29 Apr How to Highlight Your Organization’s Good Work

How to Highlight Your Organization’s Good Work

Whether helping others is integral to your organization’s mission or does so in order to showcase corporate responsibility, businesses often face difficulty in letting others know about their good work. Why is that? We commonly hear: they don’t want to brag or seem opportunistic, they don’t want to appear disingenuous, or they just don’t know how.

We’re opening the discussion today to explore ways to effectively highlight your organization’s good work in a way that is authentic, natural and feels right. Each organization will have their own approach, so let’s see if these approaches below work for you.

Capturing your moments via photos. So many times we hear of organizations doing amazing things, but no one thought to take a quick photo or create an online photo album of the action. Photos really do speak a thousand words and make for a great way to tell a story (without all the heavy writing).

Unstaged photos are the best in terms of capturing authentic action and personality. Sure, there are times when you want your board of directors to pose for a picture or perhaps a check presentation to have formality; but the best way to tell your story is to share candid photos.

The timing of capturing photos and sharing with the world is another area we see many organizations fall flat. Make sure that you not only have someone taking authentic photos (with good natural lighting of course), but also get the photos up on social media, the company website, or even sent to news stations within hours (or even instantaneous) of their happening.

Telling your story to the media. Media coverage is such a terrific way to reach both targeted audiences and mass audiences and they’re amazing at telling your story of doing good work. The major problem we hear is that the organization sends their press release to reporters without any pickup (or response at all).

Try the practice of telling your organization’s story of doing something good for the community, employees or consumers without mentioning your company’s name in the headline. Look at the story with a different set of lenses and see the story for whom it benefits, why it’s important to the community/audiences and simply mention how your organization was able to be a part of it. Don’t worry that your organization will miss out on the action; in fact, our experience has shown you’ll get more press pickup by relying on the story rather than getting your name in the headline (and your business will in fact get significant attention as well).

Social sharing and engaging. Social media is one of the easiest ways to share your story of doing good work because of its ability to reach followers in a real-time way as well as carry on conversations. Try ensuring that your social page is continuously highlighting your good works (even create a hashtag for continuous efforts) and really show personality.

Tagging the organizations or individuals helped through your philanthropic or community efforts is another way to carry on the reach and let others know of your good work too.

The main takeaway from these ideas is that your organization has the best result when letting the public know about its good deeds and encouraging others to get involved or opening dialogue to additional communities in need.

So, by sharing your organization’s ability to do good for others, you’re in turn inspiring others to get involved, roll up their sleeves and do the same!

If you need help telling the story of your company’s good work, don’t hesitate to give us a call at (813) 865-3093.