Comms top tips

Working in comms can be a constant, hectic world. Here we share a few tips to help manage your workload and tools you can use to help with tasks.

We’d love to hear your tips, do get in touch.

Tip 1 – coping with a large volume of content

Be clear with the rest of your team, and 3rd parties, exactly what you need from them if they send you content to share in newsletters or with your networks. This saves time reading lots of copy to extract the key message.

Share a template reply with your colleagues which can be sent to 3rd parties stating exactly what is needed, and the format. Be specific.

Tip 2 – Social media engagement

Social Media engagement – is an important part of social media communication but there’s rarely enough time to do it.

Try the coffee time engagement method, each day, browse your SM platforms for 10 minutes while you have a cuppa, engaging with posts where appropriate.

Setting yourself that time limit means you do engage, but there is a limit to the time you spend. You don’t get dragged into more time than you can spare, but you can feel positive that you’re maintaining visibility online and doing so in a structured, planned way.

Tip 3 – creating images/graphics

In an ideal world, we would have time to be creative for every social media post or article, but in reality, it’s often a scrabble to put something together.

If you regularly publish posts on similar subjects, for example – training, events, or job vacancies – consider creating a selection of generic graphics which will suit each purpose. Create and save Alt text to go with each image so it’s ready to go when you need it.

You may feel if you do this that you’re using an image too often and not being creative enough, but the plus points are that it saves time, and your audience will learn to recognise that an image relates to a particular subject which may mean they pick it up sooner.

Canva

Canva (the free graphic design tool) allows free professional accounts for non-profits.

Canva also has a free PDF editor for making changes to PDF’s

You can edit videos for free in Canva.

Canva is adding new features all the time.

Tip 4 – Managing your email inbox

This is one of the areas which can cause the most pressure. Too much pressure causes stress, and stress is detrimental to wellbeing.

This article shares 6 tips on managing your inbox.

Another idea is to use your automated Out-of-Office reply stating that you are busy focusing on a project or task, state that you will only be looking at emails at set times and that there may be a delay to your reply. Not only will this take the pressure off you, but it shares an example to others who may also be struggling with workloads.