LIA Messaging Tool Kit Messaging Worksheets 1-6 Welcome to the LIA Messaging Tool Kit, a comprehensive guide of helpful and essential exercises to ensure success in your communication efforts. By completing the following worksheets in this kit, you will arrive at meaningful key messages and delivery strategy: Worksheet 1: Identify the Communication Opportunity Worksheet 2: Build an Audience Profile Worksheet 3: Connect through Emotion Worksheet 4: Develop Key Messages Worksheet 5: Generate a Dialogue with the Target Audience Worksheet 6: Methods and Messengers Before you get started, briefly review the questions in each of the worksheets. Take note of the materials and information that will be important 1
Transcript
LIA Messaging Tool Kit Messaging Worksheets 1-6
Welcome to the LIA Messaging Tool Kit, a comprehensive guide of helpful and essential exercises to ensure success in your communication efforts. By completing the following worksheets in this kit, you will arrive at meaningful key messages and delivery strategy:
Worksheet 1: Identify the Communication Opportunity Worksheet 2: Build an Audience ProfileWorksheet 3: Connect through Emotion Worksheet 4: Develop Key Messages Worksheet 5: Generate a Dialogue with the Target Audience Worksheet 6: Methods and Messengers
Before you get started, briefly review the questions in each of the worksheets. Take note of the materials and information that will be important to have, such as county and community demographics, links to relevant studies and articles, detailed information on media sources, etc.
We recommend beginning any project with a meeting of key players in which you work through at least the first three steps of the tool kit. If you have done a thorough job with these exercises, the remaining exercises should be easy to complete on your own.
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Worksheet #1: Communication Opportunity
Purpose: This is the first step in the messaging process and it begins with an examination of your communication opportunity, in other words, the information you need to deliver. Communications opportunities may include a new program, service, event or campaign. The easiest way to think of it is this: an opportunity is the reason behind why you want to write messages!
Expert Tips: As with every worksheet in this series, we highly recommend that you work with a few people from your organization to help work through the questions. It will not only speed the process, but you will benefit from having multiple perspectives. For the purposes of presentation, we have limited the box size for each answer, but you can and should go beyond the space here. Don’t worry, the box will keep expanding and the pages will shift down.
What to Expect: By the end of Worksheet #1 you will be able to articulate the reason you want to talk to the target audience.
Key Question
This set of questions will help clarify your communication opportunity.
Answer
Answer these questions to the best of your ability. Include your own experiences, knowledge and data to be as specific as possible.
A. What opportunity are we communicating? (An opportunity is the “news” you want to share. Examples include a new program, service, event or activity)
B. Why was this opportunity developed? What problem is this opportunity solving? How will it solve the problem?
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Key Question
This set of questions will help clarify your communication opportunity.
Answer
Answer these questions to the best of your ability. Include your own experiences, knowledge and data to be as specific as possible.
C. How do we know our opportunity will solve the problem? What evidence do we have? Do we have any examples to share?
D. Describe the attributes of the communication opportunity. Exactly how will the program, service, event, etc. work? As an example, if it is an event – what activities are we offering, who is presenting, what information will be provided?
E. Who needs to know about this opportunity for us to be successful? Consider not only the target audience, but also participants, presenters, etc.
F. What do we want or need these people to do? What are the calls to action for each identified group?
G. What are the other steps to doing the call to action? Think of the smaller steps that a target
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Key Question
This set of questions will help clarify your communication opportunity.
Answer
Answer these questions to the best of your ability. Include your own experiences, knowledge and data to be as specific as possible.
audience member would need to take if they were not yet willing or able to do the main call to action. What could they be asked to do first?
H. If we are successful in communicating these calls to action what will be the outcome? Describe a future in which the target audience is doing or has done the call to action. How is his/her life impacted? How is the community impacted? The answer should reflect a positive future. I. Review your answers to the questions above. Using only this content, prepare a three or four sentence summary of your answers. Think of it this way – if someone asked you to quickly sum up what you learned by completing this worksheet, what would you say? This summary is your first key message, which will be edited later in these worksheets.
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Worksheet #2: Audience Profile
Purpose: In this step, you will narrow your target audience down to one representative person and then bring that person to life through storytelling. This step will take the most time, but it is the most important one in the entire process. A clear picture of your target audience is essential to successful messaging. Please note that if you have more than one target audience (and you likely will) you should complete this worksheet for each of the audiences.
Expert Tips: Go deep on details in this worksheet. If you are creating a representative person for your audience, make this person so real to you that you feel like you could meet them walking down the street. If you are profiling a real person, like an elected leader, do your homework first. Visit his/her website, scroll through his/her public social media accounts, review his/her voting record and read articles to extract as much information as you can. The stronger the profile, the more precise your messaging will surely be.
What to Expect: At the completion of this worksheet, you will have a comprehensive profile of one member (or representative) of your target audience. The summary at the end of this worksheet is the basis of your second key message in which you find the very important intersection between what you want to say with what the audience member wants to hear.
Key Question Answer
Answer the questions to the best of your ability using your experience, knowledge and available data. Be thorough and specific.
