Insight on Inciting Passion

I just got finished reading this post about how pr pros should keep their eyes on the ball when ensuring their clients are "inciting" passion in their audiences. This notion is, on the one hand, obvious: it's good to keep people engaged and excited about a cause so that (let me hit my cynical button for a second) they keep signing their checks to you. Obvious, that is, to you as a pr superstar; not so obvious, however, to clients, especially if they are new to the social media/pr game and think that sending out a random tweet every few hours constitutes staying on the cutting edge.

Case in point: I'm now freelancing as the media guru for a new-ish nonprofit that's been doing good work in South America. Their bona fides are tremendous: they send doctors from a world-renowned medical university to a third-world country to treat and prevent cervical cancer in native women. A major figure within the university is intimately involved, and the care the volunteers give is top-notch. These volunteers are highly-motivated. The organization was recently awarded a grant from a reputable place, and they have a roster of donors. They even have a catchy acronym-y name.

What could be better?

Well, you can have the coolest nonprofit in recorded history, but if nobody knows about it, it's not going to get you where you need to go. Key to getting the word out about the organization is of course your basic array of press releases, newspaper placements, TV/radio interviews, etc. And also, increasingly, blog entries, tweets, Facebook updates, and foursquare check-ins.

But again, as Emily Taylor's article attests, none of this will do any good unless every single message you transmit is custom-designed to incite excitement in your audience. And that comes with knowing your audience well. In turn, especially if you're just starting to work with an organization (as I am), you must insist that your client thinks through both to whom they want to target their pr efforts and - and this is really important - how they want to target them.

I've been doing a fair amount of reflection lately, especially on the latter point. I could be proven wrong since this is my first freelance gig, but I will be asking exactly what sort of tone the organization wants to set, especially in our social media campaign. I see plenty of organizations who send out very formal tweets around the same time every day - "Watch live as we drill a well in Mozambique" - and, I mean, that's fine. But why not personalize it? Add a little humor here and there? "Watch as Joltin' Joe Hamlin journeys to ctr of the earth looking for H2O!" Or something. Anything with a bit of personality, to make folks feel like they're in for a fun, rewarding experience.

Of course, our press releases cannot have this same tone, given that I'm going to be trying to get them picked up by large and small news outlets alike (not to mention corporate donors who probably don't have time for creative tweets). But blog posts can and should have some flava. In line with this, though, you'll need to give your clients a head's up regarding the tone you'll be using across different platforms.

Yeah, sure, the nonprofit is running the show and, let's be honest, a group of medical school doctors probably won't be overly-excited about fun, personal-ish tweets. But you should (and I will be doing this) really try to convince them of the power informal-seeming tweets/facebook updates have to getting folks excited about a cause. You're coming at people not as a monolithic institution through Twitter, but as a person who's enthused about a cause. If you don't have a "tonal plan" going in, your authorial voice will shift from post to tweet to update, and people will start to wonder if you know what you're doing.

Audiences want to be entertained/inspired/stoked, and the best way to do this is not only to write novel messages, but also to project them in a consistently creative way. I'll let you know how this plan goes as I implement it.

Oh yeah, and Happy Labor Day everyone!