Firestarters is turning up the heat for 2024! We’re kicking off the year with a brand new partnership. We’ll be collaborating with Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority (MRWA) and to deliver a brand new series of events. We’ll be producing three live and interactive sector-specific events, discussing the role of the circular economy within the Liverpool City Region (LCR) and how we can work to create more sustainable approaches to business.
Meet Firestarters
Firestarters is a community of changemakers across the LCR that places purpose before profit. Through a range of live events, we bring together people from the public, private and third sectors to tackle important issues and strive for social change. Firestarters is community lighter fuel.
Get to know our partners
MRWA is a strategic waste and resource management authority that operates across the Merseyside region. It is committed to creating more environmentally-friendly communities and sustainable approaches to business through their pioneering approach to waste innovation. As champions for the circular economy, MRWA brings together circular leaders through its Circular Economy Club Liverpool City Region. The club is a chapter of CEC global and is open to anyone within the LCR that is interested in taking action on current environmental and sustainability issues.
What is the Circular Culture series?
The Circular Culture series will consist of three events, hosted across different areas of the LCR, bringing together industry leaders and sustainability experts to facilitate important conversations. With each event focusing on a different sector, the events will be exploring how the circular economy can benefit organisations on a local and national scale, and how it can lead to adopting more sustainable and ethical approaches to business.
Manufacturing: Making and building a better world
Investigating the role of the circular economy in manufacturing, the first event will discuss the unique challenges around creating a circular culture in the process of turning raw materials into finished goods.
Event two will delve into the technology industry, bringing together local industry leaders to explore the challenges around implementing a circular economy in a sector that is committed to innovation and rapid development.
Food and Hospitality: Imagining more sustainable approaches
We’ll be closing the series with event three, taking a look at the role of the circular economy in the food and hospitality sector. The event will explore the challenges and opportunities around introducing circular culture into a customer-facing industry.
Attendees will have the opportunity to hear from a diverse line-up of local industry experts, (stay tuned as we’ll be announcing these shortly!) around the core challenges and opportunities of implementing circular culture into key sectors. Our unique Firestarters format will help to empower attendees to ‘ask the experts’ their insightful questions and our circular culture pledge will create community accountability and actionable next steps so that we can collectively spark change.
What will the events look like?
Each event will follow our unique Firestarters format, attendees can expect:
Welcome and context setting from Firestarters Co-Founder Greg Macoy and host, Fran Manca
Opening survey to gain valuable insights
Panel Q+A with a diverse lineup of industry professionals where attendees will have the opportunity to ‘ask the experts’
Smaller group discussions with attendees and guest speakers to explore the key ideas in-depth
Round-up of learnings from the sessions and community pledge to create next steps
Opportunities for networking to close the event
Attendees will come away from the event with:
Shared real-world experiences from organisations in the Manufacturing, Technology, Food and Hospitality industries
Practical advice and takeaway tools to enable positive change to happen quickly
A diverse network of contacts that can offer ongoing support and insights
A chance to ask experts questions about manufacturing challenges in the circular economy today
The opportunity to work collaboratively with organisations across the supply chain
Free membership to CEC LCR enabling networking opportunities, peer support, access to events and meetings, and regular newsletters covering important developments in the circular economy
How can you get involved in the Circular Culture Series?
Are you ready to spark change? If you’d like to join the discussion around implementing circular culture in a range of different sectors, then come along to the Firestarters x MRWA Circular Culture series by booking your ticket on Eventbrite.
To keep up-to-date with the latest news from Firestarters, follow us at @heyfirestarters on Twitter and Instagram.
In a world full of capitalist enterprises and profit-driven big businesses, it’s refreshing to see more and more organisations joining the fight for social transformation. The next generation of business leaders are more committed than ever to creating positive social change through business initiatives and careful planning. But what is social impact?
In its simplest form, social impact is “making a difference.” From a business perspective, social impact is any positive change that is created for people and the planet, addressing a social issue or working to solve inequalities and injustices with a community. Achieving social impact is the result of a deliberate mission-driven approach to business that prioritises values and purpose to create a better world. Interested in joining the good fight? Let’s take a deep dive into all things social impact marketing.
What is social impact marketing?
Have you ever come across an organisation on social media that speaks out about important issues to help make a difference? Ever received a newsletter from a business sharing their steps towards sustainability? Then there’s a good chance these companies are committed to driving social impact and are demonstrating this through strategic marketing functions.
Social impact marketing is a strategy to creatively communicate an organisation’s commitment and role in driving positive social transformation. Whilst social impact marketing requires an element of vulnerability from organisations, having a value-driven approach to business has many long-term benefits.
How can social impact marketing help to tackle issues?
When organisations take a stand and utilise social impact marketing to take an active role in local and wider communities to promote positive change, they can help tackle some of the core social and cultural challenges. Purpose-led organisations can achieve this by:
Speaking out about current issues
By using their platform and voice as a force for good, businesses can use social media marketing as a way to speak out around current issues that are relevant to their sector and their organisational mission and goals.
Promote social or environmental causes
Sharing their commitment to social or environmental causes through carefully curated social impact marketing campaigns, can help businesses positively influence their users and encourage them to get on board with initiatives that do more good for people and the planet.
Positively affect behaviour through thought leadership
When audiences see their favourite brands taking a stance and promoting the need to drive positive social change, it can help to influence their behaviour and attitudes towards current social and cultural issues. Social impact marketing can act as a form of thought leadership, helping audiences to connect with your values and make a change for something that they’re passionate about.
Examples of social impact marketing
Social consciousness is on everyone’s mind. Here are some great examples of change-making social impact marketing campaigns that we’ve seen from some of the brands you know and love.
Patagonia
We’re starting strong with fan favourite sustainability experts, Patagonia. Whilst its core business function is an outdoor clothing retailer, Patagonia is known for its socially transformative marketing, promoting environmentalist and sustainable approaches to business. Over the years, Patagonia has worked to fulfil their corporate social responsibility and make a positive impact on the planet through various initiatives and collaborations with other corporations.
In particular, their ‘We’re All Screwed?’ campaign got us all thinking and delivered a creative and unique approach to social impact marketing. The campaign consisted of a reversible poem that when read from top to bottom warned audiences of the impending climate threat, but when read from the bottom up, the poem then offers readers a more positive outlook on the climate change issue (mind blowing). This carefully curated approach, not only showcases Patagonia’s values and what they care about through their marketing, but also provides encouragement for readers to join their fight and drive real impact.
Lush Cosmetics
Lush are a well renowned brand all throughout the world for their magnificently fragrant products, their shining customer service, but more importantly for their responsible approach to business and outspoken attitude towards social issues. Running a variety of campaigns, including support for LGBTQIA+ rights, Black Lives Matter and action against animal testing, Lush’s social media feeds are often dominated by their commitment to creating social change and solving real-world challenges.
In fact, their ‘What the Zuck’ campaign led to Lush signing out of their social media profiles in protest against the unsafe environment of social media and the online world. Before ceasing to post on their platforms, Lush released a series of posts from the campaign sharing thought provoking statistics and encouraging audiences to join them in their fight to promote tech for good and create safer online spaces.
Global ice cream brand Ben and Jerry’s is an excellent example of marketing done right. Not only are they great at creating products with memorable names, but they are well known for their social and environmentally responsible mission. Ben and Jerry’s take a stand on controversial issues and are famous for their activism on progressive causes, including LGBTQ+ rights and the rights and dignity of refugees.
More recently, Ben and Jerry’s UK jumped on the viral ‘Ins and Outs for 2024’ trend, capitalising on the opportunity to share some of the stuff that they care about and their social impact mission. The Instagram post highlighted their commitment to supporting refugee rights with ‘Introducing safe routes for people seeking safety in the UK’ as one of their ‘ins’ and ‘harmful policies that don’t protect people seeking safety’ as one of their ‘outs.’ Here, we’ve seen a true masterclass as to how your organisation can increase your social impact, whilst staying true to your brand and staying on top of current trends.
