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In the past few months, the public engagement community has ramped up dialogue about how to measure success. It’s a tricky question since metrics like miles per gallon are hard to find in the “social sciences.” A great place to begin in any such exercise is to clearly define what success means so we decided to do some research. Once a researcher, always a researcher I...

In order to compete with the clutter of information that bombards people every day there are many strategies to keep in mind to kick start your participation and keep the momentum going throughout the engagement period. One of the most important aspects of driving participants to take action is crafting powerful calls-to-action. Strong messages are those that are concise and connect with people on a deep...

When we talked to over 100 agencies about their goals for improving their public engagement activities, increasing participation rates came out #1. That was enough to motivate us to look into motivation. We did some research into the most important motivators for civic engagement and here is what we learned. 1. Fear It turns out that fear is the most motivating force for civic engagement. Any first-year...

You may be wondering – what’s all the fuss about online engagement tools? Don’t the traditional methods work just fine? Digital tools have a few key advantages over traditional methods of public engagement. Here are six of the most common benefits of online engagement that we hear from organizations: 1. Increased quantity of participants Typically you hear from 50 people at a public meeting. While their input may...

Good branding makes people excited to get involved and will garner more interest and sharing on social media networks. Good brands get recognized and spread – bad brands don’t. So what makes for a good brand? Clarity Explicitly communicate what’s in it for them. Be memorable and make things easy to understand. Use plain English with simple spelling and avoid technical jargon. Make sure your brand clearly relates...