Telling the story of your social value

For a business engaged in public sector tendering, showing social value wins contracts. Also, its authentic nature can inspire authentic stories through B2B content marketing and thought leadership content, whether you supply the public sector or not. (Read on for a definition of social value if you’re new to the idea.)

The social value story  brief

I had the privilege to work with an SME that had a particularly visionary CEO. They took to the idea of thought leadership content like the proverbial duck to the millpond. We used it in a long-term B2B content marketing plan, to build brand equity and drive profits during a period of growth and change.

This business had evolved over decades into its current form. It had been bought and sold by a multinational, moved region, and reprioritised its core service to create opportunities. I was brought in to deliver website copy during the run-up to its transformation into an employee-owned trust.

So, we needed to demonstrate its enduring strength, including the excellence of both its senior management team and its workforce). Also, we set the intent to position it as a sector leader – the public sector procurement supplier of choice – to grow this area of the business.

We brought the website copy and B2B content marketing in line with a brand-building strategy. This would help to propel them into this exciting new stage and provide a strong platform for their future marketing.

During the three years I worked with them, we brought the website copy and B2B content marketing in line with a brand-building strategy. This would help to propel them into this exciting new stage and provide a strong platform for their future marketing.

One of the stories the CEO was keen to tell concerned the social value created through their projects.  They had plenty of evidence, from employee-focal policies right through to Net Zero 2030. 

At the time I onboarded them, the public sector procurement process was a mystery to me. Also, I have to admit, I didn’t consider it the most gripping topic. But if you click with a great client, it inspires you to dig deeper. It can become a virtual voyage of self-discovery. This website copy project, neatly packaged into a B2B content marketing strategy (with SEO), introduced me to a niche and made me fall in love.

Telling the story of your social value

Most public sector organisations will find project delivery partners on frameworks like the Crown Commercial Service, KCS, Capita et al. However, website copy is a brand awareness tool for public sector procurement too – they’ve got access to Google, right? They spend time on social media, don’t they?

Arguably, social value  is such a great concept that it shouldn’t be restricted to public sector procurement. If, like my client, you also supply other businesses, the topical website copy creates a halo effect. 

In other words, social value could be a set of commercial values – not limited to public sector tendering. A business that can demonstrate how it cares about our society and our world is going to attract like-minded business relationships. It will improve the recruitment and retention of stellar colleagues. And more. This is good thought leadership content.

Arguably, social value  is such a great concept that it shouldn’t be restricted to public sector procurement.

What is social value?

For the uninitiated, social value is the added value that a partner can bring to the project by virtue of their performance across 5 themes:

• Covid-19 recovery
• Tackling economic inequality
• Fighting climate change
• Equal opportunity
• Wellbeing

Potential partners in the procurement process will be graded against their evidence and these scores will be used to allocate the tender. 

For example, a business evidencing ‘tackling economic inequality’ might show how many good quality jobs they will create or safeguard; evidencing ‘wellbeing’ could be their employee assistance scheme or having trained mental health first aiders.

How we did it

Let’s rewind a smidge. The Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 helped my client focus on actively evolving what they were already doing. By the time we started sharing the evidence of social value, they had well-documented policies in place for each of the five themes. 

It’s worth noting that even if your policies are a bit light on substance right now, it shouldn’t stop you from waving your social value banner using B2B content marketing and thought leadership content. Working on your website copy, with an experienced writer who can help you uncover what, where, why and how will help polish them up, is part of your journey.

Evidencing their social value took substantial investment – the working group, the R&D, the changes that needed to be introduced across the board, buy-in from everyone in the business. As you might imagine, there was a sense of pride in the telling of their journey so far.

We took it systematically. In part, this was because the client had a limited budget for this work, and we had unrelated topics to write about too. So, we spread it over several months. Each theme was tackled in turn, and the supporting evidence organised and cross-referenced to other themes. We took each requirement and explained how it was being met, using the company’s unique data, reasoning, plans, and anecdotes to enrich the thought leadership content.

It’s worth noting that even if your policies are a bit light on substance right now, it shouldn’t stop you from waving your social value banner using B2B content marketing and thought leadership content.

To enhance the website copy even further, we spoke about the future and how these themes were expected to evolve. We included website copy on how they measured the effectiveness of the policies and, year on year, we reported back on these KPIs with full transparency. 

This new data meant, from a B2B content marketing perspective, that pages and articles could be updated, expanded and enriched even further.  We also began reporting on the (then) upcoming public sector Procurement Act 2023, which placed emphasis on sustainability and social value.

Social value themes cosy up to each other. Through the website copy, we could show how a good policy for one theme positively impacted another. We were also able to bring in B2B content marketing around Investors in People, ISO accreditations, certifications, and human interest news on training and personal achievements. 

Not one of their competitors was talking about their social value. There was hardly any existing keyword data to plan SEO. Instead, we set the agenda and raised the bar. Are your competitors talking about their social value? Are they talking about their net zero policy, their culture, their place in their local community? Can you?

This client’s strategy demonstrated that brand thought leadership content – via website copy on key pages – is A Thing.

Epilogue: thought leadership content

I used to believe that demonstrating your expertise, experience and authority in thought leadership content was achievable through ghost writing blogs. That is, I know Google likes authorship so it seemed like a good idea to name the client expert I’d collaborated with. This client’s strategy demonstrated that brand thought leadership content – via website copy on key pages – is A Thing. 

The buy-in from this client’s CEO meant it worked so, so well. They understood that the digital copywriter needed access to their experts to create the best possible B2B content marketing strategy. They gave this access, and often their own time too. This 100% commitment to thought leadership content and the strategy created unparalleled website copy within their sector. If I say so myself. 

Their SEO – previously in the gutter – took off. And when the business transitioned to an employee-owned trust, and the CEO stood back, their commercial clients and public sector procurement partners didn’t break eye contact.