Actionable calls

So you’ve identified your story and whom the story is for. Now what?

So many organizations spend a ton of time and resources developing campaigns and stories and then scramble to translate those into action. Or they confuse the larger goal with what they hope their actors to do. To wit, let’s look back at the Civil Rights Movement of the ‘60s in America and the Selma bus boycotts. The campaign’s larger goal was to stop segregation in the American south and on the bus system. They didn’t tell the Black citizens of Selma that. Rather they gave a specific call to action: don’t ride the bus.

An unintentional call to action can do more harm than good. (“Want to fix climate change? Follow us on social media.” Nah, I think not.)

In our work at the Center, our team has collaborated to identify four principles of effective calls to action:

• Make it specific: You have to help your actors see specific tasks where they can focus their energy on a specific behavior to follow through
• Make it feel achievable: To effectively engage actors, we must help them believe that their participation will make a difference and they have the power and ability to take that action.
• Make it feel easy: Calls to action should not feel like an obligation or burden; they should ask people to do something they want to do and that they can do easily.
• Make it feel like everyone else is doing it: When we perceive a behavior as a group norm, it motivates us to engage in that action because we assume everyone else is.

As you work to finalize your story, examine what you are leaving your actors with. Is there a clear call to action to help you accomplish your goals?

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