Today marks a milestone of sorts. This is the 100th Monday on Message memo since I launched the project a couple of years ago. Over a four-decade career, I had written thousands of messages for many of America’s leading causes and campaigns.
But there was something different and a little intimidating about starting this new venture under my own name.
Fortunately, my early fears about whether I could find an audience — whether people would find weekly missives on the art of persuasion genuinely helpful — were quickly allayed.
So let me just say how much I personally appreciate you being a faithful and engaged reader of the Monday Memo.
Each week, I try to help nonprofit communicators answer that question. Not just in the abstract, but in the face of a shifting, fragmented attention economy; a daunting beyond belief political climate; and the transformational challenge of simultaneously embracing AI’s potential and guarding against its risks.
So, I thought the best way to mark Memo #100 might be to share 15 of my favorite pieces of actionable guidance from memos #1 through #99.
Here they are (in no special order)
Don’t issue reports, send invitations.
Too many nonprofit messages read like reports on a group’s work with a request to support it tagged on. Don’t just report and update on your efforts. Send people invitations to help bring your work to life. That simple change in perspective can make all the difference in the world.
Be a storyteller, not a poet.
A down-to-earth, conversational writing style is almost always the right choice. It protects the authenticity and emotional power of your message. Here’s an example:
Like a Poet: “As the glistening noon sun bore down on us, our campsite became an unbearable inferno.”
Like a Conversation: “By noon, the campsite was hot as hell.”
Connect your call to action to
your reader’s personal identity.
The strongest emotional arguments reflect and deepen personal identity. People strive to act in ways that make them proud of who they are and demonstrate how faithfully they act on their beliefs.
Don’t just ask “What are you going to do?” Ask “Who are you going to be?”
Recognize that fear can
either persuade or immobilize.
Fear is a powerful emotion and can be a driving force motivating your audience to act. But there’s one circumstance where fear serves not to persuade but to immobilize. That’s when you fail to provide a credible way to alleviate the fear. Don’t provoke fear and then leave your audience stranded.
Never break your message’s rhythm
with distracting unnecessary language.
When revising or editing, don’t focus on individual word choices or the placement of a single sentence. Pay more attention to searching out and eliminating lifeless chunks of language that break your message’s rhythm and energy. Follow Elmore Leonard’s advice: “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.”
Choose clear over clever
and authentic over polished.
Two quotes on this one that say it better than I can. Communications specialist Lulu Cheng Meservey: “If the writing is bad, it’s better for it to be bad and honest. . . I’d rather see writing that is suboptimal that has personality and has intent and has conviction than writing that is textbook correct.”
And the legendary Roger Craver: ”People don’t give because your copy is clever. They give because something in it feels true. They give because it sounds like a real person talking about something that matters.”
Guide people to ask an actionable
question about your work.
Within limits, how you frame your case can determine whether people find your work actionable and engaging or just too daunting to take on. For example, Doctors Without Borders leads people to ask “Will you support selfless doctors delivering emergency medical care to people with nowhere to turn?” as opposed to “Help make sure every person in the world has access to emergency medical care?”
Don’t neglect the power of positive emotions.
It’s important to lead with emotion, not facts. And often that emotion is a negative one like fear or anger. But remember the critical element isn’t jeopardy, it’s tension.
That tension can come from preventing something bad or dangerous from happening. But it can also derive from the need to quickly seize a
hard-earned opportunity for progress.
Use tactics in support of a compelling message,
not in place of one.
Here’s a golden rule I have long advocated for. Smart tactics, techniques and strategies in support of a compelling message are a powerful formula for success.
But those same devices advanced in place of a compelling message is a recipe for disaster. Look at your communications and if you detect an over-reliance on tactics and techniques, pivot to focusing on developing and strengthening the core messages they are intended to support.
Remember, details can bring your
message to life or deaden it.
Providing clear, compelling details can bring your message to life and make sure it is received as genuine and authentic. But heed author Lisa Cron’s warning: “Too many details – or ones that distract as opposed to engage — can easily break the rhythm and emotional energy of your message.”
Develop a deep visceral
understanding of your audience.
It’s hard – perhaps impossible – to communicate persuasively unless you have a solid grasp on who you’re talking to. Surface-level demographics and transactional data alone won’t get you there. You need to know about peoples’ emotional journey. What makes them tick? What brings them joy? What drives them crazy? What keeps them up at night?
Be an architect of attention.
If nonprofits want to engage people, we have to first win their attention. And we can only do that by authentically reaching out to them in all the places where attention now lives.
It’s no longer enough to be a distributor of information. You have to be an architect of attention. Value engagement and action (shares, replies, watch time, conversions) over outputs (how much content you produce and send out).
Take risks. Don’t be boring.
In today’s fragmented media landscape, our first task is to attract attention. But many Democratic candidates and progressive groups still opt for gaining no attention rather than risking a measure of negative attention.
In the attention economy, safe messages are invisible. Be bold. Seek out moments of attention that you can funnel into deeper engagement.
“Be a storyteller” doesn’t go far enough.
“Be a storyteller” is solid guidance as far as it goes. But there’s more to it than that. We have to make sure our storytelling is purposeful and persuasive.
That means telling stories that don’t just highlight the problem, but bring to the fore your group’s (and, by extension, your supporters’) efforts to address it. Your stories have to match the moment, be consistent with your group’s voice, and connect to your reader’s personal identity.
Remember that rewriting is
“where a game is won or lost.”
Here’s William Zinsser, author of the classic On Writing Well: “Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it’s where the game is won or lost.” As writers, it’s only natural that we get emotionally invested in what we create. But we have to resist falling in love with our first draft.
Treat your first draft as a starting place and do more than “tweak” or “polish” if you want to bring a truly persuasive message across the finish line.
PS. Over the past year, I’ve been working on some writing in a much longer form than the weekly memo. More about that in the weeks ahead.