In our organisations, we all have the ability to create a positive impact on local and wider communities through the projects and initiatives that we deliver on a day-to-day basis. Added value social impact can help you do just that, whilst having great long-time benefits for the success of your organisation. A great example of social impact in this form is the growing community of B Corporations across the globe.
For an organisation to become B Corp certified, they must demonstrate their commitment and responsibility for meeting high standards of social and environmental impact across a core set of value-driven standards. Despite the rigorous assessment and challenging certification process, B Corporations are helping to reinvent capitalism and place empathy and impact at the heart of business. Aside from helping to change the world for the better, B Corp certification has many positive outcomes for your organisation, such as building trust and credibility with customers and attracting and retaining employees who share your value-driven approach.
If you’d like to know more about B Corp and if it’s the right fit for your business, take a look at our very own journey to becoming certified. (A huge milestone that we’ll never stop talking about).
Bringing social impact to your brand’s marketing
Now you know everything there is to know about social impact (you’re so welcome), here are 5 quick ways that you can start to add social impact into your marketing.
Research, research, research
In order to successfully incorporate social impact marketing into your organisation, it’s important to get to know your target audience. By working to understand the needs and values of your audiences and what they want from your organisation, you can authentically align your marketing mission with them.
Contributing valuable time and resources to developing clearly defined goals and intentions around your social impact and correctly communicating these to your target audiences are pivotal to your success in social transformation. They are also a result of strategic, insights-driven research, helping you to develop holistic and empathetic approaches to your business that do more good for people and the planet.
Shout about the things you care about
If you want to make a difference and help to tackle the big social and environmental challenges, then you need to speak up on the issues that matter to you most. But that doesn’t necessarily mean shouting about anything and everything. When you’re choosing to speak out about social issues, it needs to come from a place of authenticity that encapsulates your organisation’s mission and culture. Choose causes and issues that are important and relevant to your brand and that your audience can relate to.
When you’re choosing to use your platform as a force for good, it’s also important to consider and maintain respect for your stakeholders and share your mission with the intention to educate and not degrade (think purposeful punk).
In your mission to do more social good, you need to gain the support of your target audiences to join you on your journey to transformation. But to gain this support, you need to first establish a strong reputation and show your commitment to the causes that you support. Collecting evidence and data to support your claims can help to enhance your social impact marketing efforts and show how your day-to-day work relates to your organisation’s advocacy on a wider scale.
If you’re on your journey to B Corp certification or a seasoned social transformer, then you may demonstrate this through in-depth social impact reports. Alternatively, if you’re new to the game, you can still add social impact to your marketing and share your organisation’s commitment to making a positive difference, in a much more lo-fi way. Running a short and simple social media campaign to highlight some of your key achievements and how your organisation has promoted positive change is a great way to achieve this.
With more and more organisations joining the social impact movement and the face of business changing for the better, customers are becoming more likely to support businesses that align with their mission and values. Due to this, there is a growing need for organisations to provide more honesty and transparency around social and environmental projects and causes.
If you want to add more social impact to your marketing, it’s important to practise transparency and be open and honest about the impact your organisation is having and communicate any challenges and limitations that you might be having in your journey to support social transformation.
By adding this element of vulnerability into your storytelling, you can set realistic marketing goals around the impact you’d like to achieve, elevate your marketing functions and also drive positive interest to your organisation and your cause by various stakeholders. Honesty is the best policy.
Utilise storytelling to share your vision
Utilising effective storytelling is pivotal to bringing added social impact into your day-to-day marketing functions. Through successful storytelling, you have the ability to evoke emotions, capture attention and inspire people to join your social causes. Infusing your social media platforms, newsletters and blog posts with impactful and carefully crafted messaging that is reflective of your socially transformative organisational values is key. It can demonstrate your commitment to making a positive difference and attracting socially conscious stakeholders and inspire people to take action for the stuff that you care about.
Social impact storytelling should go beyond simply churning out messages and should harness the power of starting important conversations, inviting your audiences to be a part of something bigger and inspiring action. Powerful and authentic storytelling allows you to do just that. Your story isn’t just another tool in the marketing toolbox, it’s the foundation of what aligns your organisation and your mission to do more good.
TL;DR
So, in short, an organisation’s social impact refers to the good things that they do to make a positive difference for people and the planet. Incorporating social impact into marketing allows organisations to authentically communicate their commitment and role in driving impact around social and environmental issues. Here are five quick ways to add social impact into your brand’s marketing:
Research, research, research
Shout about the things you care about
Collect evidence and data that supports your mission
Be transparent about your journey
Utilise storytelling to share your cause
Resources we think you might find useful
If you’re ready to discover more about social impact marketing, take a look at some of these helpful resources:
This article from Harvard Business Review explores how marketing aligns with mission
Our very own 2023 B Corp Social Impact Report demonstrates the work we’ve done to drive positive social and environmental impact.
B Corp’s helpful guide around the positive effects that small businesses can have on people and the planet.
Ready to do something incredible?
If you’re ready to start changing the world through added social impact, but you’re not sure how to get there, we can help. Get in touch and we’ll connect you to our incredible network of partners, who can support you in your journey to do more good. If you’re looking for more helpful resources and insights to help you become more purpose-driven then follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn. To be the first to hear about all things Matchstick Creative, sign up to our monthly newsletter.
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Have you ever attended a networking event and felt as if your soul were being crushed? Are you sick of listening to ‘business’ people try to sell you something rather than build meaningful connections? Well, this is how our founders Ruth Hartnoll, Greg Macoy and business lead, Aaron Fontenot felt in 2020. Rather than let it beat them down they recognised this as an opportunity for positive change. They decided to redefine networking and set out to create a community which would allow purpose-driven people to work together to take action and drive positive change.
At our events, participants can;
Network with other ethical people – Attendees can create meaningful connections with a diverse network of contacts that can offer potential collaboration and support.
Gain insights – Attendees can hear inspiring insights and real-life experiences from a diverse range of guest speakers including industry leaders, small business owners and social change advocates.
Create change – Attendees are part of the change they want to see. Tackle important challenges and make your commitment to driving impact through actionable next steps and pledges.
Connect with the experts – Attendees can ask the experts about some of the key challenges and opportunities around core issues.
In this article, we will explore how we used our expertise in user experience design to create an ethical networking community that is inclusive, engaging, and impactful.
Members of our ethical networking community introduce themselves.
Remind me, what is user experience design again?
For a more detailed summary of user experience design check out our article on the subject. To briefly summarise, user experience is everything related to a person’s interaction with a product or service. When it has been well designed, it creates a seamless experience which people will love. A product or service with a great user experience will be;
relevant and useful to the correct people
easy to understand
easy to use
something users remember
cost-effective
efficient
something users want to use
enjoyable for people to use
Three things we did to make Firestarters more inclusive, engaging and impactful
Empathised with our users
One of Matchstick Creative’s core values is to act with empathy, which hugely informed how we developed our ethical networking community. To ensure that our events are empathetic and tackle topics important to our participants, we research our audience, their backgrounds, their lived experiences, their concerns, and their expectations of a community like ours. With this information, we were able to create a variety of personas and journey maps. For more details on both personas and journey maps, refer to our article on designing ethical user experiences.
These assets, commonly employed in user experience design, provided our team with valuable insights into who our participants are and how they may engage with Firestarters. By creating a shared understanding of our audiences and how they interact with the community we were able to make more informed decisions, making our events more relevant.
Purpose-Driven Penny,’ a persona representing a purpose-driven business owner.
Her story
‘Penny is 40 years old and lives in Liverpool. She previously worked as a fashion designer but grew with the industry’s frustrated lack of action on sustainability and tackling modern slavery.
Due to these concerns, Penny started her ethically sourced fashion label based within the Liverpool City Region (LCR). She feels that trying to do business differently is the right thing to do but feels alienated from much of the rest of the industry.
What does she want from Firestarters?
