February 5, 2010
A charity’s ability to communicate well can mean the difference between reaching the people you were established to help, and falling far short of your ambitions.
At Forster we specialise in tailoring communications for older people, young people and traditionally ‘hard-to-reach’ audiences. Here are a few pointers from what we’ve learnt along the way.
Know your audience
Defining your audience purely by age or by interest is no longer enough. Tailor each message for specific sub-groups based on what you know about them. Wherever possible, test your messages with your audiences first. A national campaign may need several spokespeople to ensure you connect with everyone.
Speak your audience’s language
People’s language varies depending on context, adjust the language to suit the medium, ensuring it’s understandable but not dumbed down. For a social media campaign you might use casual language, switching to ‘proper’ English for an educational resource.
Beware the ‘yoof’ speak trap
Don’t turn your audience off by attempting to mimic them. You’ll almost certainly get it wrong. Concise or text-based language can grab young people’s attention but make sure you follow it up with more thorough information on web links.
Understand the language of modern media
Modern media is a complex mix. To communicate effectively tailor the language you use to suit each outlet. Different media channels have different ‘reading age’ levels. It’s generally accepted that the broadsheets cater for a higher reading age, while the tabloids use simpler words and sentence structure for easy comprehension. This varies within any publication – political or business articles typically use more complex language than entertainment features. Tweak your press releases to suit the range of style and language.
Avoid presumptions based on readability though – in reality The Sun reaches more ABC1 readers than any other UK paper. And an online reader might dip into several different newspapers in one day.
Think outside the box
Communication methods extend far beyond traditional media and are more sophisticated – and interactive – than ever. Forster uses social media to place messages at the heart of the audience – our ‘It Doesn’t Have to Happen’ anti-knife crime campaign has nearly 12,000 friends on Bebo.
Don’t assume knowledge
Texting and typing has fuelled an acronym explosion in chat rooms and on Twitter. Acronyms and abbreviations are rife in the third sector as they save time and can prevent RSI (repetitive strain injury) – try typing that a few times – but they can alienate readers too so PWC (proceed with caution). Some are quite culture-specific: only cricket fans recognise lbw, and dating ads bemuse the uninitiated (‘CAP SAM ISO DF FS CD; WAA’ anyone?). Never presume your audience is as familiar with an acronym as you are.
Be web literate
People approach web copy differently from print. Instead of poring over pages, readers quickly ‘scan’ for relevant words and phrases. Use clear headings and bite-size information chunks over long, waffling copy.
Plain English
And finally, good communication isn’t about creating tortured phrases or showing off an impressive vocabulary – it’s about reaching your target audience. “Behind clear communication is clear thinking”, says Marie Clair of the Plain English Campaign. We, at Forster, are inclined to agree.
Lisa Mangan, Media Strategist, Forster
January 28, 2010
The digital world is full of exciting opportunities for charities to connect with supporters and achieve real change for good in society.
Whether it’s social networking, Twitter, mobile apps or the next big thing, every day brings new ideas and ways of going digital. Now, I’m a passionate believer in the transformative power that digital technology brings to charities and spend my days helping clients become ever more digitally led in their communications activities. But increasingly one of my roles as a consultant is to help those responsible for digital in charities to focus on the people in their organisation, to ensure the right skills and right level of resource is in place.
Very often the starting point for charities who want to raise their game online is to focus on changing the technology based on the assumption that it’s not possible or necessary to change the people. But good technology is irrelevant if there’s no-one to get the most from it. Even bad technology can deliver spectacular results in the hands of a skilled and creative person.
In our experience, charities seem to go through four stages of development with resourcing their digital activity. They will appoint staff in the following stages:
Stage 1
Volunteer – maybe a volunteer or staff member with other responsibilities.
Stage 2
Webmaster – often a part or full time technical resource with or without a content management system.
Stage 3
Web Editor – usually with a content management system and they’ll have started to employ other team members.
Stage 4
Head of New Media- leading a team of different disciplines.
How far the organisation’s progressed through these different stages often depends on: the size and cause of the charity, the scale of the audience you’re reaching online, the priority given to digital, potential returns from digital and length of time the organisation has been investing in digital.
Each stage has its pros and cons and a charity may well stay at any given stage indefinitely. We’ve been able to help charities make significant progress with digital by moving up a stage or by scaling up within a stage.
Searching on the web, there’s lots of information about technology, but there’s much less information to help charities of any size determine what sort of skills they need to support their digital activities. It’s also hard to find information to help those responsible for websites to make the business case for increasing resources dedicated to digital communications.
