Broadband Advocacy Tips and Tools
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This document provides guidance on developing effective messages to advocate for broadband initiatives. It recommends knowing your goal and objectives, who can help achieve them, and how to tailor messages based on your audience's filters, values and experiences. Specifically, it suggests understanding your audience's perspective on the issue, existing beliefs, and potential barriers to being heard. The key is developing "silver bullet messages" that tap into the audience's core concerns, overcome barriers, have a clear ask within their comfort zone, emphasize rewards and convey hope toward the initiative's success.
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Broadband Advocacy Tips and Tools
- 1. Broadband Advocacy Workshop: Creating a Message Bernadine Joselyn Ann Treacy
- 2. How do you describe your broadband initiative?
- 3. How to be heard • Know your goal and objectives • Know who can help you get there • Know their filters, values, experiences • Then, choose messages and methods • Check, to be sure.
- 4. Know your broad goal Then, know your objective • Specific • Measurable • Attainable • Realistic • Time-bound
- 5. Know who can help you get there
- 6. Know their filters • Think about the issue/topic from the audience’s perspective. – Are they ready for what you want to tell them? – Most effective: meet your audience where they are – Think in stages • Share knowledge • Build will • Reinforce action
- 7. Know their values, experiences • What do they already believe about your issue? – Connect with existing beliefs to build a bridge to your ideas • What are the barriers that might prevent your audience from hearing what you have to say? – To really be heard, you must anticipate and overcome those barriers
- 8. Develop the Message • Remember your goal • Tap into core concern of the audience • You may have different messages for different audiences, but make sure they do not contradict each other
- 9. Silver Bullet Messages • Are based on the value or concern your audience holds that you want to tap; • Are worded using clear language your audience can understand; • Overcome – rather than reinforce – their barrier; • Have an ask that is in their comfort zone (or offers a benefit that outweighs the risk); • Emphasize reward and convey hope toward success; and • Are consistent with your chosen theme.
- 10. Connecting with the audience • Who delivers your message? • How best to carry message? • Reality check
Editor's Notes
- Give your elevator pitch to your neighbor. Pretend they are someone influential.
- [read slide] Darn—no silver bullet. No magic wand, or miracle cream.
- Let’s walk through these. First, know your broad goal (like, maybe broadband adoption). Easy. But what’s really going to make the difference is how well you can define your objective or objectives. What’s the first measurable step you need to accomplish within the next 12 months to move toward your goal? Watch out for vague objectives like “raising public awareness.” Usually public awareness is not an objective in and of itself. It is a midpoint on the road to changing behavior. You could do a poll before and after your campaign and find out that many people are aware of your campaign, but didn’t change their behavior or take action. Ask yourself, why do you want to raise awareness? Do you want to pass a bill or change consumer behavior? State a specific objective, and then decide how you are going to measure your progress toward this objective. “Stopping global climate change” or “saving the children” are certainly worthy aspirations, but they are big visions, not concrete objectives. Instead, “Increasing the number of households who recycle” or “providing health care coverage to all children in our state” are achievable objectives.
- Who do you ultimately need to influence or activate to achieve that perfectly framed objective? In some cases, who can help you reach the ultimate decision maker? [who would you say are the most important audiences in your broadband work?} Tips: The general public is NOT a target audience The media is NOT a target audience. Media outreach is generally a means to an end—a tactic You may have more than one target audience. Actually, I would imagine that you would have several. Prioritize them. I like to use an inverted pyramid, with my most important audiences at the top. This is not a numbers game. This is about really understanding who can make a difference. I like this graphic—especially the fact that it was ten families that pressed for the 9/11 commission—what an impact! This chart comes from a really powerful online tool produced by Spitfire Strategies, and organization that works with a lot of nonprofits and foundations. It’s one of several free online resources I love, and for which I have pulled together links.
