Project communications

PROJECT COMMUNICATIONS 

The work we do in the Grants+ programme includes providing visibility for grantees’ work.

We support the development of grantees’ communication skills by providing them with training, as well as by communicating about our grantees’ work to the public in the Foundation’s social media channels and website.

The Foundation does not require grantees to communicate about their projects. However, doing so often benefits the project and its participants in a number of ways, making it well worth the effort.

When you plan your project communications, you should start by drawing up a communication plan in which you consider the following issues:

• Goal: What do you want your communications to achieve?
• Target groups: Who needs to hear about your project?
• Message: What is important about your project? Is there any news you would like to share?
• Channels: What channels do you want to use, and which ones are you already using? Do you need a website, or will communications be handled on social media? If you are preparing a newsletter, you should also email or call a journalist specialising in the subject. Make sure that you are reachable after sending a press release or any other kind of communication.
• Schedule: At what point will you announce that your project has started, and what about the results? Communicate about the intermediate steps as well as the final outcome!
• Visual elements: How does your project look? What kinds of project photos or illustrations of your project would you include in your communications or make available to the media? Could the results be visualised using infographics?
• Responsibilities: It is important to agree on the division of labour between members of the group. Together, think about how you will share responsibility for communications and remember to allocate resources for time spent on communications in your work plans. It takes time to plan and carry out effective communications.
• If possible, try to publicise your project within your organisation; e.g., through university channels. Remember to also use your personal social media, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

To increase the visibility of your project you can, for instance, consider the following options:

• Think about what could be newsworthy about the project and write a press release. In writing the press release, make use of the experts and channels within your umbrella organisation (e.g., a university communications unit) or use your own distribution list.
• Write an article or blog about the project and submit it to a public platform. The Kone Foundation blog for grantees, At the Well, is one possibility.
• Organise a discussion or other public event (such as a club, lecture or workshop) around the project or a theme closely connected to it. Invite people from outside your immediate circle to the event. The Kone Foundation Chamber can be used as a venue free of charge.
• Offer to hold a presentation or take part in a discussion as a debater or moderator at an event that is open to the general public and thematically related to your project and expertise (e.g., book fairs, Science Forum [Tieteen Päivät], SuomiAreena).
• Contact another project funded by Kone Foundation and organise a meeting to share information about each other’s projects.
• Upload a video to YouTube about your project or a related topic. Share the video on social media. The video may also be a recording of a lecture. The video may be filmed with simple technology, such as a camera phone. A podcast is also a good alternative if you or your work group have the know-how to produce, upload and publicise one.

Please keep the Foundation’s communication staff updated about your news. When you share information about your project on social media, please tag the Foundation (@koneensaatio). This way we will be able to share your news with our audience, and you get a chance to let people know that you are a Kone Foundation grantee.

Tell about your work on Kone Foundation’s website: grantees’ At the Well blog and Project pages

Grantees’ blog: At the Well

For several years, a blog has been published on Kone Foundation’s website, where grantees offer perspectives on various topics based on their research or artistic work. You can also take a stand on current topics or phenomena. We have a blog in Finnish (Kaivolla) and a blog in English (At the Well). 

Writing for the blog can be a way to participate in public discussion or otherwise build expertise outside of one’s professional circle. 

At the Well reaches out to other grantees in particular, i.e., the research community but also arts professionals. 

Guidelines for writers for At the Well

The topic can be decided on and defined freely. However, if you wish your text to reach as many readers as possible, you might benefit from considering the following questions: 

• Have you chosen a single focused topic for your blog post? Do you bring several points of view to your topic in your writing, or are there topics in the text that can be divided into several posts? 
• Is the text sufficiently comprehensible to a wider audience? Is the language understandable to those who are interested in your topic? Do you open up concepts or other specialized terminology to the reader? 
• Is your text an “information container”? How could you tempt the reader to continue reading? Can you tell the reader about how your topic is encountered in the world? Could you share your own direct observations and experiences? And can you tell the reader how you yourself came to understand something important about your subject – through an example, an encounter, something you have read, etc.? 
• How would the title entice the reader into reading the entire text? The title should raise questions, even stop and make you think. Does the title match the content of the text? 
• What about the lead paragraph? In what way could it arouse interest? The lead summarizes the writing with a couple of sentences: it highlights the common thread running through the text. Will the reader be motivated into looking for an answer to your questions or digging deeper into your perspective on the topic you present? 
• Is your writing structured in a way that makes it easy to skim through? The blog is read online, so subheadings every 300 words make it easier to read. 
• Is the purpose of your text to tell what your project is about? If you want to summarize the core of the project in a short text or you want to concisely discuss the final results of the project, your text might be better suited for the Project page. Read the instructions for creating a Project page here. 

How to create At the Well blogs

The recommended text length is max. 5,000 characters. Create a title, lead paragraph and any subheadings for the text on the page, and upload at least one landscape format image you have the right to use. Also, add short introductions on the author and the project at the end of the text using one or two sentences.

Upload at least one landscape format image you have the right to use. Videos and sound can also be embedded in between paragraphs.

Authors can upload blog posts to the online platform using their koneensaatio.fi usernames. The usernames have been created for the accountable leaders of all active projects.

Once the grantee has uploaded their blog post to the online platform, the Foundation’s communications department will review the content and contact the author by email about any edits to be done and to discuss when the blog will be published.

All blog posts will be listed on the same page and we will share them on the Foundation’s communication channels for others to read.

Click here to see the instructions on how to create At the Well blogs

What is your project all about? Tell us more on the project page!

The project page is a completely new opportunity to share information about your project on our website. We encourage you to summarise the core of your project in a short text or to share the final results of the project. Send your project’s presentation text, publication-free photos and other content to the Foundation’s communications department, and we will then put the page together for publication. The At the Well blog posts written by the people involved in the project will also be listed on the project page.

Creating project pages is a new experiment for us to make the work of grantees visible on our website and social media channels – we hope to have plenty of projects to present!

Click here to see the instructions on how to create At the Well blogs and project pages

How to act if you experience harassment?

What to do in situations of harassment and bullying? We have put together a document for grant recipients on what to do if you or someone in your community is being harassed online.

Download our Online harassment guide (pdf)

A researcher may face harassment during their career. The Finnish Union of University Researchers and Teachers (FUURT) has an information page for researchers who face harrassment in working life, social media or private life. Zero tolerance to harassment!

Click here to see the instructions for researchers experiencing harassment