B. Describe his/her demographics using the questions below as a guide:
What is his/her age? What is his/her racial or ethnic
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Key Question Answer
Answer the questions to the best of your ability using your experience, knowledge and available data. Be thorough and specific.
background? What language(s) does he/she speak? What is his/her income and employment
status? What is his/her marital status? What is his/her education level?
If relevant: How many members are in the target’s
household? How many kids does he/she have? What is the household income? What type of housing does he/she live in? What are demographics of his/her
community?
Include your sources for easy reference later.
C. What do we know about the target audience’s values and beliefs? How might these values and beliefs influence his/her attitudes and behaviors?
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Key Question Answer
Answer the questions to the best of your ability using your experience, knowledge and available data. Be thorough and specific.
Values and beliefs may include: Familial Cultural Spiritual Societal Political
Will they be helpful or stand in the way of performing the behavior?
TIP: The best way to complete this information is to talk to a sample of the target audience. Community partners also may be able to help.
D. Where and how does the target audience receive and share information? What language(s) does he/she prefer to read
and/or speak? Where and how does he/she prefer to get
news and information on a daily basis? For example:
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Key Question Answer
Answer the questions to the best of your ability using your experience, knowledge and available data. Be thorough and specific.
o Family and friends o Social media o Television news o Local events
Who does he/she trust to provide information? Some examples include:
o Family and friends o Community leaderso Physicianso Teachers o Co-workers
Be as specific as you can be with names of media outlets, trusted leaders, community events, etc.
E. What are this person’s obstacles to performing the desired call to action?
Consider concrete obstacles, like transportation and money, as well as intangible barriers like fear or cultural and familial beliefs, etc.
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Key Question Answer
Answer the questions to the best of your ability using your experience, knowledge and available data. Be thorough and specific.
F. How are we helping him/her overcome these barriers? Prepare a list of ways our opportunity solves his/her problems.
G. What will make this person doubt or dismiss the call to action? Prepare a list of reasons for them to believe that the call to action is to his/her benefit.
H. Based on what has been revealed in this worksheet, write a brief story about the target audience member that helps bring them to life. Try to keep it concise at about 4-5 sentences.
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Worksheet #3: Connecting through Emotion
Purpose: Did you know that people remember information better when it is coupled with an emotional response? Infusing emotion into messaging helps your audience know how they should feel about your opportunity and that emotion will also help them retain the information longer. This worksheet will help you identify the mood you are trying to achieve and the tone you will want to take in your messaging to create that mood.
Expert Tips: This worksheet begins with a reflection on context, or the place and time in which your target audience will receive your message. We ask you to describe one scenario, but it is worthwhile to consider a variety of scenarios to help you refine the mood and tone. Will your target audience encounter your message on a poster at the local community center or maybe they will see it browsing Facebook on their phone while riding the bus? How much of his/her attention do you have? How is he/she feeling at that moment? Keep in mind that most people do not separate their own experience and feelings from what they are seeing, hearing or reading. Get in touch with that to make your messages more meaningful in that moment.
What to Expect: By the end of this worksheet, you will have the beginning list of places where the target audience may see, hear or read your messages. You will also be able to your messages with mood in mind and set the appropriate tone right from the start. The information here will also be the basis of a third key message in which you deliver a direct and emotional message to support your first two messages.
Question or Prompt Answer ExplanationA. Set the stage. Describe a scenario where the target audience is likely to see or hear your messages.
This is the context in which your audience will receive the information. Context changes all the time and because of that, his/her reaction to information may be different depending on where he/she hears,
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Question or Prompt Answer Explanationreads or sees the information.
B. Consider how you want the target audience to feel after reading/hearing/watching your messages. Create a short list of emotions here and then underline the primary emotion you are driving toward.
This clarifies the mood of the piece and will help you choose particular words for your messages as well as images and graphics to support them. Remember, every word and image has a job – to evoke the intended emotions.
C. If the underlined emotion above is how you want the target to feel, describe the tone you will take in the conversation.
This clarifies the tone of the piece and will help you tailor your dialogue with your target. People act on emotion, and that is why effective messaging is also emotional.
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Worksheet #4: Key Message Development
Purpose: In this worksheet, you will pull from the information in the first three worksheets to begin drafting the key messages. If you have done a thorough job, the information you need should be readily available. Spend your effort refining the messages. Use the checklist provided after this worksheet as a guide on simplifying language.
Expert Tips: If you have determined that the messages will be created in a language other than English or if it will be translated later, consider approaching messages from that language first or trans-adapting as you go to make sure key messages will be equally meaningful in that language.
What to Expect: This is where you will draft your first set of four key messages.
Key Questions Messages
Using the information in Worksheets 1 through 3, you now have a deep understanding of the target audience and how your opportunity is relevant to the audience. You are ready to write your messages. Be sure to align your tone with the mood you want to create, as identified in Worksheet #3.
A. What must the audience know?
Place the summary you prepared at the end of Worksheet #1 here. Refine as needed to the most important information about your opportunity.
