Telling Your Tales

Whenever we attend Incredible Edible meet ups one of the things that always comes up is how to ensure there are good communications that support groups to have good engagement with their community and some groups send out newsletters but many others, whilst considering it, aren’t sure how to set about it, so we thought we would share some thoughts.

MailChimp is the most popular platform to use to send newsletters and whilst it takes some time to set up, it is a super useful tool to add to your communication package. Since last year GDPR legislation (https://gdpr.eu) has meant we must all ensure any personal data we collect from people must be stored securely, and the best thing about MailChimp is that it has been set up to ensure the stored data is secure. This means if you use MailChimp you can be sure that the data stored is stored in a way that is GDPR compliant and it’s another thing that as a group, doesn’t need to be worried about. It’s also possible to set up different groups of people within your MailChimp account so it’s possible to send different information to different people, depending on their particular interests, which can be very useful for groups who are working in different spaces, or across different sectors of a community. Once set up it’s very easy to use and can be accessed by as many people as want to send information out.

But of course the next question is, what do we put in a newsletter? How do we make it engaging and ensure people subscribe to it?

Certainly the most important content is whatever it is the group is up to in the time between newsletters, so where a group will be and at what times is vital, but what else? Of course it depends on the priorities of the group sending out the newsletter, but remembering the importance of story telling to all Incredible Edible groups, newsletters are ideal to use as a story telling platform. But also it’s useful to highlight events that the group are attending, as well as to talk about upcoming projects that may need support in different ways, or to highlight the work going on by other organisations that the group collaborate with. The list is endless!

And of course sharing a newsletter via social media and focusing on the storytelling aspect, means your group will get some great engagement and the opportunity to spread your online reach. And if you tag us at the Incredible Edible Network in your social media posts, we’ll amplify your tales by sharing them!