Ruth Stokes, content designer for Action for Children, joins us to talk about what drives her work in communications. She shares her thoughts on making data-driven decisions and figuring out what you care about over the course of your career.
Why did you choose to pursue a role in communications? For example, has it always been your passion or was it pure happenstance?
I’ve always loved writing — so that’s driven me from the start. I freelanced for 10 years as a journalist, author, editor, and content designer. During that time I specialised in community, activism, environmental issues, and education. Then I moved into the charity sector: first as a Digital Content Manager, and now as a Content Designer for Action for Children’s digital parenting service, Parent Talk.
What personal skills or attributes do you think are most important for a communications role? Why these skills/attributes in particular?
A genuine interest in what your audience or readers need, and an enthusiasm for learning. Being open to feedback. A love of collaborating with others. Creativity and a positive approach to solving problems!
In digital services, our decisions are led by user research and data. This helps us understand if there’s a need for our product or service, and how to shape it. But thinking audience-first will strengthen any communications. In any comms role, it’s also important to react quickly to trends or opportunities, and to be open to testing new things.
What sort of challenges do you face in your role? Is there a particular challenge that you experienced in the past that stood out?
At the start of the pandemic, we saw a huge increase in demand for digital parenting support. Parents needed help but face-to-face services were closing. In response, we decided to scale our online parenting services nine months ahead of schedule. This involved migrating and updating content from four separate microsites, while also growing our online one-to-one chat service. We had to move fast to launch to MVP version of the site.
At the same time, I was also co-leading on the charity’s main website redevelopment project. It was a significant challenge to be involved in both projects at once — a very intense time, with lots of moving parts! It paid off though. On the main site, we’ve seen our overall conversion rate for donations increase by 459% year-on-year for January. Parent Talk has supported more than 369,000 users since the start of the pandemic.
How is the role of communications perceived in your organisation?
In the past few years we’ve become increasingly forward thinking and strategic. This has included a social media strategy and the beginnings of an organisation-wise content strategy. We’ve also seen incredible collaboration between teams on campaigns, making sure the different areas of comms are working together.
What advice would you give to those at the start of their career in communications?
Work out what you really care about. You won’t necessarily get your perfect job straight away, but use each place as an opportunity to learn. In any comms job, you’ll develop skills that can help you grow in the direction you’re interested in. Look for chances to grow, and don’t be afraid to share your ideas (we all have good and bad — it’s a numbers game!).
What do you think the secret of success is when working in communications?
It’s so important to be data-led — and to look out for assumptions you’re making about your audience without realising it. Keep asking what the evidence tells you about them — as well as what it is that you don’t know. How might those knowledge gaps be affecting your content output?
We at React & Share live for helping communications teams through understanding website content sentiment and improving it off the back of feedback. How do you and your team approach content improvement?
For Parent Talk, we use the themes showing up in our one-to-one chat service and social listening to help inform new content. But we’re also working on longer-term improvements to the site, including new categories and better user journeys. We’re using a mixture of analytics, Hotjar, parent interviews, and user testing to inform this.
I’ve recently completed a content audit of the site. Off the back of this, we’re planning a set of updates for consistency, accessibility and inclusivity. We’ll also be working on updating our content governance processes to help maintain quality over time.
