Messaging Archives - Page 14 of 27 - Claxon Communication

Being leaderly when leaderless

October 1, 2013 by Erica Barnhart

Quick follow-up to yesterday’s post on The Importance of Being Leaderly.

There is an Official Adjective that speaks to leadership in an organization: leaderless.

Yes, that’s right. We have a word to describe a lack of leadership but not one to describe a surfeit of leadership. Nope, not one to describe the idea of an organization being filled with people imbued with the confidence to–regardless of title or status–be leaderly.

We have a word that speaks directly to the terrible state of affairs of being, gulp, leaderless. But not one that speaks to the awesome state of affairs of being filled to the brim with people who–again regardless of title or status–can and will step up and lead.

On a day when the United States has been all but shut down due to a distinct lack of leadership on the part of our Capital ‘L’ Leaders, it seems fitting to look at the power of being leaderly. This power goes largely untapped and un-encouraged. Clearly, that needs to change.

The Importance of Being Leaderly

September 30, 2013 by Erica Barnhart

Awhile ago, I started using the term ‘leaderly’, e.g. “That was a tough situation and you handled it in a very leaderly fashion.” I make up words all the time so didn’t give much thought to this new addition to my personal lexicon. It’s a funny sounding word and therefore catchy. I noticed other people started using it. Again, I didn’t think much of it. People embraced ‘funective‘, so why not leaderly?

This week, I start teaching Strategic Marketing in Seattle University’s Master in Nonprofit Leadership program. So I’ve been thinking a lot about how marketing and language can help someone be more, um, leaderly.

Somehow, being leaderly doesn’t feel weighty enough. It lacks the gravitas we tend to append to all things having to do with leading and being in a leadership position. I mean, leaders are the the ones who “go before and with to show the way,” who “guide in direction, course, action, opinion, etc.” These people are serious. They have corner offices. Their smart phones are on over-drive. They are in a league of their own.

And therein lies the problem. We’ve elevated leadership to a level that makes us believe we can only achieve it if we can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Since only a scant number of people can do that, it’s easy to opt out.

This isn’t just a problem for one (word-obsessed) professor preparing for one class at one university. This is language getting in our way in a seriously egregious manner. This is a fundamental issue that, I contend, is undermining our efforts, and ultimately our ability, to make the world a better place.

We may not all be Leaders, with a capital ‘L’. We may not have the right title or pay grade or a reserved parking spot. But we can all lead. We can all, in ways big and small, go before others, and with others, and guide them in direction, course, action and opinion.

There’s a difference between being a Capital ‘L’ Leader and being someone who leads. If we’re going to make the world a better place, we need both. In spades. We need as many verbs, nouns and adjectives as possible to describe this idea of forward momentum, conviction, vision and execution.

It begs the question: how will you be leaderly today?

The naughty exclamation point!

September 24, 2013 by Erica Barnhart

In honor of National Punctuation Day, I’d like to offer a few tips on exclamation point usage. Of all the punctuation out there, why the exclamation point, you ask? Because I’m seeing a naughty trend in how y’all are using it. #ShameOnYou

Before we get to the naughtiness, let’s get something clear: Exclamation points are the cheerleaders and rabblerousers of the punctuation world. As such, you should only use one when you have a truly strong emotion–excited, mad, elated, indignant, astonished, etc–about whatever is in the sentence it is capping off (yep, I know that’s a dangling participle).

Now for the naughty: We (and by ‘we’, I mean ‘you’) are all too frequently making the poor exclamation point do the yucky work of masking a sub-awesome reality.