To help drive social change
To connect with like-minded people
To raise the profile of her business
To find inspiration
Goals/attitudes/concerns
Feels stressed
Wants to earn a living through ethical business
Wants to improve and expand her business
Feels like being different is holding her back
Needs more support on how to do business ethically
Believes in collaboration
Passionate about the city
Socially and politically engaged’
Ensured Firestarters events are inclusive
We fundamentally believed that traditional networking events can often feel like a closed shop, leaving many people feeling like they don’t belong. A major contributing factor to this feeling is the lack of diversity. At our events, we emphasise inclusivity as we want Firestarters to be a place where people can have productive conversations whilst being their authentic selves. Achieving true inclusivity is complex, so we take this challenge as an ongoing creative problem to solve. While we know that it cannot be solved overnight we used our expertise in user experience design to make steps in the right direction within our community of change-makers.
Before each event, participants are invited to complete a brief survey which delves into various aspects of their identity, including ethnicity, sexuality, and which industry they work in. This approach allows us to gain valuable insights into the diversity of our audiences. To guarantee the effectiveness of the survey we developed it to be inclusive and sensitive. The survey drew inspiration from the ‘Do Ask Do Tell’ document by Stonewall, Europe’s largest LGBT rights organisation, and consulting with the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) consultant, Rachel Gnagniko.
To ensure our diversity was representative of the local area, we sense-checked our participant data with census data from the region. Doing so allowed us to gauge whether our events effectively attract underrepresented groups within the community. Remaining reflective and being committed to making incremental improvements underscores our commitment to fostering a truly inclusive environment.
A Segment of our pre-event survey collecting attendee details such as age, gender, ethnicity, etc.
As part of our commitment to representing the broadest spectrum of people possible, we have created this survey which will help us understand who our participants are and who they are not reaching (yet). All questions will give us an insight into who you are however, you are under no pressure to answer any of these questions, so only be as honest as you are comfortable with.
Create actionable insights
Having spent years attending long, boring networking events but leaving empty-handed we wanted to break the mould. After each event, we create a report with actionable insights for attendees.
During events, we have a dedicated note-taker who records the panel’s discussion. We capture the thoughts of our participants in breakout rooms on sticky notes. At the end of each session, we have hundreds of sticky notes filled with ideas which we can affinity sort into a few key insights. With these insights, we create a report with valuable resources and next steps, empowering our community to start their own fires.
Finally, at the end of each session, the people at our events are invited to sign a pledge to take one actionable step related to the event topic. Signing this pledge is symbolic but helps to create a sense of momentum, helping make our events more impactful.
Key insights from our ‘Start-up Culture’ Firestarters event:
‘1. Always work on culture – If companies want to create a positive company culture it should be understood that it cannot be created through strategies, it is something that must be consistently worked on by people at all levels of the organisation.
2 – It’s important that companies focus on being values-driven as there is a real appetite for it both from consumers and potential employees.
3. Difficulty finding investors – It can be difficult for businesses to be purpose-driven as business advisors do not always understand the value of being a purpose-driven business and being ethical can also scare off potential investors’
TL ; DR
Too many words to read? Ok let’s sum up
Firestarters is an ethical networking community that addresses purpose-driven issues.
Matchstick Creative used user experience design principles to create a community committed to putting people first.
To hold our own feet to the fire and ensure our events are truly inclusive we track participant details, ensuring that our audiences are as diverse as possible.
To maximise the impact of our events we record discussions, create insights reports and encourage participants to sign a pledge to take a positive action based on the event topic.
Resources we think you may find useful
There are many great resources available to help you understand more about service design, here are some of our recommendations that we think are particularly helpful;
When it comes to all things user experience, Nielsen Norman Group is the gold standard.
Stonewall is a truly excellent resource for learning more about LGBTQIA+ issues and how to make improvements within your organisation
This article from Survey Monkey is a highly useful resource which provides advice on the best practices for creating surveys
Ready to start your own fires? Get in touch
Interested in what you’ve read? Want to explore a purpose-driven topic and gain a unique perspective? Get in touch with us and start your own fires. If you’re looking for insights and top tips from our Firestarters events then follow us on Instagram. To be the first to hear about all things Firestarters, sign up for our newsletter.
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What is tone of voice?
Have you ever stumbled across an organisation’s social media posts and been impressed? Passed a billboard and thought, “Wow, that really speaks to me.” Then there’s a good chance that business has absolutely nailed their brand tone of voice.
Tone of voice covers everything around how a brand interacts with its audiences, from written and spoken communication, to design elements, and to how they interact with their customers. Establishing a great tone of voice isn’t just about what you say but also how you choose to say it, including the pace, pitch and order of the words you choose. Tone of voice is your brand’s attitude and getting it right can help you to build trust with your audience so that you can really talk the talk…and walk the walk.
Why is it important to have brand voice guidance?
Although having an outstanding tone of voice is essential for any organisation to achieve successful brand positioning, hitting the mark isn’t always that easy. Here are some of the benefits of building carefully crafted brand voice guidelines:
It saves time
Creating guidelines for the whole team to follow saves time on questions from the team and allows everyone to feel confident in applying the tone of voice to their writing. Providing guidelines helps to correctly define language choices across the team.
Builds trust with audiences
With formal guidelines in place, organisations are able to apply brand voice correctly, providing a positive customer experience. Guidelines promote professionalism, no matter who is being addressed.
Promotes consistency and authenticity
To create important audience connections, it’s important that the brand tone of voice is both consistent and authentic. Tone of voice is used in all areas of an organisation, so with lots of different people speaking on behalf of the businesses, brand guidelines help to keep it in check.
Well, in short, brand voice guidance is for EVERYONE in your organisation. From the CEO to your junior employees, everyone in your business interacts with your tone of voice in one way or another, having some responsibility for sharing your message with the world. That’s why it’s vital for employees on all levels to have a deep understanding of your guidelines.
Brand voice guidelines are also important when working with third-party collaborators, such as freelancers or small purpose-driven agencies (just like us). Sharing these guidelines with outside agents during collaborative projects means that your tone of voice stays…(say it with us)…consistent and authentic.
Important elements to add to your tone of voice guidelines
So, now that we’ve helped you to understand just exactly what brand tone of voice is and why it’s so important, you’re one step closer to changing the world. It’s time to think about creating your tone of voice guidelines. Here’s exactly what you need to include (you’re so welcome) :
Organisational mission statement
The first element to kick off your brand tone of voice guidelines is your organisational mission statement. Before you can even begin to think about how you want to get your message across, you need to figure out what that message is. Adding your mission statement creates clarity around your brand’s purpose and objectives, showing the world who you are and what you care about. This then helps you in your journey to creating incredible tone of voice guidelines by acting as a framework to build them on, allowing you to create distinctive guidelines that support your mission.
Values and mission statement from Matchstick Creative brand guidelines. Further information is included in the body text.
Text version:
Vision – To create a more equitable world through well-told stories and shared experiences.
Mission – We help organisations who want to create a positive impact communicate clearly. When we understand each other better, great things happen.
Values definition
After you’ve incorporated your mission statement, it’s then important to add definitions of your company values. On the surface, your organisational values can help both your team and your audience know what to expect from your brand. Adding a clear definition of each of your values can help you discover what they look like in action and authentically shape your messaging. This then plays an important role in influencing how you build your new tone of voice guidelines.
Example of values definition from Matchstick Creative brand guidelines. Further information is included in the body text.
Text version:
Why do we lead with authenticity?
Without the ability to be our authentic selves, we can’t deliver our best work. Being able to bring your full self every day creates trust and encourages a better work environment for everyone. When we lead with authenticity, we’re able to attract like-minded clients, colleagues and opportunities.
We are candid about our experiences. We share truths even when they can be difficult to hear. We present ourselves authentically no matter what situation we’re in.
What does leading with authenticity look like?
Our actions – Acting with integrity and following through on things we’ve said we’ll do.
Our influence – Holding ourselves and others accountable for their actions.
Our thoughts – Being generous with our time and expertise.
