3. Managing your campaign
At this point, you’ve already:
- Defined your aims and objectives,
- Set SMART or GROW goals,
- Created your campaign team and delegated responsibilities (if relevant),
- Decided on tactics and actions.
You may already have started to put your chosen tactics into action, such as setting up your social media campaign, drafting a petition, or to organising an event. Now you need to monitor your campaign and the actions and goals within it, so you can be sure you’re keeping track of everything that’s going on. This is especially important if you are working to specific deadlines (such as completing actions before exam season), or you have multiple strands of action or a few people working with you.
Tools to help you manage your campaign
There are many different tools you can use to manage your campaign, and it’s down to personal preference. Here are a few templates you could use, but feel free to find your own method:
Supporting & motivating others
Monitoring progress keeps you and your team on track. It can help you to follow up on tasks, and see where you’re at in relation to small goals and bigger aims. It also allows you to change direction if you need to, for example, if you were overly ambitious with something, or if you need to get more people involved to help you meet the deadline.
One way to stay motivated is to focus on the smaller wins and steps forward (this is why having smaller goals at the planning stage is key). It gives you something to tick off, rather than waiting for bigger wins which may be further in the future. If you feel like you are making progress more often, you’ll probably be more likely to see that the work is having an impact and dig in for the long-haul. If you have a campaign team, you can celebrate these wins together, to keep momentum going for everyone.
If you have a campaign team, there are a few things to keep in mind to help them stay motivated:
Checking in
You should properly check in with your teammates regularly (every fortnight or so for example, but it can be decided between the two of you). When you’re having a proper check-in, it’s important to find out how they’re doing. Maybe they’re doing well and feeling able to manage campaign tasks, University work, other responsibilities, and fun and self-care, or maybe they’re finding balance difficult, or things in their life outside University and the campaign is becoming stressful. They don’t have to tell you anything they don’t want you to know, but it’s important to show that you care about them, and that you want them to be able to cope with what’s going on in their lives. If they are having difficulties, you could refer them to Student Services or other services as relevant (see the ‘Wellbeing’ section).
You can also find out if they are they feeling fulfilled in the work they’ve been doing so far. What are they proud of? Are their existing skills being developed and utilised? Would they like to try something else or build a new skill?
Check-ins also allow you to find out if they’re having problems with anything in the work they’re doing on the campaign. Perhaps they’re having a bit of a creative block, or maybe they don’t know who to go to with certain things. This is an opportunity for you to make suggestions, help them directly, or connect them with resources that might support them in the right direction. You can also suggest they reach out to Students’ Association or University staff as relevant.
The final part of check-ins is feedback.
Feedback
An aspect of supporting and motivating your team is giving them meaningful, specific, and useful feedback on the work they’ve done. People have different ways they prefer to receive feedback, but it’s generally best to give feedback 1:1, especially when asking people to change an approach or edit work. Feedback should recognise positive work done in relation to campaign goals, as well as offering a stretch or challenge so that your teammate can improve. Here are some examples:
- “Holly, I really like your designs for the campaign branding. I think the colours and font are really bold and well-chosen, and will help us to capture attention and inform people about the campaign like we’re aiming for. If I were to stretch you, I think it would be a good idea to use more pictures and videos in our socials to drive a further increase in engagement.”
- “Chase, the text you drafted for the open letter is well-though out. I particularly liked the section where you explained the campaign – you captured it perfectly! If I could make a suggestion, I think it would be more impactful if we could condense a bit of the first paragraph, and in the last paragraph be stronger in the call to action.”
- “Sam, great work on the speaker event last week, I heard such positive feedback from attendees, and you were a fantastic host. It’s massively helped us drive interest in the campaign! If we do this kind of event in future, I think it might make it even more effective if we publicised it even earlier and made better use of social media to get the word out and increase attendance.”
You should also invite feedback from your teammates and ask them what you could do differently to help them feel more comfortable/supported. Do your best to action the feedback they give you – it models the kind of behaviour you want to see from your team if you follow through on feedback you’ve received.
Thanking your teammates
If you have teammates, it’s crucial to thank them for the work they’ve done. Thanking them is related to feedback, but slightly separate as thanking them should just be focused on showing appreciation for their work and making them feel valued.
Don’t overthink it! Think about what you’d need to hear or experience in order to feel thanked and valued. It might look like:
- A private message or 1:1 chat picking up on a recent win.
- Thanking everyone in a meeting for a recent success they’ve contributed to – be specific about what each person contributed and thank them for that.
- After a bigger win or a series of smaller wins, maybe organise a celebration. It could be anything and will depend on everyone’s preferences, but it could be:
- beach picnic and walk.
- pizza and film night.
- potluck round someone’s flat.