Dear Great tips to spice up your communications Monthly effective ideas that will add power to your charity's communications, build up your supporte

       
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Dear

Great tips to spice up your communications

Monthly effective ideas that will add power to your charity's communications, build up your supporter base and boost donations... and they won't cost you a penny.

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Who’s who

Keep alert and capture the e-mail and postal addresses of everyone who enquires about your charity (and especially anyone who actually visits your project) – and ensure you follow them up with regular, interesting contact. Keep telling them your stories and those people could become staunch supporters and volunteers.

Say what?

Content is vital. Keep writing. Tell your supporters something they don’t know, educate and inform them. Create content that does this and shows the difference your work is making to the lives of others. Keep your website and social media fresh and dynamic (at least up-to-date!) so people keep coming back. Show people how effective your work is and they will want to invest in what you do so well.

40 brilliant Facebook tips

How many?
Yep, 40 free tips about using facebook to communicate... excerpts from Andrea Britton’s book One Giant Leap into Social Media Marketing... click here to read them

linkedin

Linking it up

Don’t ignore the power of LinkedIn! Your director should have a page and your charity should have its own page... you can post updates into a totally different audience than facebook. But please, don’t put half-hearted information on your page... fill it with the great stuff you do and invite lots of people to connect with you and follow your charity page.
Click here for... How to use a LinkedIn Company Page for a charity

They want to read what's NEW

If you have news to tell but don’t have a news page, you’re missing an effective tool… please add one ASAP… it will soon become one of your most-viewed pages. It’s one of the key things people want to see. But if you are generally unable to come up with news stories, I suggest you actually DON’T have a news page, as readers (and potential donors) will be put off by the old news and lack of activity.

If you’re not sure, try this. In the short-term, you can create a free blog (e.g. blogger.com), make sure it has a similar corporate look to your website, and populate it with your news. Ensure there are obvious links to and from your website, and add a link to the main website from most of your posts too, as that’s where your donations will be made.

Go on, thank them again

Obviously when you receive a posted donation, you send a thankyou of some kind… it would be rude and short-sighted not to. Well, a couple of months ago I made an online donation and received an automated thankyou from the online payment source. That’s fine, sort of... but I don’t know, it didn’t quite do it for me. I missed having a personalised response from the charity. So here’s a thought… when your charity receives an online payment – even when you know an automated thankyou has already been sent – send another one yourself. Do it promptly. Why? You want to make every donor, existing or new, feel appreciated. They will be more likely to donate again.

Press releases

Keep press releases short and concise (250-300 words is ideal). Keep it punchy and do not use unnecessary flowery language like ‘cutting-edge’ or ‘revolutionary'. Explain any terminology or acronyms if you have to use them. Make sure you only ever use accurate information and facts. Do not exaggerate or lie. Try and always send an image - around 1mb closed JPEG is about right. Issue your press release by e-mail. It does not need to be accompanied by a note explaining what it is. Just paste the text into the e-mail, or you can attach a Word doc as well.

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I'm Phil Dowding, publicist and photographer, MD of PR agency Dowding2 and director of UK charity Child of Hope... helping businesses and small non-profits to communicate better.

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