“I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You”
Developing quality content to raise funds, attract customers, create a network of advocates, and much more
What do entrepreneurs, teachers, consultants, service providers, internal managers, and nonprofit champions all have in common? They MUST be masterful storytellers to succeed.
An ability to create a “story” for your message is the critical business skill you need to connect with your audience, whether you are:
creating a pitch deck to attract outside investors,
attempting to educate and attract customers for your product or service,
advocating for an internal project or program,
seeking donations for your nonprofit,
telling your governance story and ESG messaging to proxy advisors,
teaching to a classroom of students, or
communicating difficult internal issues to your board.
And that connection with the audience is the ticket to inspiring them to act, learn, invest, make decisions, and so on.
One of the most frequent conversations I have with clients and colleagues, especially those who deal in highly technical or complex information, is how to create a message that resonates with the intended audience and accomplishes the goal at hand.
Great content, whether written or spoken, does not just happen. It comes from critical thinking, refinement of messaging, testing, and revision. It’s also a lot easier to edit than it is to create. So below, I’ve assembled some of my most popular tips (and of course some great songs for inspiration) for when you are staring at that blinking cursor, or your intended audience isn’t connecting with your message.
Get Ready, and Go Analog
There is a reason journaling is so popular with therapists! The act of writing everything that comes to mind is a great way to clear out the cobwebs and identify some of your most influential messages. This can be frustrating for some people, especially those with a highly results oriented drive. They want immediate and perfect messages right away, but that rarely happens. The act of writing for clarity is going to result in a lot of words that never see the light of day. Don’t worry. By simply putting your thoughts down, without editing, you will gather insights that you might otherwise overlook.
Did you get the part about “not editing” yourself? Figure out a way to just put content down on paper or screen using free form/stream of consciousness. How?
Set a timer for 30 minutes and say, during that 30 minutes, that you will not reread anything that you’ve written.1
Use a typewriter2 or something equally "disconnected," like the spiral notebook you used in third grade.
Tell yourself you won’t stop typing or let the pen leave the page for a period of time (a good idea is around 30 minutes). You may have stuff in the middle that includes your grocery list, but just keep moving forward.
Use a Remarkable (my favorite device of the past several years).
Find an app that blocks your ability to access the internet for 30 minutes.
Better yet: Take the opportunity to reboot your router (which if you have Comcast/Xfinity will take AT LEAST 30 minutes, and may never come back up, ensuring hours and hours without interruption from anything in your house that requires internet).
But what do I write about?
“I Just Want To Get To Know Ya” (My Audience)
Create a customer/investor/audience avatar. Think about what a typical representative of your target cares about?
What is their current experience related to what you have to offer?
What are the things that frustrate them?
What are they worried about?
What should they be worried about that they don’t even KNOW they should be worried about?
What are some things that would help them be more successful? What limits their success?
What are the things around them that are impacting their business, their finances, or any other aspect of their lives critical to your product or service?
What are their requirements or what do they want/need from you (even if they don’t know it yet)?
Want more prompts about your audience to stimulate your creativity? Click here.
Cluster (just like Netflix but without the need for data scientists)
Review what you’ve written above and think about how it relates to each other.
Are there common themes across all the questions? Pick a few and focus on those for another session or two.
Are there particular messages or strategies that might appeal to certain clusters of your audience?
Keep your writing sessions going on a regular basis until you find that you are repeating yourself.
“Without Me” - Establishing Your Unique Value
Now that you’ve written at length about your customer or audience, turn the pen inward for another session. Consider what you want your audience to know. Explain how your product works as if you are sharing it with an alien who just arrived on Earth. Or explain it in a way your grandma can understand (especially the grandma that doesn’t have a computer and only watches Family Feud).
How is your audience’s world different without your product/service/issue in it?
How is your audience’s world different with your product/service/issue in it?
What are the three most important messages about the value of my product or service?
What are the most common objections and how can your product/service overcome them?
For the complex subject matter, what is something “everyday” that might be similar in function or how it works. The solution is like “X” in that it does “Y.” A memorable visual doesn’t hurt either.
For example, my solution allows for a single signon to access all of the areas of the system. It works a lot like a master key for an apartment complex allowing you to seamlessly access every unit without having to carry a ring of keys like Schneider from “One Day At A Time.”