Our mission – Committing to good work with people and organisations who are trying to make the world a better place.
Brand personality
Once you’ve figured out the ‘why’, it’s time to start looking at the ‘how.’ Defining your brand’s personality is a vital step in building tone of voice guidelines that allow you to shout above the noise. When we’re talking about personality, we’re talking about all of the traits that both define your brand and make it more human. Whilst organisational mission and values help to figure out why we’re speaking out for something, our brand personality then helps us discover how we communicate with our audiences.
A great step to crafting tone of voice guidelines is to come up with adjectives that best describe how you’d like your brand to sound. To bridge the gap between how you intend to sound and how you’re perceived by your audience, take a deep dive into each adjective. Here, you can decide what you’re intending and not intending to get across, as well as what each trait means to you as an organisation. When you’ve got this part down, you’re well on your way to greatness.
Matchstick Creative brand personality traits
Text version:
How we illuminate our communications:
Optimistic
Frank
Helpful
Imaginative
Use cases
When it comes to creating and implementing your new brand tone of voice guidelines, the most important element is using real-world cases. By taking your tone of voice and placing it into examples relevant to your brand, such as social media posting and website content, you can add a ‘why it works’ component, helping to combine all of the elements of your tone of voice. Creating both correct and incorrect cases will allow your team to have a clear understanding of what to (and what not to) do.
A real-world example of how the Matchstick Creative tone of voice is used. Further information is included in the body text.
Text version:
404 Page
Oops, this page has extinguished.
While we’re busy fixing things, perhaps one of these pages might help you:
About us – The story of how we got started
Our work – The clients we work with to change the world
Helpful stuff – Resources made by us to help you
Why it works
The headline is friendly using language reminiscent of our brand name.
We’re offering a helpful solution by providing links.
Our CTA includes a contact email so a real person will step in if needed.
Guidance for audiences with additional needs
Your audience is the heart of your communications. Many of us have diverse, global audiences, so it’s important to consider accessibility when crafting your tone of voice guidelines. For users who may not be familiar with the language or may require additional tools such as a screen reader, failing to acknowledge accessibility in your brand tone of voice could lead to alienating people.
Here are some top tips for implementing accessibility into your tone of voice guidelines:
Make sure headings and hyperlinks are clear. Keeping a consistent heading format and presenting hyperlinks in a clear way, helps to guide the reader to important information.
Be considerate when using imagery. Images and designs are great visual tools, but they should be used to add to the information already there instead of acting as a replacement. To improve accessibility even further, the use of alt text with images helps with the readability of your guidelines.
Use clear and simple language when building your guidelines. As tempting as it is to throw in those big words or your local dialect, try to avoid jargon, slang and idioms where possible.
Style guide
Another core step to creating a unified brand across your team is to develop a style guide within your tone of voice guidelines. This helps to define your in-house style, a set of standard principles to apply to any written components of your brand. When establishing your brand, a style guide is an important aspect of your guidelines, acting as a rulebook for your various teams to adhere to, helping you to develop a consistent brand. Making sure all team members are on the same page about how to represent your brand, style guides can cover everything from logos and colour palettes to typography and iconography.
In particular when developing tone of voice guidelines, style guides help content creators to understand how to correctly portray your brand’s messaging and personality, particularly in online content. Tone of voice style guides set the standards across various components such as terminology and punctuation.
Writing tips
Another great way to put the ‘guide’ in tone of voice guidelines is to incorporate writing tips into your new guidelines. Practical writing guidance is the section of the guidelines that take a deep dive into your tone of voice and provides support to your team in the essentials of how to correctly communicate on behalf of the brand. Essentially, these tips become the do’s and don’ts of your guidelines helping to establish the intention of your tone of voice, providing support with all things grammar, accessibility and more.
Practical writing guide from Matchstick Creative tone of voice guidelines. Further information is included in the body text.
Text version:
Firing the imagination through language
Good stories come from carefully chosen words placed in just the right order. Fire the linguistic imagination to capture our audience’s attention.
Get verby with it. Energy and colour comes from carefully chosen verbs. Use them as a catalyst to enliven your copy. For example: Run, don’t walk – grab your free template.
Use adjectives with substance. Poorly used adjectives act like tiny anvils dragging your sentence down until all its energy is killed. Use adjectives with that something extra. For example: Stop creating humdrum copy with these 5 tips.
Alliterate to communicate. Dash energy into your copy with well-placed alliteration. It’s playful and is a good reflection of our imaginative personality trait. For example: Brilliant brand voices we want to shout about from the rooftops.
Helpful reading
One of the key objectives in creating your brand tone of voice guidelines is to empower and support your team. As a result of your newly crafted tone of voice, your team should feel confident in applying your messaging with the world, across their varying roles and responsibilities. A great way to guide your team in their development is to add some helpful resources to your guidelines. Here are some of our best reading suggestions to help get your head around tone of voice guidelines:
This article from Semrush is great for understanding how to establish a brand tone of voice and provides a helpful template for building your guidelines
Tone of voice masters, Mailchimp, share their top tips for establishing your voice and tone guidelines
Who to ask for help
You’re almost set to create some incredible tone of voice guidelines. It’s always handy to include a ‘who to ask’ section for the final step in the process. Whether this is your CEO or members of your marketing team, adding in this quick guide helps your team to know who the brand champions are so they have a clear point of contact to answer their burning tone of voice questions. Now, you’ve covered all bases!
Key contacts page from Matchstick Creative tone of voice guidelines
Text version:
Who to ask for help:
Ruth Hartnoll
CEO
Brand Voice Champion
Shannon Byrne
Content Creator
Brand Voice Ambassador
Ready to start creating?
Now you have everything you need to begin crafting your brand tone of voice guidelines. As promised, here are some great real-world examples to inspire you along the way:
Mailchimp’s tone of voice guidelines:
To get us started, we’re returning to the fan favourite, tone of voice experts, Mailchimp. User-friendly, email marketing platform Mailchimp are famous for its tone of voice, which is empathetic, helpful and clear with a healthy sprinkling of humour. Their tone of voice guidelines are a fantastic example of how to do it right, with some great tips on crafting your own guidelines along the way.
Breaking academic stereotypes one tone of voice guidelines at a time, the University of Leeds have a great tone of voice that allows them to connect with their diverse audience of students, teachers, parents and wider communities. Speaking out on key core issues and taking a collaborative approach to knowledge sharing helps their brand values shine. Their carefully crafted tone of voice guidelines are definitely one to watch, delving into every area of their brand personality and mission. This is how it’s done.
The power of Patagonia’s exceptional branding is under the spotlight once more. Their unique tone of voice is evidently mission-driven, always relating back to their core values and commitment to driving change. Take a look at this analysis of some of their core value definitions, an important component to building brand tone of voice guidelines.
So, in summary, creating well-thought-out and strategic brand tone of voice guidelines is integral. Adopting a consistent and authentic tone of voice is a powerful tool for helping you to connect with your audience, share your mission with the world and create a real impact. Here are the important elements to include in your tone of voice guidelines:
Organisational mission statement
Values definition
Brand personality
Use cases and real-world examples
Accessibility for audiences with additional needs
Style guide
Writing tips
Helpful reading
Who to ask for help
Let’s start a project, together
If you’re ready to build your guidelines, but you’re just not too sure how to get there, then you’ve come to the right place. Our team of content experts can help you craft the perfect tone of voice guidelines for your organisation. Get in touch with us today, to see how we can help.
If you’re looking for more helpful insights and top tips about defining the look, feel and attitude of your brand then follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn. To be the first to hear about all things Matchstick Creative, sign up for our newsletter.
Have you ever been all set to attend an important online conference but the video link didn’t work? Ever gotten irrationally angry at customer support after being passed from one department to another, explaining your issue repeatedly as each person doesn’t know anything about your situation? If this sounds familiar, then the chances are, that these organisations haven’t applied service design principles to their product.
In this blog post, we’ll examine how service design can help to create brilliant user experience and provide an example of the challenges it can solve. We’ll also share our top tips on how organisations can apply service design principles to their product.
