It's a common nonprofit complaint, "When we're dealing with such important issues why aren't more people listening?" It may be true that everyone should care about your mission, but virtue alone wont catch the attention of your target audiences or prompt their action. Message Matters: Succeeding at the Crossroads of Mission and Market helps you do both. It shows you how to develop messages that resonate with your audiences desires so they take the action you want. Message Matters gives you a simple framework for making strategic decisions and guides you through five steps to produce a powerful, activating message. You'll learn how to: 1. Clarify the action you want, 2. Pinpoint who you want to take action, 3. Discover what your audience wants, hopes for, and desires, 4. Find the shared desires between your organization and your audience, 5. Convey your message effectively. The ideas and approach in Message Matters build on the authors years of work across the spectrum of professional communications and management and address the everyday challenges facing todays organizations. Examples and a case study bring key points to life Examples from more than a dozen associations, nonprofit organizations, foundations, and government agencies show how they have advanced their causes by using the framework in this book. A special chapter brings the theory and process to life in a case study showing how an organization used strategic messages to build a nationwide movement to change the paradigm for preventing child abuse. Whether you want people to fund you, participate in your programs, vote your way, quote you, collaborate with you, or volunteer for you, moving people to action is essential to achieving your mission. Compelling communications is the starting point. Use Message Matters and start connecting to people in a way that moves them to action. For more about the author, Rebecca K. Leet, visit: www.leetassociates.com.

Demonstrating how candidates and their campaigns affect the economic vote, this book provides a different way of understanding past elections - and predicting future ones. It offers a theory of campaigns that explains why electoral victory requires more than simply being the candidate favored by prevailing economic conditions.

Harness the power of messaging to create a positive school culture and increase school and community collaboration. Written for school leaders, this title is divided into three parts. Each part helps readers to maximize their role as chief communicators with different stakeholders: students, teachers, and parents and community. Each chapter includes suggestions for using digital tools to enhance communication and ends with reflection questions and practical next steps. How this book will help you foster school community and improve your communication strategy: Comprehend the power of messaging and public relations in school. Gain tips for how to best use available technology tools, including online platforms, for messaging purposes. Inspect scenarios and real anecdotes that show communication strategies and messaging tactics in action in schools. Learn how to implement positive communication with parents and students from the start of the school year. Explore special strategies for communicating with challenging students or in difficult school climates. Contents: Introduction: Why Messaging Matters Chapter 1: Building a Positive Culture for Messaging Chapter 2: Cultivating a Positive Message With Teachers Chapter 3: Using Technology to Message With Teachers Chapter 4: Cultivating a Positive Message With Students Chapter 5: Using Technology to Message With Students Chapter 6: Cultivating a Positive Message With the Community, Parents, and Beyond Chapter 7: Using Technology to Message With the Community, Parents, and Beyond Epilogue References and Resources Index

Are you one of the many people who long to ditch the cubicle and go to work for yourself, on your own terms? What's holding you back? Self-doubt, fear, technology challenges, the feeling that there are already too many other people doing what you want to do? It's time to face those things head-on and transform your passion into a thriving business. Why? Because your message matters. In this uplifting and practical book, blogger, speaker, and business coach Jonathan Milligan gives you a simple 4-step framework to rise above the noise and build a real business. He shows you how to believe, define, craft, and market your message so that you can fulfill your unique purpose in this life. With plenty of helpful assessment tools and proven strategies--including how to create 7 perpetual income streams in 12 months from just one message--this is your go-to guide for living your dreams and impacting the world for good.

Demonstrating how candidates and their campaigns affect the economic vote, this book provides a different way of understanding past elections - and predicting future ones. It offers a theory of campaigns that explains why electoral victory requires more than simply being the candidate favored by prevailing economic conditions.

"Inside Campaigns: Elections Through the Eyes of Political Professionals is essential reading not only for students interested in running campaigns and for journalism students who want to cover politics, but for campaign operatives generally and journalists who want to raise the level of their game. In fact, it’s good reading for everybody." —Thomas B. Edsall, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism "Much of our useful knowledge sits at the intersection of disciplines. Inside Campaigns demonstrates that through a skillful combination of political science with management in a highly readable and practical format. A first for this field!" —Leonard A. Schlesinger, Baker Foundation Professor-Harvard Business School, President Emeritus-Babson College Inside Campaigns, Second Edition takes readers on a journey into the world of campaign managers. Powered by scores of interviews and surveys of political professionals, the book considers the purpose, potency, and poetry of modern political campaigns in the US. The expert author team draw from years of scholarly research and professional campaign experience to guide readers on a behind-the-scenes tour of the ways campaigns are managed, the strategies that are employed, the roles played by both staff and the candidates, and the affects election outcomes have on American democracy. Readers will develop an understanding of what campaigns do and why they matter, as well as gain practical skills for working in a campaign or advocating for a cause. New to the Second Edition: A case study created from an in-depth interview with Bernie Sanders’ top digital decision-makers describes how the Sanders’ campaign used digital media to harness the energy of their highly motivated base supporters. This case shows students a real-life campaign decision-making situation, and demonstrates how campaigns use new digital media to drive traditional news media coverage. A unique joint interview with the top media buyers from the Clinton and Trump campaigns reveals how each campaign tracked the other’s advertising and adjusted their own advertising based on competitive tracking information. This interview illustrates to students how modern campaigns use media tracking technologies to monitor their opposition and spend tens of millions of dollars at the presidential level. A top Trump digital manager shares inside details of how the Republican National Committee moved quickly to help build out the Trump digital operations after it was clear that Trump would be the party’s presidential nominee. This insight helps students understand how the Trump campaign answered, "What do we tell them?" by testing messages online, including recycling Trump’s personal tweets in instant messages and emails. The differences between how the Clinton and Trump campaigns managed the news media are highlighted in a case study of one journalist’s experiences covering both campaigns. This case study helps the student build skills for becoming a "spinmeister" who handles day-to-day relationships with the news media. The authors’ research surprisingly reveals that, behind the scenes, Trump was much more available to reporters than Clinton, despite Trump’s continuous public attacks on the "fake news media."

Allens proven ability and flare for presenting complex and oftentimes sensitive topics in nonthreatening ways carry over in the latest edition of Difference Matters. Her down-to-earth analysis of six social identity categories reveals how communication establishes and enacts identity and power dynamics. She provides historical overviews to show how perceptions of gender, race, social class, sexuality, ability, and age have varied throughout time and place. Allen clearly explains pertinent theoretical perspectives and illustrates those and other discussions with real-life experiences (many of which are her own). She also offers practical guidance for how to communicate difference more humanely. While many examples are from organizational contexts, readers from a wide range of backgrounds can relate to them and appreciate their relevance. This eye-opening, vibrant text, suitable for use in a variety of disciplines, motivates readers to think about valuing difference as a positive, enriching feature of society. Interactive elements such as Spotlights on Media, I.D. Checks, Tool Kits, and Reflection Matters questions awaken interest, awareness, and creative insights for change.