If marketing and communications aren’t your thing but you need to know more to engage your audience, who do you turn to?
After listening to its members who wanted upskilling in comms but were time poor, Nova the support agency for Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations in the Wakefield District, approached us to deliver an online training session all about the fundamentals of communications and how to engage the community post-Covid.
The Nova team is small and, with so many other plates to spin, were looking for some extra support from a communications expert. Alice Edinburgh, Senior Business Support Officer, reached out for us to create a presentation and run a training session with top tips that would be easily put into practice by VCSE organisations.
Our deputy chief wordsmith Kat Trinder MCIPR, took on the project having previously delivered communications within the sector.
What we did
Following a discovery call with Alice, we established the broad training needs of the member audience who were struggling to engage their communities post pandemic.
We suggested the title ‘3 things you can do to improve your communications right now’ to cover off three essential needs with actionable takeaways at the end of each section. These were: understanding your audiences, livening up your social media and how to put your news on your website. Each section would be bitesize, with time for questions at the end.
We created the deck using a co-branded PowerPoint presentation and created a PDF takeaway for members post session.
The outcome
Kat delivered the hour-long training session on Zoom across a lunchtime in February 2023, which was attended by 17 VCSE members.
“It was a pleasure to work with Wordsmiths to deliver this approachable and informative workshop for our members. They instantly understood what we were looking for and couldn’t have been more helpful in organising the workshop. It’s already been a real hit with our members, particularly the tips and resources that are ideal for VCSE organisations, and we’re sure it continue to be a valuable resource in helping them to develop and thrive.”
Feedback from attendees of the session:
“Kat gave really helpful, actionable tips in an approachable way. It was a clear and concise workshop that was well balanced between strategy/planning and getting going.”
“Brilliant - Kat covered just the right level of detail and left plenty of time for questions and discussion at the end. For a social media novice none of it was too daunting.”
“Really simple and clear suggestions presented very well. Great answers to questions too, very helpful thank you Kat.”