!

So for Superman and Wonder Woman, we need to point out the risks not to them, but to others, says Dooley.

How does this apply to us?  I’ll bet many of you are trying to get people to take protective measures - vaccinating a baby, stopping smoking, fastening a seatbelt, doing family planning, etc.  Instead of beating people over the head with the message that they really need to worry, try talking about how a lack of action could affect their family, friends and community members. 

I think back to a project in which I had to help inspire Baby Boomers to create a living will.  No one wants to contemplate their own demise.  So we encouraged the Boomers to talk to their family members about the importance of advance care planning - and to fill out a living will themselves in order to get their parents and other relatives to do the same.  It was far more effective than simply telling them to take the action because of their own vulnerability.

The bottom line?  Don’t try to scare a person who feels like a superhuman into a state of vulnerability.  Ask them to take an action for others.  Being superhumans, they will want to rescue the rest of us!

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