Escalating conversations on topics such as climate change, carbon legislation, energy independence, and growing consumer eco awareness generate innovative forward eco movement for some but simultaneously create confusion for others. Many in the field, including our sustainability consulting practice, agree that the gap between eco awareness and action may represent the single largest opportunity for global sustainability progress. While traditional ‘green’ efforts have focused on expanding awareness, the recent explosion of information and global interest indicates that the message has been sent out and received. How do we convert eco awareness to eco action? 

As sustainability professionals look to close this gap, different approaches are taken:  information sharing, reports, pictures, videos, blogs, tweets, shares on Facebook and the like.  There are external forces of good working in our favor too.  As written in the post, Nudging and Gaming: A New Green Best Practice?  explored are the concepts of nudging and fun as methods to guide us into better, more sustainable practices that help the environment.  

At the core, these communications are calls to actions.  In marketing terms, a call to action  is a request/direction to ‘do something’—often the next step that a consumer could take toward the purchase of a product or service.  But as mentioned above, from a sustainability perspective, as sustainability professionals, our calls to action are intended to convert environmental awareness into actionable and measurable eco actions.  There are key elements inherent in effective calls to action:

• They have a sense of urgency.
• They conjure creative images.
• They use numbers and statistics.
• They indicate a specific action.
• And, they convert. 

The most effective call to action is one that converts.  In the physical world that equates to taking eco action.  Online, conversion equates to a user clicking a link, downloading a whitepaper, requesting more information, or buying your product or service.  When you think about it, throughout our day to day life as individuals we are all looking for conversions in many areas of our lives.  By asking others to do something for us or help us we are requesting them to take action.  How can we create compelling calls to action in our physical and online worlds to convert eco awareness to eco action?

If you found this information helpful, you'll love our Social Media for Sustainability Professionals, an 8-week, online and self-guided program that provides everything you need to make the most of social media in 2012.

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