What are some of the messages used by your competitors or businesses that are somewhat comparable?
How does my product work (in three sentences or less)?
Want more prompts about how to communicate your value proposition? Click here.
Keep your writing sessions going on a regular basis until you find that you are repeating yourself (again). And if you are explaining something really complex, keep re-writing the explanation using half the word count until it is crisp and succinct.
Now it’s time to refine….
“Been Caught Stealing” - Techniques from Other Disciplines
One of the elements of my own professional story is how public relations, IT, legal, consulting and even teaching all require transferable skillsets related to: (1) understanding a complex issue or problem, (2) distilling the context and information down to key ideas, which (3) enable effective decision making, communications, understanding, or the creation of strategy.
Last week, I was reminded once again of how tools and techniques cross disciplines.
Here’s how it happened…
Stealing from the lawyers
I was explaining how to analyze a legal issue using the IRAC method in my business law class. [I think I hear a collective groan from our readers who went to law school.]
For the nonlawyers, the IRAC method is simply this: Issue (question), Rules, Application of the rules to the facts, and Conclusion.
As an illustration:
The first sentence is to state the Issue, such as “is John negligent when he allows a puddle to form on the floor of his restaurant?” The next part is to summarize the basic Rules related to the issue. Here, the basic elements of negligence are (1) does the person have a duty? (2) did they breach the duty? (3) was there harm inflicted on another party? And (4) was the harm caused by the breach of duty. Then, the students are asked to Apply the rules to the facts of the case, answering each element with how the facts relate to the rule elements. Finally, they establish a Conclusion based on the application that John either is or is not negligent.
As I was explaining how to do this, I was struck at how much the approach aligns to various situations with communications as well. For example, by adjusting the IRAC a bit, it could apply from everything from a pitch meeting, to explaining a complex technical project or organization, to a presentation for your Board of Directors, and even your social media content. How?
ISSUE: First, what problem are you trying to solve? Said another way, what issue are you trying to address?
RULES/CONTEXT: Then, the rules become more about the context of the situation or the context that your project, business, or issue operates in. What are the key messages surrounding your product, service, or issue? What is the competitive landscape? Threats? Opportunities? What are the objections that you know that the audience might have?
APPLICATION OF THE CONTEXT TO FACTS: Now, apply the context to the issue you are trying to solve. This is where your audience can start to see the value proposition of your information.
LEAD THE AUDIENCE TO THE DESIRED CONCLUSION: After meticulously applying the context to the facts, you can lead your audience to the “reason based” conclusion, which includes a clear way forward, whatever that needs to look like.
Stealing from fiction writers…
Another great way to refine your story is to think like a fiction writer. All great stories have a protagonist, an antagonist (which in your case could be a competitor, industry in need of disruption, or an adversary in the form of an issue or problem that you are trying to solve), conflict (which is the reality of the issue that gets the action going), challenges along the way, a climax and an ultimate resolution. Will our hero face his issue and come out a winner?
For business people, this is also a great way to capture the hearts and minds of your audience.
First, consider this: Who is the hero?
Does the audience have a chance to be the hero? For example, is the person who funds your next phase the hero of the exchange?
Are you enabling the customer to be the hero? Meaning, are you providing the means for them to win their own battle by leveraging what you are offering?
Is the product or solution the hero? Meaning, will the introduction of this new solution be the hero to save them from some unpleasant or scary part of their world?
Or is the accomplishment of your mission the hero of the story? Especially important for those in nonprofit settings, is the mission what is going to address the issue in a way that makes the world a better place?
Now, think about how the hero is affected by the conflict and the problem to be solved. What are the obstacles that make their goal even harder to obtain? Who are their adversaries? How did they persevere through the darkness? How can you make the story something that your audience can see themselves in, identifying with the hero or the hero’s journey in a way that they can see themselves in a similar story and take action accordingly?
Simplifying Your Message (More stealing, this time from IT)
I have sat in countless meetings with highly intelligent technical people who cannot explain their technology solutions to a layperson. Often, the individual even realizes that no one can understand what they are talking about, but they don’t know how to fix it.