A few examples and suggestions:

“The office coffee machine is broken. Good thing there’s a Starbucks just half a mile away!” If you’re used to being able to amble down the hall to get your fix, trudging half a mile is not an adequate substitute. And you know it. Person up and say something like: “The office coffee machine broke. We can either all snip at each other all day or you can take your bad selves down to the Starbucks. The walk will do you good. The machine will be fixed tomorrow. Deal.”
“We didn’t meet our fundraising goals this past quarter. But there’s always next quarter!” Are you really feeling pumped about not meeting your fundraising goals? Probably not. No amount of exclamation points is going to fix the fact that you didn’t meet your goals. Having said that, it’s also not the end of the world. But you do need to address what’s going on and have a discussion about how you propose to move forward. That means having a conversion. That means you need a question mark. “We didn’t meet our fundraising goals this past quarter. Why do you think that is and how can we work as a team to hit them next quarter?”

And your donors see through your exclamation points as well. If you overuse them, they lose their impact. Use them sparingly. If you find yourself sticking an exclamation point on everything, it probably means you’re using boring words (like, say, provide). Let your exclamation points take a nap while you forage for some spunkier words.

[Looking for more tips on using language to increase your impact? Check out Pitchfalls: why bad pitches happen to good people. Sneak peak available right here.]

7 Rules of Thumb (plus some cats and dogs)

September 12, 2013 by Erica Barnhart

Photo credit: @DressForSuccesPHX

Earlier this week, I gave a keynote for the Alliance of Arizona’s annual membership meeting. I got to talk about one of the my all-time favorite topics >> The Language of Impact: how words can make the world a better place.

We covered 7 rules of thumb when it comes to using language, and therefore words, to increase impact.

Get rigorous.
Focus on your verbs.
Ditch the robo-speak
Stop talking about yourself.
Stop talking so much.
Translate your taglines.
Simplify, simplify, simplify.

Some, but not all, of these are covered in some form or fashion in Pitchfalls: why bad pitches happen to good people, my pocket-size book about pitches.

I focus a lot on pitches because they force you to really pay attention to every single word you use. It’s a useful exercise to see if you can say what you have to say in 10 words or less. It forces you to find the very best words and to prune out the superfluous ones.

Is this easy? No. Mark Twain said, “I would’ve written you a shorter story, but I didn’t have the time.”

Is it worth it? Yes.

Because the above Rules of Thumb take a little explaining in order to embrace, over the next few weeks, you’ll see a follow-up post on each rule. In the meantime, experiment with saying whatever you have to say in 10 words or less. See what stays and what goes.

(If you know anyone else who might be interested in how to use words to make the world a better place, share/forward this post so they can get in on the action, okay? Thanks!)

A note on cats and dogs: At the beginning of my talk, I asked a series of questions so I could factor the audience’s answers into my remarks. One of the questions was whether they were a cat person or a dog person. Someone asked me later how I used that information. (They were too polite to say it, but I think their real question was: do I really use that information or do I just ask it because it’s kinda funny? Either question is totally legit.)

Here’s the answer: I commonly ask the question at the beginning of a talk and, yes, I totally use what I learn. Acknowledging that this is a GROSS GENERALIZATION (and one with which some will take umbrage), here’s how: I use it as a proxy for how extroverted/introverted a group is. I then use this to inform how much I will/can engage the group.

For this particular group, there were way more dog people than cat people in da house. I engaged the audience a whole lot. I called on people individually. I asked questions throughout, etc. If there had been way more cat people, I might not have engaged quite so much. At least not right away. I would’ve eased into it a bit more. Not because introverts aren’t social–because they can be!–but they generally have a different learning style than extroverts. (See this wonderful graphic for more on introverts and extroverts.) This cat/dog approach is not an exact science and has its flaws, but it works pretty darn well.

So there you have it: 7 Rules of Thumb, plus some cats and dogs.

Disclaimer: The above paragraph should not be taken as judgement for or against introverts or extroverts, cat-lovers or dog-lovers or animal-lovers, in general. The world needs all the above, plus the animals they love.

Like Sham-Wow for your “good enough” marketing

July 28, 2013 by Erica Barnhart

Roxy Before we dig in, I want to introduce you to Roxie the Bird. For the record, she has been around longer than Twitter or Portlandia. She’s a seasoned bird. She can guide you to messaging awesomeness. Sometimes she’s bossy (or, as I like to say “directive”), but she knows her stuff, so pay attention to her when you see her. And, yes, you’ll be seeing her more often.

