Battling the Beast from the East for small charity learning!

Last Thursday, it had snowed pretty heavily (by UK standards). And while #snowmageddon may have been a bit of an exaggeration, there was no doubt that the Beast from the East had taken its toll. But, undeterred, I and several hundred others arrived at the FSI's skills conference, devoted to small charity learning. Braved the #beastfromtheeast to get to the @TheFSI #SkillsConference on behalf of @stalbansmgtrust - more tweets when I can feel my fingers!#smallcharity pic.twitter.com/maajaZff1Z — Richard Sved (@richardsved) March 1, 2018 So, without further ado, here are some of the things I learned from the day, once I had thawed. The first session I attended was about getting the most out of small charity websites, from Andy and Owen at White Fuse Media. You can see lots of the slides and lessons from this threaded tweet: Kicking off with @andyrpearson from @whitefuse on getting the most out of small charity websites. Be specific about your audiences! #SkillsConference #SkillsConf18 #smallcharities pic.twitter.com/VUnJ34wxuo — Richard Sved (@richardsved) March 1, 2018 Key lessons included: Be specific about your audience Communicate through real stories to make your content more emotionally engaging Video and strong images really help - amateur photography can work really well Demonstrate change Break your stories into snippets so that people don't have to visit one place to get a sense of your impact Use Google Analytics to understand your visitor jou