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Marketing and Communications for Friends Groups

Publicity is vital for the growth of your group, and for keeping in touch with other groups and individuals. Publicity is a great way to encourage new members from across the local community to grow your group membership and have a wide variety of people involved. 

There a number of different ways a Friends Group can communicate their mission and activities to the local community and wider city of Plymouth. 

The Council is also able to assist with publicity through the Council’s own social media network and e-newsletters, if this is something you want to do use the Key Contacts page to contact the team or use your appointed PCC contact for help and advice. 

Printed Marketing

Displaying posters can be really helpful, onsite information for regular park users to see what you are doing. Using park notice boards, if you have them, or talking to other facilities within the park to display your posters. For example - cafes. 

Posters can work well for specific activities or events as well as advertising your group in general.

Ensuring these have a contact name and email/number (whichever is appropriate for your group) to enable people to contact you if they are interested in the activity or joining your group.

Reaching out in to the local community is another way to advertise your group and its activities. What businesses are in the local area, is there a library, local shops, cafes or places where people gather where you can place your advertisement. Make sure you get permission from the business before displaying your posters.

Online Marketing 

Social Media 

Online communication, especially social media, has become a popular way to communicate with large numbers of people outside of your group.

Most groups decide to set up social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It is best to start with one account and build up to more once you have a large following.

Social media can help you communicate with your group easily and quickly in one go, post content to the page to engage new people, advertise any events or activities and post general information about your park.

Social media can also give you some great information / insights on who is following you, what posts are more popular and how far your posts are reaching to better understand what you followers enjoy seeing on your pages.

It is also a great way to link with the Council and spread any important messages of any work or events that may be happening in parks.

Websites

These can be a really useful tool as a landing page for your group. It can cost you money to set up a platform for a website so most groups chose not to do this. Websites can provide a source of information about your group, the history, contact information, your mission, your meeting dates and lots of other things you can’t / don’t post on to your social media platforms.

Look at some of the current groups who have websites:

Friends of Central Park

Friends of Devonport Park 

Logos

Some Friends Groups decide to make a brand and create a logo for the group to use on marketing materials, which can also be used when applying for funding and running events. This can help your group have a better recognised presence in the park visually.

There are a few cost effective ways to create your own logo without having to spend lots on marketing companies.

We have provided a help sheet to producing logos on Microsoft Word and Canva. 

Logo Creation Help Sheet

Press releases

If you have an event or activity or some exciting news about the park you want to share it is always good to keep the local news media up to date with what is going on.

Writing a press release will really help the local news media understand what your story is all about and give them much needed information to run a story.

We have provided a simple press release template you can use for your news stories should you require.

Networking

Building your network is a great way to spread the message of your group in to your local community but it is also a chance to ensure you are representing the views of all user groups in the park.

Talk to dog walkers, sports groups, and other groups in the park you see regularly to get the word out about what you are doing. Local businesses in the parks as well as surrounding the park, can really help to.

Use the local greenspace forums to meet new people and tell them about what you are doing.

The main thing to do is talk to people and spread the word.

Love Ply,mouth Parks