Service design facilitates excellent user experience by allowing organisations to consider all aspects of their service. It allows organisations to gain an understanding of what their users interact with, what processes need to be in place and what people are required.
To fully understand service design, it’s important to have a good grasp of designing great user experience. To help get you up to speed, we wrote a blog post exploring the different ways to design ethical user experience. The process of designing a seamless customer experience focuses on everything that a user interacts with. Service design can be thought of as the other side of the same coin, as it ensures that everything behind the scenes is positioned to facilitate excellent user experience. Neglecting the behind-the-scenes operations, including; people, props, and processes, can lead to failure. This can then result in a poor user experience, wasted money, and unhappy employees.
Focusing solely on user needs without considering the employees and behind-the-scenes processes will, unintentionally, ruin the user experience. A lack of support behind the scenes can make the service similar to the man behind the curtain in “The Wizard of Oz.” Where there are no functions to back it up, the experience will fall apart. This is where service design comes in, as it helps create a better user experience by considering all aspects of the service, ensuring that the intended user experience is supported and can happen.
It helps to foster a positive work environment
According to Simon Sinek, “Happy employees ensure happy customers. And happy customers ensure happy shareholders – in that order.” Service design plays a key role in creating happy employees, the first step in the process. When an organisation maps out their entire service, employees gain clarity regarding their roles, within the broader context of the service, and how their actions directly impact the journey of the user.
It promotes collaborative teamwork
Service design encourages collaboration between user-facing teams and behind-the-scenes teams. This mutual understanding and respect will help to enable cooperation and promote collaborative problem-solving, and a more joined-up approach to service delivery.
It identifies pain points and facilitates innovative solutions
A common problem organisations face is a lack of a shared understanding of their entire process. Team members often only comprehend their section of the service which can result in major pain points going unnoticed. Tools such as service blueprints help organisations gain a more detailed overview of their service, identify internal and user-facing pain points, and design more innovative solutions.
Service design in action: booking an appointment at the GP
Service design principles can be used to tackle many different types of challenges, be it in the physical or the digital world. Here, we will explore how service design can be used to improve the services offered by a GP’s surgery.
Before we begin it is important to understand what type of user we are talking about. This example will explore how a retiree would book an appointment with the GP, attend the appointment and receive treatment. Take a look at our blog post on ethical user experience for our tips on how to correctly represent your users and how to plot out their journeys.
The first thing to consider is when applying service design principles is everything that the user sees and interacts with. In this example, we will attempt to align the journey as closely with reality as possible, and then see if we can improve it using service design principles.
The user’s journey at a GP surgery
Calls the GP’s surgery at 8 AM
Speaks to a receptionist to book an appointment
Travels to the GP surgery
Checks into the surgery
Waits in the waiting room
Called into the GP’s office
Tells the doctor what is wrong with them
The doctor prescribes medication for them to take for the next two weeks
The doctor refers them to a specialist
The patient leaves the GP surgery
Behind the scenes
The next stage in service design is to consider what operations should be happening behind the scenes to facilitate this user journey.
Calls at 8 am
A working phone line is required
A trained professional needs to be ready to answer
The professional needs to be able to access patient details and the doctor’s availability
Travels to the GP surgery
Physical signposting is necessary
A car park with accessible parking is important
Up-to-date information is needed online to help people locate the office
Checks into the surgery
A system for patients to manually check themselves in or a trained receptionist with access to the same software is needed
Waits in the waiting room
A clean and comfortable seating area
Signage indicating waiting times
Called into the GP’s office
A member of staff calls the patient
Tells the doctor what is wrong with them
Access to the patient’s medical history
The doctor prescribes tablets
A system to issue medication
The doctor refers them to a specialist
Contact details for the specialist
Improving the service and the user experience
Now that we can see both what the users interact with and what is needed to facilitate these interactions, we can begin to improve the overall experience for the user, through better service design.
Calls at 8 am
Can more resources be given to GPs to allow patients to book emergency appointments more easily than only at 8 AM? As our user is a retiree, they may have hearing difficulties, so there should be an option to accommodate those with hearing impairments. Services like Relay UK could provide helpful solutions to this.
Travels to the GP surgery
To accommodate individuals who are unable to leave their homes and have difficulties getting into the surgery, a pickup service could be provided.
Checks into the surgery
Manual check-in services would ease the pressure on reception staff and streamline the process, but machines like this tend to be avoided by retirees, preferring to speak to a person. It may decrease queue lengths to have dedicated members of staff manning the manual check-in machines to support people who are uncomfortable with the new technology.
Waits in the waiting room
Placing hand sanitiser dispensers, disinfectant stations, and paper towels throughout the room can enable patients to maintain good personal hygiene by cleaning their hands and seats. This approach may help to ease the workload on NHS cleaning staff, while fostering a consistently hygienic environment.
Called into the GP’s office
A tannoy system could be used which tells the patient when it is their turn, rather than depending on a member of staff physically shouting.
The doctor prescribes medication and refers the patient to a specialist
The use of a standard NHS system which communicates with all NHS institutions and pharmacies (this doesn’t currently exist).
How to apply service design to your organisation
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All of these principles are fantastic ways of improving any service, here are our top tips for how to do this at your organisation.
Research
Before attempting to do anything else, it is crucial to understand who your customers are, how they interact with your service and how they feel about it. To discover more about the research stage, take a look at more helpful stuff around ethical user experience.
A range of perspectives
It’s important to gather a wide range of perspectives during this process. Every member of your team will have a slightly different understanding and may be aware of pain points unknown to anyone else. Collaboration is key!
Map it out
Creating a service blueprint is an excellent way to apply service design principles to your organisation. This will allow you to gain a clear understanding of how your service works, what the users see and what is needed to facilitate it. This is where your broad range of perspectives will be invaluable as each person will be able to provide a little piece of the picture.
Co-design solutions
Having a variety of perspectives not only helps to spot pain points but also drives the creation of more innovative solutions. Co-designing solutions with a diverse range of stakeholders makes the most of resources and expertise already in the organisation
Just as different team members may be aware of the pain points unknown to anyone else, they may also be in the best position to come up with the most relevant, user-centric ideas to address them. Co-designing solutions can boost the sense of ownership throughout the organisation. When people feel like they’re part of the solution, they’re more likely to feel invested in ensuring the success of the service.
Start creating great services
Now, you have the tools to begin to create great service design built with your audience in mind. But, if you’re looking for even more insights on how to create seamless services , follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn. For more updates on the latest news from Matchstick Creative, sign up for our monthly newsletter.
Service design resources we think you may find useful
There are many great resources available to help you understand more about service design, here are some of our recommendations that we think are particularly helpful;
The Interaction Design Foundation is among the best, and is a paid learning platform which provides world-class lessons on all things user experience. It also produces excellent free resources such as this article on service design.
This article from School of Good Services, is a great explanation of service design principles.
Lead Innovation provides three examples of great service design in the real world.
When it comes to all things user experience, Nielsen Norman Group is the gold standard. This article from them not only gives more information about what service design is, but also tells us why it’s beneficial.
Another excellent resource for exploring more about the benefits of service design comes from the government website, which more broadly attempts to standardise many of the user experience and service design principles.
Firestarters made a groundbreaking return this month with a brand-new virtual event. To celebrate Global Goals Week 2023 and how Firestarters are committed to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the event focused on the role of cross-sector collaboration in sparking change and putting the goals into action.
Get to know Firestarters
Firestarters brings together a diverse range of people from the private, public and third sectors, focused on taking action and sparking positive change across the Liverpool City Region and beyond. Through a range of live and virtual events, we create a community of changemakers, working to facilitate hard-hitting conversations and tackle key challenges. Firestarters is community lighter fuel.
Why Global Goals Week?