- Once you know who your target audience is, begin to really think about the issue from their perspective. Are they ready for what I want to tell them? How can I best meet them where they are at? In Blandin’s community leadership training program, we often call these “filters.” Of any other elements of this work, this piece is especially important when we’re talking about broadband. Stage 1: Sharing knowledge. People need basic knowledge on the issue before they can even consider acting on it. In this stage, the task is to share information on the issue without overwhelming the audience. You want to help the audience develop a personal connection to the issue so they care – make the issue relevant by appealing to their values and lifestyle, or by connecting the issue to their family, friends or community. With your information, you also want to share empowering solutions, so people feel they can help make a difference. [anybody have a good example of why raising basic knowledge has been critical ?] • Stage 2: Building will. Building the will to act means overcoming the barriers your audience may have. In this stage, you are no longer sharing information. Instead, the task is to ease the audience’s perceived risk. You can overcome the barriers by respecting the audience’s comfort zone and asking them to take a manageable action that fits their lifestyle. You can also show them a leader taking action first, or position the action as the social norm—something that Chambers of Commerce are well positioned to do. You must offer hope for positive change, and show that the benefits of taking action outweigh the risks. Position your audience as the hero – not the villain – who can take action to make a difference. • Stage 3: Reinforcing action. Once people have taken action – even a small one – on behalf of your issue, reward them for doing the right thing. Remind them that they’ve done a good thing, and they’ll be much more likely to respond next time you ask. In this stage, the task is to celebrate your victories with the people who helped make them happen. If they don’t yet know about, care about and believe in your issue, they're in Stage 1. If they know, care and believe – but aren’t quite ready to act – they're in Stage 2. If it’s time to salute them for action already taken and position for next steps, their in Stage 3 There is a great description of this approach in the Activation Point tool.
- As you continue to think about your issue from the perspective of your target audience, the next step is to figure out what will compel the audience to move toward your objective. What do they already believe about the issue? You must be respectful of their thoughts and opinions on the issue. And you can connect with their existing beliefs to build a bridge to your ideas and help them see your issue as personally relevant. People care more about an issue when it’s packaged in a way that aligns with their values. Is this hitting home for some of you? A lot—perhaps most—of broadband conversations happen in a policy context. But we are here to stand with our communities as they design and claim vibrant, resilient—connected futures. And it will be on their terms, and in their terms. Remember: This is about their value system, not yours. You cannot assume that if people know what you know, they will do what you do. Many people know that big cars have high emissions levels, but they choose to drive them anyway. Perhaps big cars make them feel safer. Perhaps smaller cars do not offer them enough cargo space. If you want to connect with your target audience and make them your ally, you need to understand how they think. It is always easier to tap into a value someone already holds than to create a new one. You must also identify the barriers that might prevent your audience from hearing what you have to say. People have a long and varied list of reasons for not taking action. To really be heard, you must anticipate and overcome those barriers. In some cases, you might be asking your audience to step outside their comfort zone – understanding the risks and rewards your audience associates with your issue can help you have a much more productive conversation. Consider the lifestyle of your audience. The best way to make it easy for audiences to engage with your issue is to ensure it fits with their lifestyle. If you have multiple audiences, choose one value and one barrier for each audience and list them below. Let’s talk about this for a minute. Who has an audience in mind? What do you believe they already believe about your issue? What do you know about existing beliefs?
- Before you get to specific messages, what is the big picture you want to convey to the audience on the issue? This is what defines how you’ll approach the conversation with your audiences. The theme will guide your messaging and reinforce the core concern you want to tap into. For example, if your audience’s core concern is their pocketbook, your theme might be “we can’t afford not to invest in the solution.” The key is to select a theme that springs from the audience’s values, not yours. Consider the tone as well. An optimistic tone can help empower and motivate your audience. Hope is also an incredibly powerful incentive for a person to engage with your organization – a sense of hope, of possibility, enhances a person’s desire to help. If you have multiple audiences, the theme for each audience should match the core concerns you identified for that audience. You can use different themes for different audiences, but make sure your themes do not contradict each other. Once you pick a theme, you must stick with the same theme throughout your communications efforts.
- Who delivers your message is just as important as what you choose to say. Tip: People listen to people more than institutions. For example…. Through research, Save the Swordfish organizers found that seafood consumers listen to and trust food purveyors – and especially chefs – with information about what they should or should not eat. Similarly, chefs had strong credibility with government decision makers as a new voice of expertise in the debate because many could report from firsthand experience that the size of swordfish at docks and fish markets had declined over the years. Chefs had the credibility the campaign needed. They resonated with the target audiences and became highly effective spokespeople. Environmentalists alone could not have delivered the same message and had the same impact. If you have multiple target audiences, you may have multiple messengers. Choose the messenger who will be most credible with each audience. Many communities have used social media breakfasts to do this. They have taken a “show, don’t tell” approach, making space to share stories among local businesses. It’s been very effective in many ways. It’s only after all of these steps that we talk about tools--meetings, web sites, newsletters, a press conference, letters, phone calls, paid advertising, or other means for getting your message out to your audience. Your communications tactics are how you carry your message to your audience. Tactics need to take into account your objective, audience target, and message. The best communications efforts use the most direct tactics possible, focusing specifically on target audiences and what you have come to know about their filters, values and experiences. Remember as you go forth in your efforts, communications plans are not written in stone. A good plan is dynamic and may need to be altered along the way