I’m always looking for feedback from people in charities as to what digital skills work well, what types of digital team structure are successful and how to scale up. I’ll be exploring these areas at the CharityComms seminar on March 10th and would love to hear from anyone who has strong opinions in this area.
So before you rush to seek the next big digital idea, take a moment to think about whether investing in your people may have a bigger impact in 2010.
Jim Raymond is Operations Director of Baigent Digital, a consultancy and agency specialising in websites, online fundraising and digital strategies for charities.
January 18, 2010
I think we can safely say that choices regarding social media are no longer about “should we or shouldn’t we”, but “how do we use it to best effect?”
Just a few Facebook statistics show how important these channels can be, and this is only one media platform:
- In 2009 Facebook passed 350 million active users
- There are now more than 5.3 billion fans across the various causes and organisations listed
- More than 70% of users are outside of the USA (so the rationale that it’s just the Americans who like this sort of thing no longer holds water)
Attitudes to social media as a mainstream communications tool appear to be changing, as research and ideas company Marketing Sherpa’s latest findings suggest. The chart below shows that a large proportion of organisations are prepared to increase their formal investment in social media in a controlled way. In other words, they’re treating social media like any other communications channel.
So, why are organisations more prepared than they were previously to utilise these channels? I think there are a few reasons but crucially, we can all now see some real-world success being enjoyed by businesses and charities as a result of social media. So, the perceived risk of trying something new isn’t quite so significant.
Secondly, we know that truly successful organisations are integrating their activities across a number of communications channels, targeting key audiences and ensuring their social media activity builds on and reinforces their other communications. This results in their key messages being delivered to a wider audience, as well as encouraging more audience feedback than could ever be achieved prior to the arrival of social media. Thanks to the two-way channel of communication it provides, a relationship is being built with the audience through interactivity and we no longer do all the talking.
Thirdly, we need to make our messages visible and take them straight to our audiences. For the marketers amongst us this is just common sense and has been a core tenet of targeting activity for years. One of my favourite real-world examples is Bullying UK, a charity dedicated to supporting victims of bullying and helping to educate those who have to deal with and prevent these situations. The internet and social media are great channels to reach their typically younger target audiences and you will find their presence on Facebook, Twitter and flickr amongst others. The same key messages are also reinforced through poster campaigns, PR (by targeting relevant forums, journalists and media outlets) and events. They don’t have millions of pounds to invest but by integrating their activity across relevant media, their communications achieve real cut-through.
The conclusion is simple, I think; if social media helps you to reach your key audiences and reinforce your key messages, then just do it. There are now plenty of case studies to minimise risk and plenty of experts to help you make the most of a controlled investment. If nearly half the organisations surveyed by Marketing Sherpa are going to invest, you don’t want to be lagging behind, losing supporters and missing media opportunities.
Kevin Baughen, Bottom Line Ideas
January 13, 2010
Starting 2010 with a splash
Each year the Scout Association runs a winter camp. Normally it’s a bit cold and frosty and lots of young people have a good time but it’s not really newsworthy. This year was different. If you were watching the news on Saturday the 9th January you could hardly miss us. So, what changed? How did this happen and why were the team able to get such great coverage?
On Friday the 8th January it became clear that the UK was almost closed down. Thousands of schools were shut and business was suffering as staff failed to get to work. Here at the Scouts, we realised the media were running short of ideas. Journalists needed to put a new angle on the snow story.
Our media team saw an opportunity and went for it. Our annual winter camp for 2,500 young people was going ahead as planned and participants were attending from all over the UK. Getting people talking about the event would be a great way to build our brand and get Scouting noticed. All we had to do was generate some attention. We had three things going for us:
1. We had enough resources in one place. Our media team members and youth participants were gathered together, allowing us to fully exploit the circumstances.
2. We had a fantastically well organised and very visual event. ‘Schools close but thousands of Scouts camp out in snow’ seemed to surprise most journalists.
3. Our media contacts were likely to be receptive to the story after a fair few days of snow and not a lot else going on.
We knew that the snow had created a pretty unique set of circumstances. So, on Friday morning, after having taken the opportunity to go for it, we called our key media contacts and pitched the story hard. Some journalists told us the event wasn’t what they were looking for and that our camp would be cancelled. Others were surprised the event was still going ahead.
Our big breakthrough finally came when we got BBC Radio 4 interested. The Today programme wanted to run a piece on organisations that were refusing to let the snow stop their activities. Our event fitted their agenda perfectly. Initially they wanted to speak to Bear Grylls, but he was filming in the Sahara so that wasn’t an option. However, on Saturday morning, we quickly set them up an interview with the camp organiser. Within an hour of the programme, we had a series of broadcasters and newspapers sending journalists and photographers to the event- cited conveniently close to London- to gather the story. The BBC even sent an OB TV truck, a radio OB team and a helicopter! Whilst the media entourage were en route we were busy setting up guests, broadcast points and story lines.
