How a content strategy is kick-starting change at Action for Children
Near the end of 2019, we launched a content strategy project at Action for Children. It’s a roadmap for increasing our impact through content - for the people who need our help, and those who want to support us.
What did we focus on?
We interviewed stakeholders around the charity to identify key areas for development. This included:
- addressing inconsistencies in what we do
- a better understanding of who we’re speaking to, where
- prioritising content areas to strengthen our message
- empowering teams to create content quickly and effectively, with a clear goal in mind
- better planning for the year ahead.
We involved a broad range of people across Action for Children to help us identify priorities. This, combined with desk research, informed the six key pillars of the project:
For phase one of the project, which ended this spring, we focused on the first three pillars. Here’s what we developed as a result of each …
1. Content principles: a framework for good content
Lots of stakeholders wanted to put more focus on quality over quantity. They also said our content could be more consistent in its approach. To address this, we proposed creating a set of rules to help make decisions on what makes the cut.
Coca Cola, the NHS, the BBC, Greenpeace and Macmillian all use content principles. They act as checklist for content producers on what “good” looks like. They help to make sure everyone in an organisation is on the same page.
So what would Action for Children’s own principles look like? We got content creators in a room to come up with some ideas. Together we reviewed principles used by other organisations. Then we brainstormed what makes Action for Children content great, when we’re at our best.
The plan is to use these to help define our key principles. Our workshop participants helped us come up with some ideas, which will now be reviewed by the Brand Team.
We also we asked the room to consider how we could potentially use principles in practice. For example, could we use a scoring system to help us make decisions? Should it be some light-touch guidance? How would we make sure any principles joined up with other guidelines?
2. An audience-first approach by channel
Being able to plan our content based on our audience and where we talk to them is important. It helps us to tailor our work to what people actually need. It enables us to avoid clashes in messaging and tone. And we can better support our charity goals.
With the help of our UX Lead and Insight Team, we collated all the information we have on our audiences. We then ran workshops to map how these people currently consume content. This considered all our different channels: from online, to newspapers, to out-of-home ads.
The workshops helped to highlight areas of low confidence — ie where teams knew less about their audiences. Websites/social media was an area of particular uncertainty. While most teams felt their audiences could be getting content here, we needed more data to drive decisions. Digital is also a high risk for messaging clash, due to competing demands.
As a result, the Digital Engagement Team are now developing two key pieces of work:
- A social media strategy. It’s involved a huge amount of research into what content we’re posting, and what people respond well to. This is helping us understand more about what content to prioritise, where. The strategy is being rolled out this autumn.
- A plan for making our website content more user-led. The main Action for Children website has to serve lots of different needs. Its primary audience is supporters. But it must also speak to people like commissioners, foster carers and service users. As part of a website development project, we’ve been mapping users to content areas. We’ve tested a new structure with the public to ensure it’s intuitive. And we’re putting new KPIs in place to track engagement with content over time. We’ll use this knowledge to produce guidelines for content that puts users first.
3. Messaging: what we say about our activities
Our research showed that we create a huge amount of material, but we’re not always using one consistent message.
We have core scripts for key campaigns. And we have key lines developed by the Media and Policy teams. But there’s single no source of truth for all our activities, that’s accessible to everyone.
For this reason, we’re in the process of developing a “messaging book”. The book will provide signed-off descriptions on all areas of work. It’ll give everyone a quick reference point for the descriptions and impact stats.
We’ve created a draft structure for the book, and gathered some initial feedback. The first draft of our messaging book is set to be delivered by the end of the year. Crucially, it will need be updated regularly as our focus as our charity continues to evolve.
What’s next?
This is an ambitious project — but it’s about to become even bigger. The work is becoming part of a broader five-year communications strategy led by Brand.
Meanwhile, the Digital Engagement Team are using what we’ve learned so far to hone our approach, bit by bit. We’re looking at improving content production online, on social media and our websites.
Next month, we’re relaunching Action for Children’s main website, and we’ll be using this as a springboard to improve our processes. For us, it’s a real opportunity to assess how we do things well, and where we can do things better.