Now that we’re through introductions…

Many organizations are making due with marketing that’s “good enough”. The problem is “good enough” is often not good enough anymore. You’re competing for the heads and hearts of supporters who are on the receiving end of some pretty fantastic marketing from other organizations.

Sometimes you can look at a pitch and immediately say “Oh boy, that one’s a stinker!” But when it’s your own message–one you live and breathe every day—well, it’s not that easy to tell the difference.

At the risk of going all Sham-Wow on you, I have something that can help. I created the 1,2,3 Marketing Assessment to help you figure out if what your marketing is hitting the mark and, if not, why.

Using the tool, you quickly score your current efforts against the three elements required for really great marketing. It’s quick and easy, people, so no excuses not to do it.

Your mission deserves better than “good enough”, does it not?

Download your 1, 2, 3 Marketing Assessment and get started!

Easy-peasy method to test out potential pitch words with link shorteners

July 24, 2013 by Erica Barnhart

link Oh the “quiet” months of summer—at least in the office. Lots of family (and otherwise adventurous) vacations are planned at this time of year. The pace in the office shifts. Ahhhh.

So with this change in rhythm, now is maybe not the best time to rally the troops behind a big, new organization-wide project. But with a little less noise than at other times of year, summer can be a great time to learn some new tricks (you know, when you aren’t out practicing your belly flop or BBQ technique).

The seasonal lull presents a great opportunity to try out some new tools (Google Keyword Tool maybe?) and focus on some of those activities there doesn’t seem to be a good time for. I’m all about words and perfecting your pitch, so how about investing a little time and effort in testing different variations and elements of your pitch online? And yes, I’ve got a tool for that.

A quick and easy way to test the words you use in your pitch is to get them in front of people online with a clear click opportunity (you know, that blue underlined hyperlink thing), and to see which words draw the most attention (to wit, clicks). You can do this on your organizations blog or other pages, anyplace folks come to read about what you do. And you don’t need a fancy-schmancy web analytics suite to do it either. You just need a link shortener.

Now you might be thinking “Why the heck do I need a link shortener? The whole idea of hyperlinking text is that people don’t have to see the links!” Well, yes, this is true. However, most link shorteners allow you to easily access data on the clicks on the shortened links you’ve created. We like bit.ly for this over here.

So here’s what you do: write something—a newsletter, your web page, a blog post—that includes variations on your verbiage. Test out your verbs and your pronouns. Try out pitches developed by team members. For each one that you want to track, find a relevant page on your website. This will be the destination page when someone clicks on thy hyperlinked words in your masterpiece. For example, maybe you want “we create opportunities for children to have fun while they learn” to link to a page that shows some pint-sized service recipients exploring educational games (which you delivered) in their classroom. Take the URL for that page, and create a shortened link. Now, hyperlink the words you’d like to test on your web page with the shortened URL. Follow this process with all the experimental word combinations in your content and then put your content out into the world.

Then log in to your shortener account to check on your stats and learn about your clicks: how many there were and when, where your link was shared, where your audience is located and who shared out your link. Your click numbers alone will help you understand relative interest in the word combinations you are testing out (and you won’t have to dig through those pesky web site analytics). The other data will help you determine the value of your web pages that you’ve linked to. If it’s interesting to friends-of-friends, they will share.

Another variation on this approach would be to test out taglines with your engaged audience by using them in your autosignature. Just swap out taglines on a regular basis.

You don’t have to remove the magic of how you talk about what you do by over-orchestrating it with technology. Link shortening tools are simple and easy. It’s like free market research.

The quest for the perfect word (and other useless endeavors)

July 19, 2013 by Erica Barnhart

Gates Foundation, Jeff Raikes, perfectionism, le bon mot, words, language I love French. I really do. The way everything sounds so sophisticated and deep, even if they’re really just talking about grocery shopping or mowing the lawn.

