Nine simple words to boost your end-of-year appeals

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs.

In Content Marketing for Nonprofits, nonprofit strategist Kivi Leroux Miller mentions a study by Jen Shang.

Shang researched philanthropic behavior and uncovered nine adjectives Americans use to define a good person:

1. Kind
2. Caring
3. Compassionate
4. Helpful
5. Friendly
6. Fair
7. Hard-working
8. Generous
9. Honest

As you can imagine, the process of going from awareness about an issue to taking action — donating, volunteering, etc. — involves a complex psychological process.

And many times this process doesn’t move along as fast as we’d like.

Why emotional words matter

Your community acts when emotions are triggered. And while words might not be as powerful as images and video, they do have a triggering effect, according to neuromarketers.

Aside from buying Kivi’s book right now, put aside some time this week to update your organization’s content strategy, as well as your website copy and email messages.

Make sense? What do you think?John Haydon delivers social web strategy solutions for “the quick, the smart, and the slightly manic.” Curious? Then visit the John Haydon blog, follow him on Twitter or leave a comment.