Ask three different people at your organisation this question:

“What makes us different from other providers?”

If you get three different answers, you have a messaging problem. OR as we have already discussed, what’s our ‘one thing’? It needs to be an immediate and enthusiastic answer. However, most providers don’t know what makes them different or great, which makes writing about your business difficult, leading to inconsistency.

Another way to go about this is to ask three friends or famaily members, show them your business and your local competitors and see how desperate they are to find any discernable difference.

Inconsistent messaging is one of the most common and costly issues for disability sector organisations. It happens because:

• There’s no agreed answer to the fundamental questions
• Different people have different interpretations of the brand
• There are no guidelines for how to communicate
• Content is created by whoever has time (and usually first draft wins)

The result is a brand that feels scattered, generic and untrustworthy, even if the actual support you provide is excellent. Because a great service doesn’t help many people when its hidden in the pack.

The fix? A communication framework

A communication framework is a structured set of communication pillars that everyone in your organisation can use consistently across every channel and context.

It’s not about scripting everything your team says, or being rigid. In fact guard rails can support good writing, and having some guidance around the ‘tone’ and the ‘personality’ of the brand makes it even easier for yourself/colleague/AI bot to write copy. It’s about giving them the building blocks so they can communicate confidently and consistently without having to make it up every time.

Exercise

Ask three people in your organisation what makes you different. Write down their answers. Note where they agree and where they diverge. That gap is what this module fixes.