The Beast from the East may have landed one last blow, but it can?t stop the arrival of spring. Its signs are already here: the days are longer, the trees are budding and the daffs are coming up.
For some, spring is the perfect time to review your targets for the year and think about how you will creatively report on your impact.?You may be thinking of doing something different this year, but as with many charities and entrepreneurs, time (and budget) is against you. Here are three practical ways you can get started:
- Look around:?Start by looking at what other charities or entrepreneurs are doing. They?ll often be the larger charities with the bigger marketing budgets, but there are a number of smaller and medium-sized ones are able to punch above their weight.?FoodCycle?uses a simple yet effective way of highlighting their impact on a web page, which includes highlighted bullet points of statistics and a link to an engaging digital report that integrates with their?website. Check?out what people are doing to communicate the impact of what they do in their social media feeds. Follow a charity or company you like and see what they?re using ? GIFs or infographics with stats, handwritten feedback or quotes or video. Digital impact consultant Madeline Sugden lists some?great examples.
- Collaborate:?I remember the mad, last-minute scrum when it came to annual review time; trying to extract the data and quotes from colleagues and get the case studies. Collaborating on content development with co-workers,?volunteers and end users at an early stage can help the process ? but this will often be more time-consuming.
- Start small: If you?re feeling?overwhelmed by the prospect of going digital, think of one thing that you can start doing that fits in with your brand values.? You may not have a whizzy website but you can start extracting some of the valuable information and stats you do have on your services and use them in your social media or email marketing. You may not have stories or photos of your customers, but a photo handwritten feedback can be just as effective.
Wondering how you can plan for your content or introduce a digital element to your impact reporting?
Book a free Springtime mini-communications audit for the month of May