Global Goals Week is a universal week of awareness, with this year marking the halfway point in the UN Sustainable Goals. As part of a week-long programme of events across the city, we did things in our unique Firestarters way, bringing people together to understand how we can work collaboratively to put the sustainable goals into action. As an organisation committed to the SDGs through our value-driven approach, we wanted to bring the brightest and best minds together, working as a catalyst for change and creating accountability in working towards the goals.
What we discussed at Firestarters Global Goals Week
The event brought together a panel of local and global industry experts and a range of change-making guests from various sectors to discuss the core challenges and opportunities for effective collaboration and meeting the SDGs.
At the event, we heard some inspiring ideas from five guest speakers:
Kyle Soo, Partnerships and Product Manager at B Corp UK
In true Firestarters style, the event kicked off with a Q&A from our panel of experts. Angela Lake was up first, where she was asked to discuss the changes that she’d like to see to allow businesses to collaborate more effectively. Angela highlighted that the actions taken towards collaborating and meeting the goals need to become less of a box-ticking activity and more about funding and resources being put into action.
It’s about the importance of organisations investing into resources that allow them to drive impact and meet the goals.
Next, we heard from Stephen Painter who shared his insights into overcoming the challenges faced by businesses in working collaboratively. Stephen talked about the importance of reframing our thinking, and changing the focus from profit to the planet.
At Hemsec, we changed our thinking and started to educate ourselves on what more we can do and how we can drive change.
When asked about the advantages of working collaboratively, Sara Wilcock explored the importance of educating the next generation and providing them with the right tools to drive change.
Impact comes from people learning what they can do as leaders and organisations. We can only do this by working to understand the goals and then finding potential collaboration opportunities.
In order to collaborate effectively, Benjamin Nathan highlighted how we don’t need to achieve all 17 of the goals alone, and the key is teamwork.
If we shift the conversation from competition to collaboration we can drive impact. We need to surround ourselves with the brightest minds and the best ideas and then see how we can learn and grow from that.
To close out the panel of inspiring insights, we headed to Kyle Soo, asking him about the role of core organisations such as B Corp in helping organisations to meet the SDGs. Kyle spoke about how our mindsets are linked to successful collaboration, through a spirit of openness and transparency.
It’s important for individuals and organisations to have vulnerability and being able to have the openness to say when they don’t know the solution to all of their problems. That’s when we can find opportunities for points of collaboration.
Taking the core insights and ideas that we learned from our panel, the event then brought attendees and guest speakers together into smaller breakout sessions. Here, we facilitated much more in-depth conversations and the creation of a group pledge in order to develop actionable next steps and measure accountability.
The community pledges were live and co-designed, developing a cross-sector commitment and creating future actions to help towards meeting the goals. The pledges worked to provide a solution to the core challenges identified within the in-depth group discussions. By requiring attendees to make a commitment to implementing the solutions within their organisations, the pledges provided the next stage to spark change and put the SDGs into action.
What’s next for Firestarters?
We have a host of exciting events coming up across 2023 and 2024, designed to help us tackle issues and drive impact across the Liverpool City Region and beyond. Are you ready to spark change? Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to hear about our latest news and events. Stay up-to-date by following us on Twitter and Instagram.
User experience is everything related to a user’s interaction with a product or service. When designed well, it creates a seamless product that people will love. By focusing on your user’s experience, you are ensuring that you deliver a product or service that does good.
In this article, we’ll take you through what good user experience is and why it’s so important. We’ll also share some of our best practices for creating excellent user experience to ensure you can build the most ethical service.
Why is user experience important?
Regardless of how good the intentions behind the product are, a poor user experience will still alienate users and reduce the amount of good your product or service can achieve.
A product or service with a great user experience will be;
relevant and useful to the correct people
easy to understand and learn how to use
something users remember
cost effective
efficient
something users want to use
enjoyable for users to use
Do your research
User research is the process of understanding who your users are, their needs and their frustrations. Conducting user research will help you to create a product or service that is inclusive and addresses real issues. Here are the two types of user research methodologies.
Qualitative research
Qualitative research is a type of research that is flexible and doesn’t require a large number of participants to create meaningful insights. It deals with the thoughts and emotions of users; “why did they do something?”, “what are their attitudes?” and “what do they believe?”.
Popular qualitative research methods:
User interviews – A method of understanding the thoughts and feels of users
Observations – A method of understanding how users actually do something
Usability tests – A method for understanding usability issues with a digital service and uncovering opportunities for improvement
Quantitative research
Quantitative research is a type of research that is rigid and requires a lot of participants to create meaningful insights. It deals with hard data; “how many people did this?” and “how often do people do that?”.
Popular quantitative research methods:
Surveys – A method for gathering key information from a large number of people
Website analytics – Collecting and analyising key website data such as page views
A/B testing – Comparing two versions of the same feature to gauge which is more effective with users
While neither of these methods is better than the other, they do have their time and place. Quantitative research is best used to discover things such as how many people visited your website. Qualitative research, however, is the best method to find out why some visited your website .
Helpful resources
There are many different types of user research methods, each requiring expertise to be done properly but here is a great introductory piece from Medium on how to conduct user interviews. For more information on different research methods Nielsen Norman Group is an excellent resource.
Empathise with your users
After conducting user research, you can begin to use it to help make informed decisions. However, it’s important to remember that there is no such thing as an average user, as no product or service has only one type of user.
Think of a coffee shop. There isn’t one type of customer; there are people writing novels, busy business people grabbing a quick coffee, harassed parents needing caffeine, and many more. Considering the full range of people interacting with your product or service is more ethical than considering your users to be one monolith, as you are empathising with people’s lived experiences, what they want from you and the barriers they face.
Personas
Personas are a great way of representing who your users are. A persona is a visual representation of your key audiences. Creating these assets helps you and your team think about these people more empathically and encourages you to ask yourself, “who are they?”, “what are their lived experiences?”, “what concerns do they have?” and “what do they want from our service?”.
Here is an example created in-house at Matchstick Creative which shows one of the types who attend Firestarters.
Helpful resources for audience personas
A great resource for finding out more about how to create, and the importance of, personas can be found on the Interaction Design Foundation.
Creating a narrative
Now you understand who your users are and what they want, you need to know how they interact with your product or service. A great way of gaining an understanding of this is by creating journey maps.
Journey maps are a simple, easy-to-read representation of all the steps a person goes through to achieve a certain goal. These are useful tools because they help teams build a shared understanding of the service. A common problem when designing a product or service is a lack of a shared understanding of what you do. Individuals within teams tend to only understand the section of the service that they deal with and no one tends to have a complete overview.
As well as helping to build a shared vision, journey maps help teams to consider all of the frustrations a user may experience and how to address them. Without creating this shared vision, you may unwittingly be creating situations that cause problems. Journey mapping will help you become more empathetic when designing your product or service.
There are different kinds of journey maps, each with strengths and weaknesses. Here are three common types:
An experience map – A general overview of how a generic person experiences something. eg. Someone buying a coffee. (Although there is no such thing as a generic user, it is important to get a rough sense of how these interactions work before digging deeper into specific types of people)
A customer journey map – An overview of how a specific type of person interacts with your product or service. Eg. How a busy business person purchases a coffee at your coffee shop.
A service blueprint – Similar to a customer journey map, except this time, it also maps out what your product/service needs to do to facilitate each of the user’s interactions. Eg. A person choosing a coffee – the background asset needed is a regularly updated menu.
Here is an example of a customer journey map created for one of our clients, Borough Care. Read our case study to find out more about how we helped Borough Care improve its user experience.
Helpful resources
Journey mapping is a process that requires a lot of collaboration and expertise. If you’re looking for more information on the process, explore this article from Adobe.
Collaborate with your team
Once you understand your users, what they want and how they will be interacting with you, you can begin to create design solutions that are meaningful and impactful. Collaborating with your team when designing is essential as it will lead to more innovative, well-rounded solutions.
Workshops
Workshops are an excellent approach for encouraging collaborative design within a team, and a method that we use at Matchstick Creative. They offer a platform for diverse team members with different skill sets and experiences to come together and contribute their ideas.
