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I'm Aimee Sanderson and I work for Vision Australia.
I'm their E-communications Manager.
This incorporates their websites, their social media
presence and basically anything online.
We've found we have the biggest impact and reach
when we use a heart, head and hand approach.
This means that we tend to get our messages out there
by really tapping into people's heartstrings
and what's important to them. For us, we are
able to leverage off Seeing Eye Dogs Australia,
the children's services and really connect with people
on that personal level.
Once we kind of have that heart connection, we're able
to then start talking about the more important issues
because they have context and they connect with people.
For example, when we're using social media
we'll be going out with a lot of these
softer issues and then after a while, we're able to
start introducing some of the core services that we have
and why they're essential and why people should be
engaged.
And that makes it a lot easier for people to connect with us.
When we use social media we are really aware that
we need to first have a nudge or a link that pulls the user in.
We tend to leverage off the various business units
that we're lucky enough to have here.
We have Seeing Eye Dogs Australia and their
adorable puppies - we have Children's Services.
These tend to attract a large amount of users.
Once we have them, we can then softly start integrating
the messages that are really important for people like
employment services.
Going out and just publishing messages that
are strong and heavy and just advertising jobs we find
tends to put the user off.
By first getting their trust and also keeping their interest
through a variety of content, we have a lot more
success in getting the essential issues out as well.
One social media campaign we've had a lot of success
with is something we call the Lucy Story.
With the recent with changes with the National Disability
Insurance Scheme, we created an animation of
a young woman called Lucy.
The animation made it very friendly and approachable
for people to be able to view.
We made it very short. We showed her walking through
a day of her life. Pre being diagnosed with her condition
and afterwards, and also what it would have been like if
Vision Australia hadn't been able to offer those services.
Once we had that level of connection, we were then able
to start making the links back to things
like employment services.
We showed her in her workplace with assistive
technology and without assistive technology.
But by approaching the issue in a very user-friendly way,
it made it a lot easier for people to be able to make
that connection and then understand what we can offer
as an organisation.
Vision Australia's old website was very departmental based.
And although functional, it meant that the user
needed to come along and needed to already know where
they were going before they could find the information.
When we looked at redeveloping the website, one of the
main things we were trying to keep in mind was the user
approach. So looking at the main user groups -
what they wanted to achieve when coming to the
website, and then basing the heading
structure and the main navigation around that approach.
This has a couple of benefits and one of the main things
we're finding is that it means that if somebody's looking
for employment services, or not looking for employment
services, if they go into Living Independently,
they find information about living at home, getting
around in the community; orientation and mobility
and they see employment services.
With the employers, one of the main things we did with
the employment services section of Vision Australia was
to divide the information up into two sections - for the
clients who would be the job seekers and then for the
employers themselves.
We have a section called Business and Professionals
and that's where we've put all the information for the
employers.
It has the benefit of, if we have people in there looking
at web accessibility, print accessibility, we have a
section for health care professionals,
they can then see that we also offer
employment services which they might not have
thought of before.
This also has the benefit as well of having all their
information in one section for them.
And we can tailor that and use the right voice and
approach for that.
We have different ways that they can
contact us but we have contact forms which they can fill
out and come straight to us.
For job seekers, one of the main things was to make
it all AA accessible which is to be taken for granted
with a website like Vision Australia's.
So we made sure we had all the
accessibility controls necessary for them.
Content wise, we were covering basics like how to
conduct interviews, what you would be needing to apply
for jobs, the assistance that we can provide and then,
going right through to once you've secured a position,
the different assistive technology needs that you may
then require once you have that position.
We try and make it as easy as possible for people and
also just let them know that we are here and we can help.
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