<start brief personal interlude> From Kindergarten through Grade 2, I was in French immersion. After a brief hiatus from Grades 3 through 6, I picked it back up in Grade 7 and I’ve been been at it ever since. This franco-focus culminated in me spending a year at the university where all French folks with ambitions of making the world a better place through policy and/or politics go, Sciences Po. <end brief personal interlude>

You think I love words? These people were/are obsessed. Obsessed! I sat, bewitched and bemused, as they debated endlessly about which word was le bon mot–the right word. And by “right”, they meant perfect.

Fast-forward a few years (or decades, whatevs, who’s counting?) to this morning when I was reading Jeff Raike’s post on perfectionism. He points out that our question for perfectionism carries a big risk: that in our effort to avoid failure, we narrow our options to those that are low-risk and achievable, rather than risky and remarkable.

Organizations–probably yours–fall into this trap when it comes to words. All the time. Constantly. Thus all those boring thank you notes. Thus yawn-worthy newsletters. Thus homepages that you have to read twelve times in order to even kinda sorta get what they’re saying because you keep nodding off.

Words are cheap. Don’t waste your time always looking for le bon mot. There’s a time and place for that. It’s called happy hour in a Parisian cafe. Unless that’s where you work, take off your beret and get back to work.

There are two notable exceptions to this “Good-And-Done-Is-Better-Than-Perfect-And-Drove-You-To-The-Brink-Of-Insanity” rule:

You’re about to invest thousands of dollars in a printed piece: In these instances, spend some QT finding exactly the right words. (And while you’re finding the right words for that piece, I’d also recommend you hack about 50% of the words you’re planning to use because people will only skim the piece anyway, but that’s a post for another day…)
Subject lines of emails: Most people agonize over the content and then dash off the subject line. Reverse that. Nail your subject line and make sure the content is good.

Aside from those two exceptions, your quest for the perfect word is in all likelihood preventing you from achieving your goals–both the little, tiny, risk-free ones AND the great, big, awesome, this-world-is-truly-better ones.

Words are cheap. Take some risks. Scary though it may feel in the moment, you’ll be happy you did.

The words your supporters use are as important as the words you use

July 11, 2013 by Erica Barnhart

Words are important. We’re clear on that, right? Verbs, pronouns—they matter. They make people feel and act. They are the tools you use to explain WHY you do what you do.

Now I don’t want to bore you by getting technical, but there is another reason why words are important: they are what make search engines work (well, words and a bunch of boring code). Words are what people use to find and learn about your awesome work online. So the more that you use the words –the ones your future donors are searching– on your website, the more likely they are to find you, and fall in love with you.

Now you may have identified some of the logical search terms your audience would use to find you—perhaps something along the lines of “clean water charity”—because it’s fairly obvious. But consider that your supporters of the future might not know they are looking for you. Perhaps they are researching clean water technologies for their high school biology project, or maybe they are planning a trip to Africa where (unbeknownst to them) they will become aware of challenges many villages face in providing potable water to their residents. Should they come across your mission online, they will learn of your work, maybe follow you or sign up for a newsletter. So the key, when it comes to keywords (see what I did there?) is to understand all the many ways people—the kind of people you want to attract—are finding information related to your work in some way.

So how does one access information on the keywords that people use to find stuff online? The search engines analyze and provide (oops) this information to potential advertisers. Because keyword search patterns are valuable to companies making investments in search advertising. And fortunately, this information is also available to you for free.

A great tool to try out is Google’s Keyword Planner. Search for keyword ideas by entering some of your known keywords (the aforementioned “clean water charity” in our example). You’ll find a list of relevant words, some of which you might not have thought of like “how to purify water”, and data like the average number of monthly searches for the terms and competition from websites or ads that employ those words.

I’m not saying you should load up your pitch with a bunch of Google-generated words and phrases. That would definitely have you sounding a like a robot. Just consider using some of these words in how you tell the story of what you do. Expand the diversity of your words to help new searchers find you.

