Things we’ve learnt from Charity Comms Digital Conference
We’re excited to be at the Charity Comms #CharityDigital conference this week and wanted to share our highlights and food for thought from Day 1…
Empower teams to deliver
It was impressive to hear how the RSPB acted quickly to form a small team to manage the #AttackonNature campaign:
- They mapped out roles and responsibilities, had daily stand-ups and shared information and updates quickly.
- The group made decisions and signed off on comms, which made a huge difference to being able to be truly reactive.
- Another of the charities involved in the campaign reflected that it took 36 hours to sign off a media statement, sparking a realisation internally that their sign off processes for reactive comms needed work.
Striking right balance of explainer content
We heard some approaches to content design for technical/detailed content to bring causes to life, or present information in a different and more relevant way.
- The RSPB trialled explainer threads as part of their #AttackonNature campaign and they proved so popular that the charity now feel that they’ve brought a new audience in (25k Twitter follower increase during the campaign)
- The Community Planning Alliance developed infographics for their response to the #AttackonNature campaign to break down key concepts and then directed audiences to blogs on their site for more detail.
Social Media content accessibility
“Everyone deserves to navigate the world in the same way as anyone.”
Prue and Holly from RNIB shared some practical tips on how to make social media content inclusive, here are a few below that I need to hold myself to account on:
- Include alt text, all the time. And turn on alt text reminder on Twitter accounts.
- Use Camel Case (capitalise each letter) because it’s easier for screen readers — and yes, this includes hashtags!
- Limit emojis — screen readers read out a description for each emoji and so it can become tedious for users if there are a lot of emojis in one post.
Getting teams engaged about digital strategy
- David Hunt from Breast Cancer Now talked through how important gaining senior team buy-in for digital transformation was critical, and particularly in supporting everyone to navigate moving to Agile ways of working.
- Work with your agencies in ways that upskill your teams so that you can increase organisational digital maturity while your web projects are in progress (I am particularly SUPER passionate about this one!)
Invest in digital skills
Dani Hughes shared her experiences of digital upskilling programme at BHF and GOSH Charity, including some brilliant ideas to galvanise staff engagement:
- Find out exactly what your staff want to know more about and deliver tailored training
- Monthly internal newsletter from the Digital team
- Try out reverse mentoring to get senior leadership involved
Read more inspo from day 2 of the conference!
I’d love to chat more about what I’m hearing and learning — please do get in touch with me on Twitter or yasmin@williamjoseph.co.uk
