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| Path: Main Street > Resources/Library > Research Articles > Feature Article |
Public engagement and the Internet: The message and the medium
By Pattie LaCroix
April 30, 2007
Getting people to turn their talk into tactics, their chat into action, is the challenge for all public engagement campaigns. One of the classic problems when communicating is that we tend to present our perspective in our own way of speaking, with little consideration to the listener’s environment. What results is often a perspective that is shaped by absolutes, filled with jargon, and delivered from our own environment into other varied environments. There is little chance that this kind of messaging will glean the results that you hope for, and even far less of a chance that you will engage people online.
The online space is a space of collaboration, two-way dialogue, and user-generated content with opportunities for people to connect with one another. Pushing out your point of view with no entry point for dialogue or personalization of the content will limit the impact of your public engagement initiatives.
Purnima Chawla is the executive director of the Center for Nonprofit Strategies, and she notes that keeping your audience in mind is central to creating communication that is authentic.
“Above all, communication must be authentic. Tailoring your message to your audience means taking the audience’s perspective into account - speaking to audience members rather than at them. It does not mean losing your own perspective or compromising your values to tell people what they want to hear.”You can’t really persuade someone to act if it they feel like they are on the other end of a bullhorn that is blasting out a message important only to them. The purpose of your message is to provoke someone to do something. To do this, keep in mind:
It is great if you can provide information in a way that helps people really connect or tune in. To do this, consider the following:
- The environment - focus on the environment in which your message is being received, not delivered.
- The medium - take advantage of the medium you are using to deliver your message.
- The words - use language that will resonate with your audience, avoid “internal speak”.
The online space plays a vital role in any public engagement campaign. This space has the ability to take your message to the “viral” level. Good viral messages are not easy to create. Provoking someone to pass along your message to their social or professional network is what makes a campaign virally strong online. This “pass along” provocation is not specific to an issue, but rather to the properties of the culture of the Internet.
- Overbranding your message: Putting your visual identity everywhere on the message can be distracting and feel too self-serving rather than issue-centred.
- Statistics: Don’t overwhelm people by hitting them over the head with a deluge of stats.
- Story: Tell people a story they can relate to; this is far more powerful in persuading people to take action than a list of stats.
- Personalize: If you can make your message personal, chances are you will make a connection with your audience, plus they will be more likely to pass your message on to others.
If your online message is humourous, entertaining or contains new information important to your audience, it stands a good chance of being passed along online.
In the next column in this series on public engagement and the Internet we will look at messaging and language in our public engagement campaign.
Pattie LaCroix has provided strategic leadership in crafting integrated communications and fundraising strategies to nonprofits for more than a decade. As CEO of Catapult Media she is passionate about the power of storytelling in engaging your audience and building support for your work. You can reach Pattie at www.catapultmedia.ca.
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