B. Why should she/he believe us?
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Key Questions Messages
Using the information in Worksheets 1 through 3, you now have a deep understanding of the target audience and how your opportunity is relevant to the audience. You are ready to write your messages. Be sure to align your tone with the mood you want to create, as identified in Worksheet #3.
Review the summary at the end of Worksheet #2. Through your writing here, speak directly to the target and explain why your opportunity will benefit him/her and what proof you have that it will.
C. Use emotion to further persuade your target. Describe how the target will feel after experiencing the benefits. Help them visualize the solution in action.
D. What do we want them to do?
List desirable behaviors (e.g. call the hotline, visit the website and sign up, share on social media, etc.) Contributing behaviors to the main call to action could help if the subject matter is sensitive.
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Key Questions Messages
Using the information in Worksheets 1 through 3, you now have a deep understanding of the target audience and how your opportunity is relevant to the audience. You are ready to write your messages. Be sure to align your tone with the mood you want to create, as identified in Worksheet #3.
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Message Editing Checklist
Use the checklist below to review your writing. By following these general guidelines, your writing will become clearer and more concise.
Aim for 6th grade or lower reading level (Use readability scales to test messages.)
Reduce to one syllable words, as many as possible
Explain or remove acronyms
Limit sentence length to 35 words or less.
Direct the voice at the audience by using “You” whenever possible
Use active voice throughout, put subject before verb
Use positive language, emphasize positive actions
Match tone with mood, use words and images to support tone
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Worksheet #5: Dialogue & Content Development
Purpose: With this worksheet, you’ll learn how to anticipate dialogue with the target audience to organize your key messages into a compelling conversation that moves the target to action. Benefits to this exercise include:
Thinking of your content like a dialogue helps balance the conversation between what you want to say to the audience and what they want to hear.
It will help you speak with the audience (dialogue) instead of speaking at the audience (monologue). Having a conversation will help you further refine your messages to plain language. The prompts in this worksheet follow a proven formula for motivating audiences called Monroe’s Motivated Sequence.
Monroe’s Motivated Sequence is based on the science of persuasion. We find this sequence helpful for organizing messages by imagining a conversation with the target. The sequence has five steps:
Expert Tips: For this next exercise, assume you have encountered the target in the situation you described above. Imagine engaging him/her in brief conversation. Use the sequence below to create a dialogue. Use your key messages for your part of the conversation and write in answers you might expect from the target audience member to whom you are speaking.
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Sequence Step You Say: Target Says:
Step 1: Attention Get attention by focusing on what’s on his/her mind first. Create a connection by validating his/her feelings and concerns.
“You have my attention. I want to hear what you have to say.”
Step 2: NeedFocus on his/her need. Demonstrate how you share the desire to solve the problem. Create a sense of urgency.
“I agree. I have that need or want.”
Step 3: SatisfactionProvide more detail about the solution. Tell him/her how you have considered and dealt with the obstacles that could prevent them from doing the behavior.
“I see your solution can work.”
Step 4: Solution Help him/her visualize life after the solution is in place. How will he/she benefit? How will he/she
“I see the benefits of what you are saying. This is a great idea.”
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Sequence Step You Say: Target Says:
feel afterward?
Step 5. Action Tell the target exactly what to do. Give him/her all the necessary information to act on what you’ve said. Reinforce what a good decision he/she has made.
“I’m ready to take action.”
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Worksheet #6: Methods and Messengers
Purpose: Now that you have your messages, it is time to pick the communication methods, messengers and tools you will need to make sure the messages reach the audience. Revisit the audience profile and the information about how and where they receive information. Also look at the list of scenarios you brainstormed as part of Worksheet #3.
Expert Tips: Methods are “where” your messages will appear. Messengers are “who” will deliver the message. Tools are the items, documents or materials you will need to prepare for your method and messenger. For example, if your chosen method is to try to secure an article in the local newspaper, your tool will be a press kit and your messenger is the spokesperson who will be interviewed for the story. If your method is a presentation to city council, your tool is a speech and your messenger is going to be the person who would be most convincing or persuasive in their delivery.
What to Expect: By the end of this worksheet you will have a draft of your communication plan to deliver your messages. That plan includes the places where you want to distribute your messages, the spokespeople you will need to recruit and train on key messages and the various tools you will need to prepare to make your plan a reality. As noted earlier, the boxes below are placeholders. We expect that this worksheet may be many pages long.
Key Question Answer
A. Which communications methods will be most effective to reach the target audience? Consider paid (e.g. advertising), earned (e.g. media relations), owned (e.g. events, website) and shared media (e.g., Facebook, Instagram)
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Key Question Answer
B. Which messengers should deliver the message? Consider the people that he/she trusts, believes, interacts with, etc.
C. Which tools will need to support distribution of your messages? Some options include: flyer, poster, brochure, infographic, video, social media images or posts, and press materials.
D. How else can we support the messages and messengers? Which stories, testimonials, graphics, images, etc. will reinforce messages and are appropriate/relevant for the chosen messengers?
