Gain Traction with an Irresistible 3-Step Communication Strategy

Recently, Tobi and I took part in a three-day intensive communications strategy coaching program (coaches need coaches!). While the motivation to attend was to strengthen our organization’s overall communication strategy, the real golden nuggets of value turned out to be takeaways that are applicable for the work YOU do!

Leaders of volunteers and others at your organization are often overwhelmed with many competing priorities and keeping an open line of communication with volunteers can often be overlooked in the day-to-day.

Having a strategy in place helps busy staff save time and increase focus by improving and simplifying the work they’re doing. They can do so by consistently applying one simple formula to almost every aspect of their communication strategy.

This formula can be used for recruitment efforts, but also be recreated for other volunteer engagement goals and deployed across any number of platforms. In short, it can serve as an invaluable tool wherever you want to incite an audience to action.

What is this system that can save time and move people to action?? Keep reading to learn more!

Simplicity: The Foundation for Your
Communication Strategy

A foundation of all communications is to change behavior, but given too many choices, people freeze and become indecisive.

You’ve felt it, maybe in the cereal aisle at the grocery store or the last time you ate from a buffet (remember buffet lines? Mmmm…). There’s just so much to choose from, you wind up grabbing whatever’s closest or fits most safely within your comfort zone.

Too many options can confuse your audience. So, why do nonprofits continue to complicate things?

It’s time for a better way, and we’ve got the formula.

This formula will keep your messaging contained and simplified, which will increase the likelihood that your audience will read your message and act. Whether you’re recruiting volunteers or fundraising, you want to offer only a few choices and limit the possible actions to be taken.

People are busy and their attention is easily sidetracked by the endless stream of information and requests bombarding them every day. Using this messaging formula will help you keep things short and sweet.

Asking for small, incremental actions gets your audience in the habit of responding to your messages. Once you’ve established a routine of positive response, your readers go with what they know any time they are in doubt.

Another important reason to adopt more simple messaging is that you and your team busy. There is a laundry list of tasks that need attention. Streamline where you can.

Knowing that everyone has a system in place will make crafting all your messages easier. And, if we’re honest, knowing you have a reliable framework for getting something done reduces your reluctance to share responsibility.

Gain Momentum with Three Baby Steps

In addition to simplifying the options you offer volunteers, breaking information down into chunks that make it easy to digest can also turbocharge the effectiveness of your communication strategy.

Through baby steps, you can change hearts and minds gradually until they are completely committed to taking action.

You can use the basic framework below to develop a small series of simple messages, and you’ll be able to easily adapt compelling power for use across a variety of channels including:

Social media posts
In-person talks – from stage or one-on-one
Live or recorded video
A newsletter
An email series

This persuasive technique can also be effectively employed to garner support for an initiative you’re proposing or as the basis for a fundraising appeal. It is also well-suited to the recruitment and re-engagement of volunteers.

Learn more about engaging volunteers with email.

How It Works

Have you ever fallen victim to this riddle?

Say “silk”

Spell “silk”

What does a cow drink?

The same sort of mental connections that make us hesitate before thinking or saying “water” (You did say water, right?) are the ones you will produce in effective persuasive messaging.

It’s easier than you think.

So, how do you use this method for communicating with volunteers?

Since recruiting volunteers is common problem to solve for, we’ll use that as the example for revealing the formula.

Research First

To craft the most impactful message, make sure that you’re targeting the correct audience.

Based on what you know about their motivations to volunteer, you can make an educated guess about what will attract their attention and participation.

Learn more on social media messaging and volunteer motivations.

Say you determine that your ideal audience for the role of museum tour guide has Career and Social motivations. In other words, the volunteer is interested in volunteering to network, add skills to their resume, and prepare for their future of work. This means they are seeking participation to improve their job prospects and to develop social ties.

What your compelling, persuasive message series will need to achieve is to address who this prospect is, who they want to become, and how volunteering with your organization gets them there.

So, through baby steps, you will move them from where they are NOW to where they WILL/CAN be by volunteering.

Determine Your Three Stages

This formula is based on building momentum using three “touches.” Depending on your circumstance, these touches may be text messages, emails, phone calls, or a combination.

Each touch is designed to move the audience a little closer to the action you want them to take. So, you’ll need to decide the incremental steps it would take to get someone from where they are to taking the ultimate action you want them to take.

Having three stages isn’t random. Science tells us that the brain enjoys threes. It’s enough repetition to start feeling a pattern or connection but, not so many as to overwhelm.

Once you’ve implemented this strategy a few times, it will become easier for you to break any large ask down into your three stages.

Let’s assume the audience for our example case are people that have been on your email list or receiving your newsletter for a while.

