For a Cause

What is your audience looking for?

2024-07-13T14:04:00.004-04:00

And what do you want to give them?

photo: emiliano vittoriosi/unsplash

How can I give my users what they want while getting what I want?❞

That's a question Google says you should ask about your website.

The first step in answering this is to figure out what your users' goals are, what your goals are and how they work together.

It's a transaction.

Instant website

2024-06-02T20:47:00.001-04:00

photo: kalhh

For grass-roots groups and issues campaigns, you can thrown up a website in a half hour using Blogger, Google's blogging platform. ¶

It's free, and easy to administer and hand off.

On the web, write like a journalist

2024-02-04T11:58:00.000-05:00

The forms and tropes of traditional news writing might have been made for the internet. ¶

In a way, they were.

The road your message travels

2023-08-02T17:50:00.000-04:00

Mission, audience, medium ¶

If the mission is your starting place, then medium is the bridge to your audience. ¶

Marry these three and your message will be compelling and true.

The power of understatement

2022-03-05T12:15:00.002-05:00

During the Second World War, one man recalls, ❝

Our bulletins in German were the most objective sober bulletins of all that were put out by the BBC. We could not afford to be caught in any inaccuracy.¶ ❝ The German listeners would not swallow anything, because they were on the lookout to prove us liars. We had to be 101 percent accurate. We had to claim less than we actually did.

There is nothing more effective than saying that there has been a moderately severe raid on Essen, when 2,000 people have actually been killed. That sort of thing gives the enemy cold shivers.

Put your audience first

2022-01-09T21:33:00.006-05:00

You may have seen this making the rounds: ¶

A typical website visit in 2022

1. Figure out how to decline all but essential cookies
2. Close the support widget asking if I need help
3. Stop the auto-playing video
4. Close the “subscribe to our newsletter” pop-up
5. Try and remember why I came here in the first place
— Andy Budd (@andybudd) January 2, 2022

The parallels between good design, good writing, and good user experience are revealing. Writing and design might as well be aspects of the same thing.

Which they are.

Specify your work

2021-06-23T17:22:00.000-04:00

It's helpful to craft a functional description of each ongoing communications project. ¶ ❝

Advocacy Week is a weekly email roundup of events in the nation's capitol. Stories are short with links to further information. ❞ ❝

The Advocate is a quarterly journal in print of ideas and trends in advocacy. It serves readers with feature stories and editorial departments while promoting our programs and thought leadership.

For a Cause is a personal blog to explore the craft of advocacy messaging and storytelling. Blog posts are short and seek to explore and reflect on ideas, concepts, and practices. They are published periodically on no fixed schedule.

More than a pretty typeface

2021-06-22T16:48:00.000-04:00

Design is an editorial element ¶

Graphic design plays a central role in carrying your message and brand.

Giving editorial direction to designers and artists is a core communications skill.

Why Blogger?

2021-05-21T12:14:00.000-04:00

Appropriate technology ¶

I've managed websites on many platforms.

Does my choice here mean I think Blogger is the best of all?

Blog what you (don't) know

2021-04-19T17:38:00.000-04:00

"Write what you know" is, proverbially, advice to writers of fiction seeking authenticity. Don't write a police procedural without first learning something about police procedure. ¶

It's good advice, and might apply to other communications projects too. But journalists and story tellers do not need to be subject-matter experts about anything other their craft.

That is what makes this job fun.

Give it away

2021-03-15T16:44:00.000-04:00

Education and outreach, meet content marketing ¶

Today, let's borrow something from the for-profit marketing world.

Something the marketers borrowed from us. ¶

If you give stuff away, you will make friends, build credibility, and create relationships.