What were the outcomes? Well, many and varied but we got some excellent TV coverage. The BBC reported the event 12 times on TV and included our story in the prime time early evening and late news slots. Better still, the Scout camp became the leading news item on the hour, every hour, for 6 hours back-to-back. Radio and print coverage soon followed, helping to build our adventure-based brand both locally and nationally. The best bit was the editorial in the Telegraph. The worst bit? My feet have only just thawed out.
Simon Carter, Assistant Director- Media Relations, The Scout Association
January 8, 2010
How about making a resolution to make sure your website is easy to find?
Much of the time, visitors to your website will find it through either typing in a guessed URL or via an internet search engine and you need to ensure that any search engine can find your site without problems.
The first thing to think about is your URL. A search engine will list any page, but it’s better to make the URL something meaningful when it comes up in a listing, so it is definitely worth trying to have a domain name which represents your organisation. If you are known by an acronym as well as your name then it is best to have both URL’s pointing at the same site so that people will find you with either.
You can also point other domains to specific pages on your site, so if you have a special campaign or appeal buy a URL and point it to the lading page so that people – and search engines – can find it easily and it will stand out in a list.
Search engines also look for ‘meta tags’ – simple pieces of code that sit in the header of your web page and contain details of your site. These are crucial because they determine what title is shown in the taskbar menu and what title and description the search engine will display. The most important meta tags are title, which sets the taskbar and search results, and the description is used in search results.
These may seem daunting, but it is easy to check them by right-clicking on your home page and selecting ‘view source’. The meta tags sit in a block near the top of the page. Once you have found them, check what they say, whether it is correct, and whether they will help people to known what your site is about.
If they aren’t there, ask your web manager or agency to add them. If you manage your site manually, copy and paste the meta tags from another web page and change the details to suit your own site
It is worth checking that you have good titles and descriptions on you most important web pages as well as your homepage. If you want search engines to list pages on your site that you think people will search for then make sure they have relevant tiles and good descriptions. Pages about your services, work, how to volunteer, get involved and those special campaigns and appeals should have page specific meta tags.
Make sure that you website uses header tags, just like using word styles to format the text, the title on the top of the page should always be in header 1 – and the search engines read the header tags. Then the easiest and least technical bit of all, make sure the header is highly relevant to the page – it will help the search ranking.
Finally, make sure the most important phrases for each page are repeated at least three times in the text. Search engines read your pages and judge the search keywords by the title and phrases used. If your page is about street kids in Thailand, for example, make sure those words are repeated several times so that the search engines register it.
If you search for you charity on the main search engine do you come up above the fold and on the first page? If not, you need to do some work –or get some help.
Sue Fidler, Sue Fidler Ltd
December 23, 2009
2009 has been a challenging year for the third sector. However, campaigning has continued to be innovative and engaging.
Here we look back at five campaigns that hit the headlines in 2009.
1. CUT, Women’s Aid
This shocking campaign film, starring Keira Knightley and directed by Joe Wright, caused a stir when it was shown earlier this year. Some wondered whether Knightley’s celebrity eclipsed the message Women’s Aid were trying to promote. Could normal women relate to the campaign? By contrast, others found the ad too realistic and objected to its violent content. There were calls for it to be censored, although these were contested by the charity.
There’s no doubt that this campaign got people talking.
2. ‘Give a few bob’, Prostate Cancer Research Foundation
With the help of The Communications Agency, the Prostate Cancer Research Foundation brought the comedian Bob Monkhouse ‘back to life’ for their 2007 ‘give a few bob’ campaign.
Having died of prostate cancer in 2003, Bob was now having the last laugh by helping to raise funds and awareness for the charity. Thanks to computer wizardry, old footage and an expert impressionist, suddenly Bob was everywhere. The charity believes it generated £3.5million of media value from its £50,000 budget.
In 2009, Bob continued to create a buzz, reflecting the strength of this long-running campaign. You can read more about the campaign here.
3. Computer Tan, The Karen Clifford Skin Cancer Charity
This highly creative, CIPR Award winning campaign used the power of the web to great effect. The charity successfully targeted a younger audience with its ingenious online hoax. Launching a fake tanning company, Computer Tan, they pretended they could convert computer screens into desktop tanning booths. After their ‘tan’, the message behind the campaign was revealed. Bloggers and traditional media sources took hold of the story and people from around the world began to visit the site.
