Calling the public to action (in local government projects)

Or else why bother with outreach?

The previous edition was about “thinking outside the blocs”: using personas to harness empathy and orient public-facing project writing toward individuals who have their own messy agendas and pressures.

Using personas potentially engages and involves much more of the public, because it speaks to what’s in it for them (value proposition). But that begs a question: If you’ve pegged why the public should care, then surely you need them to do something for it. What is that action and how should you ask?

Writing the “call to action”

Like personas and value proposition, this also is from marketing and advertising — and more subtly, from journalism. Marketing and advertising are about converting the reader — making them into a buyer. Public involvement also has conversion — making the reader into someone who gets involved by — what? You need to explicitly tell them. Give them a verb in second-person POV (addressed to “you,” the reader) and imperative mood (as a command or request):

• Take the survey.

• Attend the meeting.

• Visit the website.

• Sign up for notifications of when the comment period starts.

It’s really that simple, as long as you dodge a few pitfalls.

Failing to call

Public-facing project writing often geeks out on non-actionable aspects of the project, such as how many miles of sewer pipe a street project will replace. It might mention an open house or a survey in passing (often as an “opportunity”), but fail to clearly call the reader to it. That invites the public to mentally respond with “cool story, bro, but I don’t see how this involves me,” and a shrug.

Calling too late

Your wonk/geek work cohort may think they’re adding enticement or prestige by exhaustively citing all the background and details first. But no — members of the public are busy with their own stresses and pressures and agendas, so they have short attention spans for your message. Put your call to action near the beginning, following your value proposition as closely as possible. Put everything else afterward.

Calling for too much

Some calls to action have verbs like “recommend” or “advise” or “analyze.” Those are not trustworthy asks, because they imply mastery through training and experience not broadly found among the public. They could scare off newbies, which likely include under-represented folks — so they may be toxic to equity and inclusion. They also portray government as abdicating its stewardship role and attempting to backfill with crowdsourced free labor — not a good look for your client. Instead, just call for the public to tell what they think, how they feel, what they’ve experienced.

Calling for something inscrutable or silly

The classic is “PROvide feedBACK” — that is, “react in advance,” which would require time travel. Most of the public likely can’t articulate why that hits wrong — just that it vaguely inspires distrust. (Word to the wise: Get your wonk/geek cohort to stop vastly overusing “provide.” Y’all can sound programmed, like cult members.) “Evaluate criteria” is right up there as well. “Weigh in” has implications of both body shaming and martial-arts violence. What other silly specimens have you seen?

If you don’t have an action

Really? No date to save, no email list to sign up for? Maybe it’s just too early in the project to start outreach. Otherwise — if you take up the public’s bandwidth with something they can’t yet act on — you’ll train the audience to ignore the project.

Next: bringing it all together

So you’re ready to use personas, harness empathy, and think in terms of value proposition and call to action. Next time will be about bringing it all together in key messages — building blocks to help make sure all your project’s public-facing writing stays consistent (an IAP2 best practice).