A great way to simplify is to return to the requirements that you defined above. Most IT people will tell you that a great requirement is one that has very clear “acceptance criteria,” meaning the user (in this case your audience) can say, “yes the requirement was met,” or “no the requirement was not met.” This is also how lawyers view deliverables or service levels in contracts - when their goal is to make the particular language so clear and unambiguous that each item is a checklist of delivery that can be answered with a simple yes or no.
Same goes for your messaging.
Does it address the key goals of your audience?
Remember the old “What’s In It For Me” (WIIFM) test? It’s still relevant when considering the value of your message.
Does it illustrate how your product/service specifically meets the goals?
Does it provide the necessary information to make a decision?
Will a layperson understand it?
Does it clearly state the next steps/actions required?
If you can answer YES to these “requirements,” or other requirements of your particular communication, you are ready to move to the next step.
Test, refine, and test again
Another thing we can all learn (or “steal”) from IT is testing. Testing whether the solution meets the requirements, and user acceptance testing to see if it addresses the needs communicated by the user. In this instance, your audience.
But how can you test?
Parse the words. Are there acronyms, or terms that are not common knowledge? Find ways to replace as many of these as possible (preferably all of them) with words that most people know and use in everyday conversation.
Shorten your sentences to subjects, verbs, adjectives, and a few conjunctions. And listen to Stephen King, remove the -ly words and adverbs.
Check for passive voice and remove it because it causes you to lose the power of your message. The best tip I ever saw about this is: “If you are afraid your sentence is in the passive voice, add the phrase "by zombies." If it still makes grammatical sense, it's in the passive voice.”
Call your favorite “Classic Girl” (aka mom), say “listen to my great idea,” and read it to her. See if she understands it by making her explain it back to you. If she doesn’t understand or can’t explain it to you, keep refining…and know that she is still happy that you called.
Read or say it out loud. Record it. See if it sounds the way you think it does. Even better, film a video of yourself presenting the information if that’s how it will be delivered.
Test your messaging on individuals or mentors in your network that have different kinds of backgrounds, and a commitment to keeping your information confidential.
Find someone within your target audience to be an advance reader - test the messages on them and get their reactions. This can also ensure that they advocate for you “in the room.”
If all else fails, remember this: For most business documents, a good rule of thumb is to aim for a 7th or 8th grade reading level. Microsoft Word provides this information for you, and if you are not using Word, there are other tools available to assess the readability of a document.
Create Themes Like a Season of TV (special considerations for repeatable communications)
There are times when you might have repeated chances to tell “chapters” of your story. For example, a Board of Directors might meet quarterly, or your funders might want progress reports every couple of months. This can pose a unique challenge for business leaders, entrepreneurs, or anyone struggling with how to keep momentum going and provide information at the right level of detail. The challenge of these unique types of communications is keeping a ribbon of “theme” flowing through each interaction, tying concepts together and showing progress toward a goal clearly - all while not being repetitive.
Never fear, this is where you can look to your favorite television show for inspiration. Consider the arc of the season. What is the long-term arc of your messaging or the goals you are trying to achieve? How will you set expectations about the interim steps and your progress against those steps? If there are issues or decisions needed, how will you “refresh” the viewer about what happened in prior episodes, and then introduce the new action of this one?
And if you are still stuck, there is always ChatGPT.
This article is dedicated to one of PrepOverCoffee’s first subscribers…she is a talented communications professional, and one of my favorite people on the planet. She recently started a new job (wow are those people lucky to have her), and she sent me a note that I had to admit made me cry a bit. She said “...something you said in your Alpha Cats post at the end of the year really resonated with me right as I was making the decision to take this new role -- so thank YOU!”
…and then she quoted me to me!
"I wish for you to be the alpha cat: have the bravery to invest in yourself and do the most scary things, the confidence to “own” the room, the boldness to not let the bullies and the nonbelievers that you encounter change how you feel about a situation or yourself, and the fearlessness to bet on YOU every time."
…and it made my day. Thank you for yet another gift of connection with the PrepOverCoffee community.
For more on ways to “chunk” time in order to be really productive, check out the Pomodoro Technique.
Remember these fine partners in creativity? They helped me finish draft 1 of my novel without interruptions and distractions! Try it, you won’t go back.