How to improve community engagement by refreshing your communications

In April 2018, concerned that our website was no longer fit for purpose, we challenged ourselves to ask 20 people about our ​‘brand’ and the way the community viewed Big Local. We found out that residents had conflicting views on the communities of Marsh and Micklefield being expressed as one by Big Local. Many people were confused about who we were, and what our purpose was. 

Residents thought our brand ​‘look’ needed uplifting, to reflect the area, and to have a more upbeat and welcoming tone. And that we should be driving communications for everyone, for groups across the whole community – as well as getting our own message across. They wanted us to create vehicles for local communication that could be sustainable in the long term. 

We created a web and brand design brief based on this research and put it out to tender. We also decided to scrap what had been an ​‘ad hoc’ newsletter and instead produce a new local newspaper (a much-loved community newspaper had folded just before Big Local). We commissioned an agency, who were happy to work in consultation with residents, to do the web and brand work and cheekily asked them to throw in a newspaper template as part of the deal.

In the autumn a partnership member offered to take on social media on a freelance basis, creating a more lively and responsive presence online, also running ​‘Let’s Get Social’ events to cultivate more social media confidence amongst local groups.

When the time came to writing the content for the website pages, the problem of who we are and what our purpose is reared its head. In response to this, and as part of a general development drive, we held two visioning days. Together, staff and partnership members decided that our purpose was to empower others in our area to succeed. We also wanted to make sure everyone could participate in our community and have a lot more fun! 

Once our ​‘Empower-Include-Enjoy’ ethos was clear, a draft three-year communications plan was thrashed about in an open meeting. The new ​‘look’, infant website and newspaper were shared, social media ambitions were talked through, and a relaunch event was proposed. 

We beavered away behind the scenes for a few more months, realigning all our email addresses with the website URL and social media tags, testing a Slack platform where groups could upload info about events. 

For the newspaper, we took on a young volunteer who was interested in graphic design and sent her to work with the agency for a couple of days, then employed her to lead on the layout of The Mayfly. 

We also planned six monthly ​‘First Saturday Breakfast’ in-person events for residents to meet up and share food and news. 

In May 2019 we launched the first issue of ​‘The Mayfly’ newspaper, delivered to (almost) every door, and promoted on social media. In it, we promoted the breakfasts and our lovely new website marshandmicklefield.com which opens with the strapline ​‘This belongs to everyone’. 

Turning our communications around has been a huge amount of work for a small community project, but everything is important: social media keeps the conversations going, The Mayfly tells the stories, the website keeps things clear, the breakfasts are for sharing news and company. 

Good visual design has helped us express how two communities can share one Big Local opportunity. We are yet to find a failsafe method of newspaper delivery, and still have to work hard to stay ​‘on message’ and make sure this really is for everyone. The biggest challenge is yet to come: making all of this sustainable. 

Things do look promising, new people have come forward, particularly through The Mayfly, to be actively involved in community work. As anyone working on Big Local knows, this is like striking gold. Hopefully, it will continue. In the meantime, as a community, we now have a unique visual identity and a solid communications system that we are proud of, and this in itself feels empowering, inclusive and enjoyable.