4. Brain Donor Appeal, Parkinson’s Disease Society
The Parkinson’s Disease Society have won numerous plaudits for their Brain Donor Appeal, including a 2009 PR Week award. Their campaign won support from celebrities including Jane Asher and Jeremy Paxman, who both signed up to the brain donation register. The campaign netted the charity media coverage worth the estimated equivalent of £4m of paid-for advertising. And this month the charity reported 1,200 new donors against a target of 1,000 by the end of the year.
5. Earth Hour, WWF-UK
In 2009, WWF-UK oversaw the successful transfer of this idea from Australia, where the campaign had been run previously. The charity was able to persuade a number of influential figures to take part and secured the support of the National Gallery, the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament, all of whom turned their lights of for one hour on the 28th March 2009. The campaign proved so popular that it will be run again in 2010. You can read more about the campaign here.
We’d love to know your thoughts about these campaigns. Hopefully 2010 will prove to be an equally exciting year for charities.
The askCharity blog will be taking a short break over Christmas, but we’ll be back in the New Year. We hope to see you then!
Sinead Rippington, CharityComms intern.
December 18, 2009
At this week’s CharityComms seminar, Diana Tickell, UK Director of Communications at Barnardo’s, reflected on the success of their 2008-09 ‘Break the Cycle’ campaign.
Diana delivered some top tips on how to maximise the impact of provocative communications.
1. Get your internal comms right prior to the launch.
Be honest about your intentions. Staff from across the organisation will understand the campaign if you articulate its aims clearly. You should explain the route you’ve taken, why it’s necessary and its potential benefits. Avoid constant consultation with staff- controversial campaigns inevitably generate some resistance- but do respect your stakeholders.
2. Know your opposition and anticipate their reaction.
Be prepared for the backlash if you want to capitalise on the buzz around your campaign. You must be able to back up your assertions with solid evidence and have a media handling plan ready to fight the fire you’ve started.
3. Expect the unexpected.
Barnardo’s online ‘Children in Trouble’ film upset the hunting lobby. This was not the intention of the ad, Diana clarified. She reminded charities that emotive campaigns are risky. They can elicit a range of reactions with unforeseen consequences.
4. Use the controversy constructively.
“You have to be prepared to ask the difficult questions,” Diana explained, and if your organisation initiates a debate it must not shy away from the issues at hand. Embrace the challenges that come your way but remain focused on your original aim.
5. Develop a long term strategy for success.
Break the Cycle was part of an ongoing plan to reposition Barnardo’s as a ‘relevant and contemporary’ charity. The campaign has helped to shift attention towards the organisation’s broader policy agenda. However, Diana wants Barnardo’s to move from their hard-hitting ads to “something a bit softer” in the future.
Sinead Rippington, CharityComms intern.
December 11, 2009
Twitter, we have a problem: we’ve been phished.
For those of you unfamiliar with the term, let me explain – phishing, according to the great social hub of information that is Wikipedia, “is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication”.
Our “trustworthy entity”? A close friend of ours, promoting a link that we might like to take a look at. Of course we were going to trust them and click onto it –who wouldn’t? That’s what friends are for. As it so happens, though, our friend wasn’t indeed our friend after all, but a nasty bot in disguise, the same bot that they indeed had fallen for before us. By clicking on the link, the bot descended on our account, and sent out the same suspicious message to every last one of our followers.
Got your head around that one yet? Think of it, if you may, as bacteria. You receive a direct message (DM) from someone, you consequently click on it, your entire inbox receives the message you were just sent. Someone in your inbox clicks on the link you sent them (well, the bot disguised as you), and therefore the same message goes out to everyone in their inbox. Why is it called phishing?
Bait = “trustworthy entity”
Hook = friendly message/threatening message and link
And it’s not a new phenomenon, either, but our experience was a new one, and if anything, it’s taught us that this can happen to anyone. And you can never go wrong with a little bit of caution.
How to avoid getting caught in the hook:
1. If it looks dodgy, then it probably is. If a friend sends you a link to tell you that they’ve seen a picture of you somewhere, email them, and don’t, for goodness sake, click on the link. They might not even know they’ve been phished.
2. You should know that banks and tax collectors are never going to follow you on Twitter and ask for your password or account details. William Paterson would roll in his grave.
3. While phishing has nothing to do with password security, you should always keep your password to yourself regardless, and never hand it out to third parties.
What to do if you’ve been phished:
1. Change your password – and this goes for your other accounts, too. Always avoid using the same password for all of your online accounts.