There are many different types of workshops, but in essence, a workshop is when a group of people come together for a set period to work on a specific problem. The best way of running a workshop is to have one facilitator who will take the group through a series of tasks but other than that, there is no hierarchy among the rest of the participants. In a workshop the opinion of the CEO will have the same weight as the opinion of a caretaker, This approach fosters an open and inclusive environment, where the opinions of each team member are valued equally. It recognises that valuable insights and innovative ideas can come from anyone, irrespective of their job title or role.
Test your solution
Having designed a solution that you think addresses all of your user’s needs, it is not enough to assume that it is good enough. The most ethical next step after design is to test that it actually meets the needs of your users and does what it is supposed to do.
Usability testing
A great example of testing a solution is usability testing. This method works particularly well for websites. Participants are asked to complete a series of tasks representing the key features of the website. The researcher will note the participant’s behaviour and feedback. The aim of this is to uncover issues that might be creating a negative user experience, find any opportunities for improvement and discover more about what users want.
Helpful resources
Here is a real-world example of usability testing, Matchstick Creative conducted a series of usability tests to improve our client’s existing service. Another great resource for learning more about usability testing is the Nielsen Norman Group.
Key learnings on ethical experience design
Experience design is a vast field and we have barely begun to scratch the surface in this article, but if there are three things you can take away, they should be:
Put people first – When creating any product or service you must ensure that you understand who your users are and what they need. If you create something without considering users first, you may be alienating people and creating more issues than solutions.
Create ‘one truth’ – A challenge many products/services face is no one within the organisation has a complete understanding of all of the interactions users have with it. It is essential to create this understanding in order to build solutions.
Learning never ends – Even if you have done all of your due diligence before creating a product/service there may still be issues so it is important to test your solution to check that it actually works.
Start creating great user experiences
We hope this article has helped give you an insight into what goes into creating an ethical product which has a fantastic user experience. But, if you’re looking for even more insights on how to help clients create great user experiences, follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn. For more updates on the latest news from Matchstick Creative, sign up for our monthly newsletter.
Ethical content is any content created with people, purpose and the planet in mind. It is authentic to you and your brand and is used to tell inspiring stories, share important information, and educate your audience. Ethical content prioritises approaching content marketing with honesty and transparency, sharing accurate, valuable information in new and creative ways. When done well, it helps you create more engaging content and build a brand that connects deeply with your ideal audience.
In this article, we’re taking you through seven examples of best practices within ethical website content creation. We’ll share our top tips on how to create well-written content that considers your audience and environment, and examples of how you can do the same in your brand.
Fact-check your content
A good starting point for creating ethical website content is to consider where you find your information. Are you using specific news websites and studies for your information, or are you writing opinion-focused content? If it’s the first, then an important step to keep in mind is how trustworthy your sources are. Ethical content should always be accurate, informative, and come from reliable sources. Therefore, it’s essential that you gather your information from the right and relevant places. To ensure that the information you use in your content is reliable, collect it from a variety of different sources. Cross-reference different news sites to double-check they’re reliable because the last thing you want to do is share false information with your audience.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CuZtQkUujre
If you’re concerned about sharing misinformation with your audience, a good rule of thumb to follow is to go straight to the source. For example, if you’re reporting on government stories or policies, go directly to the gov.uk website for facts about the stories – rather than seeking information from outside influences who might misinterpret the content.
Helpful resource
A great online resource for fact-checking the latest news is snopes.com. If you’re unsure whether or not what you’re hearing is the truth, it’s always a good idea to double-check before creating content.
Live by your brand values
Your brand values aren’t just a list of words that you create once and never refer back to. They should be present at every level of your organisation, from the people you work with to how you communicate on behalf of your brand. Having clear brand values that you embody through everything you do is an important part of creating a recognisable organisation. Not just that, but it also creates a sense of brand trust between you and your audience. However, how do you show your brand values through your communications?
Two of our core values focus on encouraging collaboration and empowering our team to be their true selves. Therefore, when it comes to creating content on behalf of our brand, we ensure that we get these messages across. One of the ways we do this is by writing informative articles that reflect our values – for example, our article about how to encourage collaboration in new teams. Through this work, we showed our passion for collaborative working, shared our unique views on collaboration and provided advice for other organisations looking to do the same. If you’re wondering how to begin embodying your values through your content creation, writing informative articles that reflect your views is a great place to start.
Helpful resource
Living by your brand values can seem challenging, especially if you’re feeling unsure of how to create content that’s in your brand voice. Our guide on how to apply brand tone of voice will help you feel confident in writing content for your brand.
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Take accountability
While we’re sure we’d all love to get things right all the time, it just isn’t possible. You’re going to make mistakes, and that’s completely fine! However, what’s important is that when you do make mistakes, or change your views on something, you own up to them. Taking accountability for what you say and do as an individual or as an organisation is essential if you’re aiming to create ethical website content.
Admitting you’re wrong can be hard, but it’s important to be open to change and adapt when something doesn’t go to plan. The first step to taking accountability is to be open to criticism, especially from your audience. Remind yourself that your audience supports you for a reason, and if they’re offering their criticism it’s out of respect for your brand. If you’ve built brand trust with your audience, their opinions are most likely with your best interests at heart. Be open to their feedback and be willing to take accountability when you know you’re in the wrong – your audience will appreciate your honesty.
Helpful resource
Indeed’s article about accountability in the workplace is a fantastic resource to help you understand how you can be accountable for your own work, whilst encouraging your team to do the same.
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Credit your sources
Transparency plays a significant part in delivering ethical content. An important of being transparent is to always credit your sources. By this, we mean that if you’re using external resources to create your content, be sure to give them credit for their work. Whether you’re referencing an in-depth university study or incorporating photography from a specific photographer, it’s important to evidence your sources and give credit for their brilliant work. Depending on the content you’re referencing, there are many different approaches you can take to crediting your sources. However, the most common sources to credit are usually websites and imagery.
Referencing websites
If you’ve included statistics or information from a specific newspaper or article and want to know how to credit them in your articles, the easiest way to do this would be to include a link to the original source. To do this, simply include a short sentence explaining that the information was taken from a specific website, and add a hyperlink that links directly to the source alongside it.
Referencing photographers
If you’ve used photography from an external source, it’s always best practice to properly credit the photographer in your content. The easiest method for referencing imagery is to include the name of the photographer and the website that you found the image on underneath the photo. For example, below, we’ve included an image from an external website which wasn’t taken by us. Therefore, we’ve credited both the website the image is from and the original photographer in the image caption.
Whilst crediting websites and images is fairly self-explanatory, other types of referencing can come with their challenges. If you’re looking to reference specific books or sources in academic work, then you may need to use Harvard or Chicago referencing. For help using academic referencing techniques, the following sources may be useful:
It’s unreasonable to expect yourself to understand everything about every topic as a content creator. You can’t know everything! Just because a specific topic is relevant or prominent in the media, it doesn’t mean you need to create content about it. A skill in creating ethical content is knowing when a topic is relevant to you or your brand, and when it isn’t. After all, there’s no value in creating content for content’s sake.
Similarly, if you feel a topic is relevant to your mission but don’t have the specific knowledge or skills to create it, seek support from others in your network. Sometimes you may not have the expertise to create specific content, in which case, an expert in that field may be able to help you. Don’t be afraid to ask for advice to create the most informative, inspiring and educational content you can, in the most ethical way.
Helpful resources
Only you can know whether a certain topic is relevant to your brand or not. However, if you’re unsure about whether or not to post something, our advice is to refer back to your strategy and think about whether the content will appeal to your audience.
Quality over quantity
Ethical content is both entertaining and informative, which fundamentally comes down to quality. For your content to appeal to your audience, you want to provide value to them and not leave them feeling like they’ve wasted their time and energy engaging with it.
Some of our best tips for creating quality content are:
Do your research: If you want to add value through your content, be sure to spend time thoroughly researching your chosen topic. This will ensure that your content provides your audience with insightful information that they can carry with them.
