The power of your social impact story

One of the things I LOVE helping my clients with the most is unlocking their captivating social impact story, so they can share it with the world and attract more of their ready-to-buy clients and customers to their business, alongside key stakeholders, funders, beneficiaries and supporters.

Your social impact story matters because it is the thing that people either instantly connect to (at a deep visceral, emotional level) or don’t (and so you know they’re not the people you’re trying to engage).

And when you’re busy and limited on time you want a way to connect with people quickly and powerfully, based on something meaningful.

It always surprises me then that the vast majority of social enterprises haven’t crafted (or evolved) their social impact story, or use it on a regular basis. Because those who do are the ones we see having most success in terms of scaling their impact, pursuing their vision and securing the income they need to do both these things.

Your social impact story matters.

It’s the reason WHY you exist.

It’s the passion, purpose and values behind what you do.

It’s the demonstrable evidence of the impact you create.

And it’s the powerful story people want to hear.

So if you haven’t focused your time and energy on it yet, it’s definitely time to do so.

When you’re clear on your social impact story it’s easy to create content; write powerful web copy; engage people meaningfully at events and sell!

So if you’re struggling with any of these things right now, I want you to ask yourself how do I introduce my organisation? Do you simply tell people WHAT you do? If so, there’s a better way to connect, a more powerful way that will get people interested quicker, if they’re aligned to your vision, values, purpose and why.

And understandably telling them WHAT you do, doesn’t communicate this or get to the point quick enough but starting with your why first does.

Your impact story includes

1.    The reason you exist – your why, the problem your tackling, why you care and why other people should care

2.    What you’re doing to create change (in relation to the problem you’re tackling) – your vision, what you plan to do and examples that explain the journey from now (the problem) to the future (your vision)

3.    Evidence (data) to demonstrate the difference you claim you make

4.    A story, testimonial or case study to bring the data to life

When you combine these four things in your impact story you’re sharing your ‘why’ in a much deeper way with your target audience. Plus you have multiple parts to your story which can be broken down into different messages for different platforms and purposes (emails, social media posts, blogs, press releases, presentations etc) - your communications become super easy to plan.

But why does your why matter?

Simon Sinek is the expert of why your why matters, you should watch his video here, or read his book here.

In essence, most businesses talk about functions and benefits because they don’t know why they exist or are not very good at communicating their why. But why connects more deeply. In fact, to the right audiences (the ones you’ve personally selected as your target audience) it’s a gut reaction - a deeper connection based on their vision for the world, their beliefs and values, their emotions and feelings. There’s less rationality and reasoning, it just feels right.

It’s therefore a much more personal and powerful way to connect with your people – whether they are customers, supporters, volunteers, employees or donors.

So give it a go and let me know how it goes!

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