Having been in the company of some new organisations lately, I have discovered that the telling of their brilliant stories through compelling messages and images is often still missing from externally facing channels. It can be easy to get lost in your work and forget you have different audiences who are needy of content and context.
If you do not do a full audit of your audiences, where they are and what they respond to, you cannot give them what they need and you risk not engaging new audiences and losing existing ones. Consistency and authenticity are important to frame your interactions and connect to people on their terms as well as yours.
Running a full comms audit can be helpful for devising PR, Marketing and Digital strategies. Your website is the home for your stories and that needs to be in full working order. This all sounds obvious, but the skills it takes to create a solid, engaging and valuable website and marketing strategy are not that common. For organisations that are not aware of their competition and unaware of the latest marketing technologies, it will be easy to fail.
Take a look at your website and channels from the eye of an audience target…
- Can they find what they need easily?
- What perception will they have of your work and offer?
- Is your most important audience given priority?
- Is the way you are sharing information exclusive or inclusive?
- What about the innovation and thought leadership of your organisation? Does that have a section so that your peers, funders and community contacts can know what you are about?
A great case study I always talk about is Entelechy Arts. We built this website from nothing. After running workshops without and then with the designer/developer Tim Jukes, I could work out the pages we needed and navigation of information. We made the audiences/participants the priority and so when they go to the site they are asked ‘I want to… and are given options to dance, sing, make etc… which are in an attractive, bespoke, interactive, hexagonal montage. The stuff for the industry funders and peers is all under About Us because they know where it will be.
The team effort to get images right, copy worked till its perfect and the whole site reflecting the organisation took many months of intense work, but it is now a living archive of their work. The team are thrilled and we just launched the blog too – sharing the wonderful and rich stories of those that are connected to the organisation.
TAKEAWAY…
Don’t be shy to share your incredible stories with your audiences. Work with the best professionals to make sure they are told in the right way for your organisation.