Know your audience: Always keep your audience in mind when writing your content. They’re who you’re often writing the content for, after all. Spend time getting to know what they want from your content and always keep it front of mind when creating it.
Carry out peer reviews: A second pair of eyes on a piece of content can make all the difference to its quality. Whether it’s a quick once-over review from a friend or colleague or an in-depth review session, both will add value and result in a quality piece of ethical content.
Helpful resources
When you aren’t able to get a second person to review your work, there are plenty of other ways to double-check your content. A great resource to use is Grammarly, which can check your content for grammatical errors, tone of voice and how engaging it is.
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Consider your use of language
Language is more than just the way you speak. It plays a key part in every way that you communicate as an individual and a brand. When thinking about creating content ethically, language is an essential part of the process. Your use of language should reflect your brand values and your tone of voice. When creating content for your organisation, it’s important to consider whether the way you’re communicating is in line with the values you set for yourself.
However, language is more than just communicating in the right brand tone. It’s also about the words and phrases you use. Being an ethical creator means being up-to-date with the most inclusive language and terminology, ensuring that your content is representative and respectful of changing language. Avoid stereotyping groups of people and making assumptions. Language is constantly changing, and it’s critical that you keep in the know about the nuances of language.
Helpful language resources
Language is ever-changing, which can be challenging to keep up with. To help keep you in the loop, here are two free tools to support your content creation:
Inclusive language checker: An online tool that checks written content for potential issues with non-inclusive language
Gender Decoder: A language-checker that analyses whether the content is more masculine or feminine-coded.
So, what can we learn from this?
We’ve covered a lot of ground here, but if there are three things to take with you into your own ethical content creation, it’s these:
Authenticity is key: There’s no point in creating content if it isn’t true to who you are as an individual or organisation. If your content isn’t bringing anything new to the conversation, is it adding any value? Share your opinions and insights, and create with your unique voice in mind. That way, you’re always adding something new.
Be open to change: You can’t stop change from happening so, instead of resisting, embrace it. Whether it means admitting your opinions have changed or adapting your language to reflect changes in terminologies, it’s important to welcome change wholeheartedly.
Don’t over-create: Knowing when not to create content is just as important as knowing when to do it. Be confident in who you are as an individual or organisation and ask yourself, do I need to comment on this? Just because something is newsworthy, it doesn’t mean it’s relevant to your brand and audience.
Ready to start creating?
We hope this article will help you feel more confident and empowered to create ethical content on behalf of yourself or your organisation. But, if you’re looking for even more insights on how we create content with our audience in mind, follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn. For more updates on the latest news from Matchstick Creative, sign up for our monthly newsletter.
In 2022, we reached the huge milestone of becoming B Corp certified, demonstrating our dedication as a purpose-driven business to do more good and strive for positive change. As part of our B Corp commitment, we’ve produced our first impact report, highlighting the great progress that we’ve made over the past year to impact improvement, and also creating transparency around the areas that we found slightly challenging to hit the mark.
Impact reports are important for any B Corp-certified organisation, helping to provide an open and honest representation of their measurable social and environmental impact over a 12-month period. Helping both internal and external stakeholders to better understand an organisation’s B Corp journey, the annual impact report explores progress from the five core areas, which are:
Governance – Our core mission, ethics and transparency
Workers – The way we help our Matchsticks from their career, to personal wellbeing
Environment – Our environmental impact and management processes
Community – How we’re supporting diversity, inclusion and equity whilst engaging with communities both locally and nationally
Customers – Our commitment to working with 100% purpose-driven businesses and advocating for social change
Taking a deep dive into the key areas, the impact report will take a look at some of our big moments from 2022, the progress that we’ve made and how well we’ve worked to stick to our B Corp commitment. Alongside the good things we’ve done, we also know there’s room for improvement. Taking into consideration the things we found slightly challenging in our first year of B Corp, the report will take a look at our goals for 2023, and exactly how we’re going to do it!
We’ve learnt a lot in our first year of becoming certified, hitting many milestones to help us create impact along the way. Last year, we were proud of our successful commitment to working with 100% purpose-driven businesses and the steps we’ve taken to support our Matchsticks, such as setting up our HR functions and implementing our first-ever staff handbook. Our vision to drive social impact has been exceeded with a host of successful Firestarters events, including three events at The Good Business Festival. We’ve been busy!
Where can I find the first annual B Corp impact report?
Our goal is to share with our incredible purpose-driven community the work that we’ve done over the past year to do more good for both people and the planet. You can explore our impact and our commitments for 2023 by reading the report here.
From exciting purpose-driven projects to our Matchsticks hitting big milestones, we have lots of great things happening. Be the first to hear about our latest news by signing up for our newsletter.
To stay up-to-date with the latest news and updates, make sure to follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn.
We’re partnering up with Growth Platform to produce a special six-month programme of Firestarters events called ‘Growth for Good’. The events will support businesses in the city region who are looking to learn from expert speakers, gather strategic insights and have the opportunity to grow their network with purpose-driven people.
Get to know Growth Platform
Growth Platform is Liverpool City Region’s growth company, designed to support people and businesses to realise their potential and generate growth. Their role is to strengthen and simplify the business landscape, creating a sustainable economy that reflects the needs of our community.
What is the ‘Growth for Good’ series?
The ‘Growth for Good’ series will be hosted across the city region’s six boroughs and will be covering six core subject areas that address the biggest challenges facing businesses today.
Diversity and Inclusion
Net Zero Carbon
Fundraising & Investment
Purpose-driven Business
Start-up Culture
The ‘Growth for Good’ Showcase
Join us at our final event in the series…’Growth for Good’ – Showcase
The final event in the series will welcome purpose-driven businesses to reflect on the successes and learnings from the previous events and enjoy an afternoon and evening of meaningful connection. It will centre around “sparking change” across the city region by connecting purpose-driven people from the private, public and third sectors. Even if you haven’t attended our other roadshow events, you are very welcome to attend our showcase event.
What can you expect from ‘Growth for Good’ – Showcase?
Attendees will hear from expert speakers covering themes of diversity & inclusion, net zero carbon, fundraising & investment, purpose-driven business and start-up culture. Our expert speakers and signature Firestarters format will ensure attendees feel empowered to ask questions about How purpose-driven businesses can find success, whilst enabling positive change across the Liverpool City Region.
Who will be speaking at the event?
We’re welcoming back a host of speakers from each of our previous roadshow events, including:
Michael Wolffe, Climate Change Officer at St Helens Council
Amy Yarker, Co-Founder, Managing Director and Fermenter at The Fermentation Station
Natalie Denny, EDI Consultant at Skywriters and the Anthony Walker Foundation
Christine Spriggs, Collaborating Communities Lead at Kindred
What’s happening at the event?
An awesome panel of speakers from across the city region
Inspiring real-world success stories
Intimate networking groups for a chance to have real, meaningful conversations
Community fire building! We’ve got real campfires for people to chat around as well as the chance to “make a commitment” in our community fire art – more to be revealed!
Free, ethical giveaways from local businesses
A book stand from a local bookseller
Your ticket includes a hot drink, a drink at the bar and delicious pizza!
A bit of joy; sparklers and fire pits
Attendees will come away from the event with:
Shared real-world experiences from inspiring, local businesses
Practical advice and takeaway tools that enable positive change to happen quickly
A diverse network of contacts that can offer ongoing support and insights
A chance to ask experts questions about building a more purpose-driven city region
Insights on relevant Growth Platform services and a chance to meet their team face to face
How can you get involved in ‘Growth for Good’ – Showcase?
Want to be part of the discussion of how purpose-driven businesses can find success whilst enabling positive change across the Liverpool City Region? Join us at Firestarters X Growth Platform ‘Growth for Good’ – Showcase on Wednesday 29th March 2023 by booking your ticket to the event on Eventbrite. To keep up to date with the latest news from Firestarters and Growth Platform, follow us at @heyfirestarters on Twitter and Instagram, and @GrowthPlatform_ on Twitter and Instagram.
