Homelessness Week 2024 Marketing Support for Grant Recipients
Homelessness Week is a national annual event occurring the first week of August.
In 2024 the theme is Homelessness Action Now.
Congratulations on being a successful recipient of a Shelter WA Homelessness Week 2024 grant this year!
We are super excited for you and can’t wait to support your event, project and initiative as you bring it to life. The Grant Team have been receiving questions that relate to marketing so we thought putting together a simple guide may be a way the Shelter WA marketing team can support you.
Below you will find key information related to marketing for Homelessness Week 2024. If you have any questions at any time, you can contact us via shelterwa@shelterwa.org.au
Here’s to an abundance of successful events, projects and initiatives for Homelessness Week across the state this year,
Shannon, Senior Marketing Officer, and Sabrina, Events and Marketing Coordinator
A brief intro to Homelessness Week
Homelessness Australia hosts Homelessness Week annually to raise awareness of the impact of homelessness, and the solutions needed to end homelessness.
During the week homelessness services and community groups educate the community and advocate for change via national and local community events, media and social media activities.
Shelter WA are excited to host a range of events across Homelessness Week in August. The events we are hosting are designed to assist with collectively understanding homelessness in WA as we work together to identify, support and action solutions to end homelessness.
There are additional resource links included further down on the page to connect you with key information published by Homelessness Australia.
Supporting you to market and promote your event, project or initiative
Maximising your marketing reach will 100% influence what you are promoting, no matter what it is.
Marketing and promotion is about sharing what you are doing.
Often it can feel like marketing is only about promoting something people can participate in but that is only one aspect of marketing. Those who support your efforts in your local community, and even further afield, will be following you because they are interested to know more and understand how to support you. Knowing more includes things like why you do what you do, the impact or change you want to make, what’s important about your group or organisation that you want others to know and remember.
We encourage you to be clear on what you are promoting and sharing.
All the key details including dates and times, links or ways people can attend, whether they need to register, who is hosting, who the event, project or initiative is for, and any other information you believe is important for your ideal participants or supporters to know is an awesome start.
Include clear instructions and information that is easy to understand for a majority of people you interact with.
Consider including a sentence or two about what you want people who see your content to do.
In the marketing space this is referred to as a ‘Call to Action.’ All this is, is an encouragement or instruction for people to interact, share or get behind what you are doing. It can make a big impact on your marketing efforts. You could even consider adding some examples to the Marketing Foundations Template we have shared below.
Even if your project or initiative doesn’t require direct participation like people needing to register, your community will still want to hear what you’re doing towards ending homelessness in your area. It might inspire others to get involved for even greater impact.
These key marketing foundations will support your efforts as you share content across your digital marketing channels, including your social media, Linked In, website, newsletters and more, including other marketing channels.
We have included a template you may like to use to map out the foundations mentioned above. Download the template via the button below.
If you already have this in hand, that’s fabulous, but we know many smaller organisations rely on volunteers when it comes to your marketing, so documenting this information will help to ensure you are consistent with your promotion and, we hope, lead to your message getting in front of the people it is intended for and what you are hosting being a wonderful success.
When creating and sharing your Homelessness Week event, project or initiative we would be grateful if you could include Shelter WA where relevant.
Ways to do this include;
- Adding our logo to your graphics. A number of different formats can be downloaded from further down this page
- Using the Shelter WA banner for Homelessness Week 2024 on your website, registration pages and in your email signatures. Banners can be downloaded from further down this page
- Tag Shelter WA using the following links. When you do this it gives us a chance to share what you share across our channels on Linked In, Facebook and Instagram. If you use the @ symbol and start to type Shelter WA in your captions we should show up and be taggable
- Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/company/shelterwa/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ShelterWA
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/shelterwa
- Use the following hashtags in addition to your own hashtags. We suggest 4-5 are used for Facebook and LinkedIn, but you can add up to 30 on Instagram if that works for you. Please copy them as they are, with capitals included as this makes hashtags more accessible for your audience
- #HomelessnessWeek2024 #HLW2024 #ShelterWA and the official Homelessness Australia hashtag #HW2024
- Link any banners or images to the Shelter WA Homelessness Week 2024 Program page @ https://www.shelterwa.org.au/our-work/homelessness-week-2024-program/ which has links to registrations for all three events hosted by Shelter WA
Design 101 – tips for your images
When designing images to use in your marketing we thought these tips might help as not everyone has had an opportunity to understand how to create an image that captures your message and entices your audience to click on your post to find out more.
- Less is always more – rather than crowd your image with lots of words, capture your main marketing message and use your caption to provide all the details. Your marketing message might be the name, date and time of your event, or name of your project or initiative
- Remove the background when adding other images to your coloured background – we see a lot of images where there is a white background behind additions like logos from sponsors. This can be jarring to the eye and is always better to remove a background and use a transparent image where you can. We know a lot of organisations and groups who don’t have a large marketing team use Canva these days and we love it as a way to create images. There is an option to remove the background from any image using Canva so check that out if you don’t know about it. It will raise the quality of your images a lot without those pesky white backgrounds showing up on the images you are creating
- Most eyes move across the top of an image left to right and then down the right hand side – this little bit of marketing psychology is always worth thinking about when designing imagery and our Senior Marketing Officer Shannon refers to this as primary marketing real estate! One way to use this is to ensure your logo is in the bottom centre or right corner of your images if that works with the rest of your design!
- Light on dark, dark on light – this refers to the colours of your image elements. If you use a dark background then aim for a light colour for your font and vice versa. Have a look at an Instagram feed and we are sure you’ll be drawn to look closer at images where there is a contrast. The trends over recent years of light backgrounds and light font colours can make things very challenging to read and if something challenges the eye people in general will scroll right past your important content
- Font choice does matter – firstly, if your organisation has a style guide that outlines what font to use then always use that. It will create consistency across your images which is so important. If you don’t have a dedicated font then choose one. Something easy to read like Arial always works. It might feel a bit boring but the objective is to get your audience to easily engage with your content and if you are using a fancy script style font it can be very difficult to read for many people
- Font size also matters – this goes with the less is more tip we started with! With accessibility so important in design these days, use a larger font that is also left aligned or centred where possible in your image
Shelter WA logos
All logos below are transparent so can be placed over coloured backgrounds without a white background.
Please select the best layout and colour to compliment your image design.
Shelter WA Homelessness Week 2024 Banners
The banners below are sized for use on websites, in email newsletters and email signatures.
We envisage additional banners will be made available soon so please check back for more options in the future.
Shelter WA Homelessness Week 2024 Social Media images
The image below is sized for use on Linked In, Facebook and Instagram. It would be suitable to use on other social media platforms and could be suitable for your newsletter.
For reference the size is 1080 x 1350 pixels, or a 3:4 ratio, which is the recommended size for Instagram. Other digital marketing channels do not have a preferred size for images.