Some traditional marketing opportunities are like Joan Rivers: they’ve gotten a nip and a tuck and they keep on working

June 30, 2013 by Erica Barnhart

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia (David Shankbone)

The internet has changed how people make purchase decisions. The availability of data (like online reviews) and search algorithms that seem to predict the exact thing you were looking for with only a few keystrokes (you know, right before you delete your search history so your kids can’t see that you were researching boarding schools) can shorten the time between the decision-to-purchase and the actual purchase. Of course, same goes for decisions people make about where to invest in making the world a better place. Interested in advancing adult literacy? You can have information on a number of reading programs on your computer screen in mere seconds. Want to know who has been helped by those organizations? YouTube will likely bubble up some compelling testimonials.

But remember back in the old days? You know, like the 90s? When marketing was made out of paper and handshakes? Have we changed so much since then that the old way of marketing no longer works at all? Should we completely shun the old for the new?

As much as we hear that newspapers are dead and that people are increasingly engaging with organizations online, there are some “traditional” marketing approaches that have been on the receiving end of a little nip and tuck, but still work. Particularly when looking at activities where someone first gets to know your organization—way before they decide to engage with you—there’s still opportunity to kick it old school…with a little twist of channel integration.

Sponsored events (with a dedicated Twitter hashtag, e.g. “#givingtuesday” ), press interviews (now most likely to be read online and hyperlinked to your website) and speaking engagements (which, if recorded, may generate significant interest on YouTube) are great examples of traditional channels that have gotten a makeover, courtesy of emerging digital channels, and come out looking even better than before.

So as you evaluate your investment in traditional marketing activities, consider the possibility that what’s old is new again with the additional reach that comes from technology.

Bling out your email with a little alternative channel juju

June 26, 2013 by Erica Barnhart

gears background People give to organizations whose visions align with their values—organizations that they trust to make an impact. To build that trust, you’re likely reaching your target audiences—the collection of people who already support you, the people that may support you in the future, and the people and organizations that help connect you to your supporters—in multiple different ways. People visit your website, read about your progress in a newspaper article, meet one of your pitch-perfect volunteers at a party and then they become your supporter.

Even if you have carefully selected the channels via which you will put your message out to the world, creating that multi-touch experience for your potential supporters doesn’t happen magically (despite how many times you say “Shazam!”).

Sure some people will experience your work organically (like when they are researching an issue they are passionate about online and come across your web page and a video of an event you put on), or when they are tried-and-true believers who subscribe to your newsletter and follow your progress on your Facebook page.

But a great many of the people that will fuel the success of your work in the future are having a very singular experience with you. They downloaded an impact report and never heard from you again. They get your newsletter but never look at your website. And wouldn’t it be cool for them to know about your Director of Development who kicks-butt on Twitter? Well, they don’t.

Consistency and repetition of your message across channels strengthens your brand and builds relationships. Yet, according to a study by Convio, only about 55% of nonprofit organizations are serious about integrated marketing. Forty-five percent of you aren’t doing much to nurture those high-value, multi-channel relationships—you aren’t giving the people who have already expressed an interest in your work more opportunities to experience the magic of what you do.

I’m not suggesting a marketing overhaul; if you know how the people you care about find you and experience you, creating connection between those places—so they can meander, learn more and share— can transform something like an email campaign from a one-hit wonder to a relationship-builder.

Here are some ideas to consider:

Make your email communications shareable. You don’t have to have a social media presence to reap the benefit of some viral sharing of your message. In every email, add social media share buttons or links and when you are communicating with your supporters, by all means, ask them to share! It’s not icky. They believe in what you do.
Consider landing pages for campaigns. Instead of sending people to the home page of your website, send them to a page with messaging consistent with your campaign and designed to move them to the next step in the engagement process (for example, signing up for your newsletter).
Add a link to your Facebook page on your direct mail pieces.

Here are a few resources with more ideas:

Practical Tips for Multi-Channel Fundraising

What it means to Do Multi-Channel Right

How to Improve Your Email Marketing with an Integrated Approach