Have you ever been working on a program, campaign or project of any sort that requires you to engage employees, stakeholders or leaders? It’s likely that this effort has taken time – planning, drafting, editing, approvals – but now you’re ready to go. You hit send on the first email or host the first town hall or post the latest video online – and then nothing. No likes, comments, feedback and no one is taking the action you wanted them to do. Your manager is asking for metrics, results and feedback. You’re scratching your head about why it’s not doing what you planned it to do. What happened?

There can be many answers to why the initial communication did not get traction. Did you do enough research about the audience? Is the call to action clear enough? Is it something that people can actually understand? Before you throw in the towel and call the effort a failure, stop for a minute and think about it this way – you didn’t see immediate success because you put all of your high expectations on that one tactic.

Someone once said that you need to tell people something seven times in seven different ways for it to click. And like it or not, it does apply to our work as communicators.

That’s why any communication needs a plan with multiple, different activities to reach the audience and convince them to take the action that you want.

Getting discouraged is not an option. Keep pushing the message out in a variety of ways. Evaluate the success of each method and adjust your plan as needed. Eventually, it will be heard.