Jolene Cargill: Learning to Shout
If you were going to open a shop would you make an attractive window display and hope that people came in off the street? You might get some custom this way. But to sustain it you would have to let people know you were there.
Nurturing your reputation is more critical than ever before. Promoting your organisation is as important as core business operations, customer focus or financial management. To do it with any impact, promotion has to be managed and always innovative.
At the launch of the Social Enterprise Skills Exchange last week it was suggested that there was too much duplication in the sector and more collaboration was needed. The reply was loud and clear. Undoubtedly there is duplication and collaboration can bring rewards. Ultimately if two organisations provide the same product or service they are competitors.
Effective promotion helps you stand out from the competition. In this unpredictable economic climate where cuts to public funding continue at a savage pace and the competition for grant funding is fierce, it is vital to invest in communications. If you don’t already have staff in house dedicated to communications or a budget for working with an agency or consultant it’s vital to commit time and energy to learn and develop creative ways to promote your organization.
The new Social Enterprise Skills Exchange operated by Edinburgh business development, Firstport and Pilotlight, aims to connect social enterprise with the business community and promote an exchange of skills. Start up and growing social enterprise will be matched with business resources such as volunteers, pro bono work or skills share and development. As a ‘one stop shop’ it will be a good place to network, raise the profile of your social enterprise and plug skills gaps.
Businesses can learn a great deal from social enterprise; measure of success beyond the bottom line including impact on staff, communities and the environment. Meeting targets for corporate social responsibility and the public relations benefits provide incentives to improve their performance in these areas.
Social enterprise can tap into business acumen by learning about strategic business development, breaking into new markets and maximizing income streams that don’t compromise core social purpose and how successful business approach their communications; how to distinguish from the competition and get key messages across to stakeholders. Where business can struggle to find new ways to tell their story, social enterprise is already rich in human interest and if communicated effectively the impact of the work is extremely valuable for promotion and the media.
The new skills exchange is ultimately about building the capacity of social enterprise; capacity to deliver, to develop relationships and to ensure growth is sustainable. But as for every business, the long term success of any social enterprise will stand or fall on the ability to develop the capacity to innovate, learn and develop new ways to get people to buy into what you do.
It’s not easy to shout loud about your successes and it takes time to find out what kind of marketing and promotion works for you. Learn the basic skills such as how to shape and develop stories and spot opportunities to pitch a news story or feature; how to take advantage of social media and how to speak to the right people to give depth to what you do in the press.
Using different platforms means you can target your messages to different audiences whether its funders, potential investors, customers, the media or key influencers in your sector. And over time, as you learn and develop, you will see the returns.
Jolene Cargill is a freelance journalist and communications professional with over ten years experience in journalism, marketing, and public relations. Find out more on her website: www.jolenec.co.uk
(1) Comments
Thanks for letting us know about the new skills exchange programme. I've been to the website and signed up and would definitely appreciate partnering with a business to learn how to run our social enterprise more effectively.