2. Lodge a complaint with Twitter.
3. Keep your friends friendly – tweet an apology, and a warning.
Three weeks after we filed a complaint about the naughty spambot, we finally heard back from Twitter Headquarters – but seeing as the social tool very much relies on its users to generate its content and applications, we found that the most effective thing to do in this situation was to take matters into our own hands and warn the flock.
Teri Williams is an intern at CharityComms and nfpSynergy, and is a published author online and in print for CMU, Clash Magazine, Scottish youth charity Young Scot and The 405.
December 4, 2009
Although I’m usually wary of making predictions about the year ahead, I’m fairly confident that 2010 will be the year of the mobile for charities.
Barriers to adoption are crumbling and with a growing number of successful case studies and the removal of VAT on donations by mobile, now is the time more than ever for charities to take a closer look at how mobile fits into their communications activity.
Donations via mobile got given a big boost earlier this year when O2 announced that charities of all sizes will now be able to receive an estimated extra 10p in the pound for text donations of up to £10 made via dedicated 70 prefix short codes. This means that 90p out of every £1 is going to the charity through mobile donations and it should be expected that in 2010 all operators should fall in to line and Inland Revenue will be forced to treat everyone equally, with no VAT taken from charities through mobile donations.
That’s fantastic progress, as just 1 year ago out of every £1.50 donation only 95p went to charity. For more background information on the rise of mobile giving, take a look at nfpSynergy’s report, ‘Sending Out an SMS’.
Mobile donations uptake may still be slow among charities without strong case studies to point to. Text donations are currently encouraged by strong national campaigns, such the Tsunami Relief campaign that saw over 1 million text donations were sent within days. Similar take up has been seen with the Bhurma Relief and Children in Need campaigns, but perhaps the biggest case study so far is March’s Comic Relief campaign, which saw 7.8 million raised through text donation.
Success may be due to anonymity. Supporter can give small amounts without being seen to be giving “too little”. Giving via mobile is also a simple process – text messaging is easy and second nature for most participants.
Because of this anonymity and ease of giving, marathons are set to become a fantastic opportunity for mobile donations. Charity’s communications teams should be encouraging runners to print short codes on their t-shirts and fundraising materials, creating a moment of spontaneity and opportunism when potential donors spot a runner whose cause they can donate quickly and easily too through mobile donations.
Communications teams in charities also need to think about where they are looking to use mobile – is to recruit volunteers, ask for donations, spread thank you messages, drive awareness, or send traffic to mobile sites? Mobile communications are also good for charity’s internal communications, an efficient way of updating team members on a regular basis.
There is a real opportunity to create a healthy mobile communications ecosystem for charities, with charities making money through mobile donations and with communicating easily and efficiently supporters. I’m looking forward to seeing whether my predictions come true and to see whether 2010 is the year of the mobile for charities.
Ben Matthews
Founder, Bright One
twitter.com/brightonecomms
www.brightone.org.uk
November 27, 2009
The hot topic at last Wednesday’s CharityComms seminar was volunteers, and how not to treat them like second-class staff members. How do you make them feel like an integral part of the organisation (which, indeed, they are), without forgetting the fact that they are giving up their time and energy, for free, to help your charity? Are they working for you, or, in reality, are you working for them?
Being a volunteer myself, I’m no stranger to this conundrum. While my familiarity with volunteering steers away a bit from the third sector – most of my experience comes from helping out at student events and helping run voluntary-driven arts festival newspaper ThreeWeeks – I know a thing or two about the good and bad things of being part of a “free” team.
My experience at the aforementioned publication ThreeWeeks was nothing but an excellent one. The entire voluntary team, from the office administrators to the writers, the sub-editors and production editors, were made to feel part of the culture of the publication, and every day we were reminded how much the editors relied on us to help run it.
That’s the thing – volunteers are the cogs of your operation. Without them, you’d be a dead steamboat with nowhere to go. Ideas bounced back and forth at the seminar about how exactly to communicate effectively to volunteers included involving them in team newsletters, highlighting particularly outstanding work from regional teams or individuals in internal communications such as organisational emails, and generally keeping them informed of the day to day activity of your central business hub (as Sarah Fitzgerald of MND stressed during her seminar presentation, never refer to your central office as ‘Head Office’).
If they’re willing to put the time and energy into promoting your brand, amongst other things, it’s up to you to communicate to them effectively and help them stay motivated by reminding them that they’re vital members of your organisation.
http://threeweeks.co.uk/
Teri Williams is an intern at CharityComms and nfpSynergy, and is a published author online and in print for CMU, Clash Magazine, Young Scot and The 405.