They’re already basically familiar with what your organization does and have demonstrated their interest in your cause by providing you and email address (opting-in in one way or another).

From this warm audience, you want to recruit 2-3 people for a museum tour guide position.

The incremental stages could be:

- Watch a virtual tour
- Meet the team
- Receive training as a tour guide

Touch #1

Speaking directly to your ideal volunteer candidate, in the first touch communication, you’ll want to thank them for supporting your cause and let them know you appreciate the time they take to keep up to date on your organization’s activities through the newsletter.

Convey that you understand they have empathy with your cause, and you know, if the right opportunity presented itself, they would want to step in and help even more.

Now, aware that the IDEAL candidate has Career and Social motivations to volunteer, they might be someone who aspires to one day be a curator. Maybe they’re currently in school or working in science but view the opportunity to volunteer as a museum tour guide to connect with people in the industry they seek and to develop skills that will support their career path.

You focus your messaging to appeal to only those factors.

Like this:

“You would love to learn more about what goes into planning the collections and know all about the provenance of each notable piece. Perhaps you aspire to one day be a curator of historic pieces, celebrated for your in-depth experience in antiquities.

Imagine sharing your passion for archeologic finds with others who are fascinated by their wonders and are experiencing them for the first time…”

What’s happening here is that you’re feeding their aspirations and motivators. You’re speaking to what their heart wants. They can envision themselves with the experience and knowledge to become the curator they’ve dreamed about and you have described!

“We’d like to invite you to click on the link below to watch a behind-the-scenes tour of the upcoming XYZ Exhibit.”

Refrain from saying more and creating complexity. A single action is all you’re asking from them in this stage. It could be to download a document or answer a quiz. The point is to get them to take this stage #1 action and to leave them wanting more.

Touch #2

So, many people – among them, your IDEAL museum tour guide volunteers – (took the quiz or downloaded the infographic or) watched the video. Great!

Being the strategic communicator that you are, you included stage 2 messaging in that video that they watched.

The video again spoke of achieving career aspirations and enjoying social engagement, ideally, from the perspective of a current volunteer tour guide.

This person shared how they fit volunteering into their busy schedule, and it has paid off in developing their knowledge about the collections and in the many like-minded friends they’ve made through their volunteering.

This gives your prospective tour guide candidate the notion that an ordinary person, who lives nearby, who doesn’t appear to possess any superhuman capabilities, has successfully made strides in the direction of their same dreams. That gives social proof that their objectives can be achieved by following this path.

The action you ask for in stage #2 is for them to meet the rest of the tour guide team. That can be as simple as a link click to a page with testimonials and biographies of your team. If this is a full-court press recruitment effort, maybe you’ll host a Zoom call or in-person event.

For our example, your IDEAL volunteer tour guide candidate clicks to the webpage. Then, they’re ready for the third message in your series.

Touch #3

By this time, your prospect knows, likes, and trusts you. They have responded to your calls to action and been rewarded along the way.

In the third message to your ideal volunteer candidate, you’ll prompt them to remember that the career and social aspirations they hold for themselves are available to them.

Remind them that they’ve seen how volunteering as a museum tour guide has been great at growing the social network and career prospects not only of the guide in the video but, for several other team members they’ve read about or met. Reassure them that this pathway is available to them.

Now, invite them to attend an upcoming orientation to learn more and meet other people who are as passionate about antiquities.

Boom! Baby steps have led to a BIG result!

Now, your big ask – to become a volunteer tour guide – has become the natural next step. If you follow this system, truly ideal prospects will most likely be signed on before you even ask. They have been led to the action you wanted them to take through your application of compelling communication strategy.

How the Formula Fits into Your
Communication Strategy

While we often think communicating with volunteers needs to be complicated OR can be achieved by one single email, the reality is much more elegant and simple.

Three baby steps.

Regardless of the format or channels being used, every message you send should be determined by strategic objectives.

In our example, the objective was to recruit optimal candidates for open tour guide positions. Every message being sent to your constituents should have as specific a goal.

Whether to volunteer or become a donor to your cause is just one of many, many decisions a person may be making on a given day.

By offering smaller steps and creating a pattern of positive reward for taking those steps you can make the decision easier.

Here’s a great quote from Tobi on this very subject:

“If the public has barriers that prevent arriving at a conclusion, we may need to help. One way is by better organizing information to help volunteers choose how to get involved (availability, interests, timeframe, etc.). By paying closer attention to how we organize and communicate information, we can decrease the cognitive burden of decision-making.”

Your communication strategy is not about manipulating people. It’s about helping them more quickly and efficiently reach their own desires and goals.

When you keep your audience front and center, the writing gets easier and easier and the results you seek are more frequent.

Try this formula out the next time you have a request to make of your audience. We’d love to hear your results!