Are You A Social Impact Startup? Apply These No-Cost Social Impact Communication Principles

It’s been such fun in recent months to meet with a number of startup founders in the social impact space. What I love most is the clarity of these founders’ vision, the needs they have identified and the hunger they have to get after it and make a difference.

Time and budget are two of the biggest constraints facing startup entrepreneurs. Yet that doesn’t reduce the need to engage in social impact communication. Applying the right outreach now can result in relationships with a growing number of people who might become future customers, donors, investors or partners.

If you are a startup leader or team member looking for fast ways to make a difference with communication even though you don’t have a dedicated budget, consider the following principles. Small actions multiplied by time equal greater visibility of you and your organization; greater shared understanding of what you are trying to accomplish; and greater opportunities to secure funding for your work because of the attention you’ve captured.

1. Speak up in places where the audiences you care about spend time. Another word for this is “platform.” Entrepreneurship, particularly in the social impact space, can be discouraging because it can feel as though you are speaking to a wall. This is especially true if you have historically prioritized Facebook, Twitter or other social media platforms. (LinkedIn is an exception, I believe – I’ll speak to that in a moment.) It’s also tempting to go after headlines in major national media. Splashy PR is exciting, and who doesn’t want to see their organization’s name mentioned under the banner of The New York Times or The Washington Post? The reality, though, is that most social impact startups would do well to identify two to three core audiences and speak to them. For example, this might include:

• Funder groups most likely to invest in your work in the next 12-24 months;
• People in the customer/audience group your organization will serve; and
• Professional peers in your network who'd like to get to know you and your work better.

As a startup, you crave and deserve the investment of time, attention and ideas from the best and brightest surrounding you. People want to help, as long as they first know you need help. Ask and receive!

2. Start small, and start somewhere. I recently shared with my Secrets of Social Impact Communicators email list some things I’ve been learning about how to best use LinkedIn as a channel for sharing ideas and building community in social impact circles. (Email me at [email protected] if you’d be interested in reading and I’ll gladly share.) My thesis for that email was simply that LinkedIn is a tremendous platform for sharing your perspective. It doesn’t require a major time sink, either. Start by updating your personal profile, writing original-to-you posts during the business week, and contributing generously with your comments, shares and perspective. You’ll be in great shape. You can do this all in well under 30 minutes daily, unless you choose to do more.

3. Make yourself a topic list with flexibility for impromptu insights. As a social impact leader, you rarely have time to build out a complex content calendar. You might not even be a natural-born writer. How in the world should you begin to say something of value to your audience? Here are some ideas:

• First, set the bar at a reasonable height. If you say something from the heart, the way only you can say it, and mean it, this is excellence. You don’t need to produce a new theorem or a universal theory of everything. You simply need to tell me something about the work you are doing, or how you are doing it, or why it matters.
• Second, avoid self-promotion and emphasize passing on of acquired knowledge, insights or new perspectives. The old adage goes, “Show, don’t tell.” I prefer something a little clearer: Whether you use words, a photo or a quick video, help me paint a picture in my mind. Give me a sense of what you’re doing and why it matters. Help me get to know you better as a person and a leader.
• Third, embrace vulnerability and a comforting dose of reality. It often helps to jot down as many ideas as you can come up with for topics you could comment on. Use a pen and paper, Evernote, or another comparable tool. This could be opportunities or challenges you're facing in your personal life, industry issues, reasons you care about social impact work, specific projects you’re leading or wicked problems you’re solving. Let’s face it: Some days, our work—at least to the outside world—might seem boring. We wrote a report. We sat in a half-dozen meetings. We checked the box on the next phase of a 5-year project. But the thoughts flowing through your mind, the insights you’re gleaning, the aha moments you’ve had along the way—that is the stuff amazing content is made of. There’s no magic to it. It’s just your experiences, filtered through your voice, as little or as much as you care to say.

4. Embrace the silence. Time, as I have shared, must pass as you begin telling your social impact stories. Time enables more people to be exposed to your ideas. Time allows people to process your ideas and consider how they align with their own worldview. Time unlocks doors to partnership opportunities, new research collaborations and so much more. Be prepared to feel as though you are speaking into the ether. Sooner than you might believe, you’ll start seeing signals people are listening—and appreciating what you are sharing.

5. Step into the potential paths you have laid down. As you get into the habit of sharing your social impact startup’s journey, you will begin to see flashes of opportunity. It might be new funding leads, or additional project partners, or people you respect who see you as a peer and wish to collaborate. You won’t have total clarity about which new path to try first, or whether it will result in the outcomes you’re working toward. But it will be the most valuable feedback you can get: The feedback that your social impact work is not happening in a vacuum, nor is it forgotten.

You matter. Your work matters. And even as a startup, the social impact communication you practice helps draw points of connection between yourself and people who find common cause with what you are doing.

Celebrate these moments that give you a peek into the future—into the potential of your ideas and what you have built—and then go forward with conviction.

Because everyone started as a startup.

(P.S. If you happen to work in food or agriculture, grab a free copy of my new resource, "101 Climate-Smart Ag Conversation Starters For Program Leaders, Doers and Thinkers." It's chock full of easy ideas to build relationships, stay on track and make the difference you work so hard to deliver.)