Blog.

Get the latest insights on engagement, design thinking and communication strategy.

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What teaching taught me about community engagement

This World Teachers’ Day, our project and analysis consultant, Alix, reflects on how the skills she learned as a teacher in North Carolina apply to The Social Deck’s approach to community consultations.

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Partnership with the Australian Human Rights Commission

This partnership means that The Social Deck and the AHRC can help our community engage in the issues that impact them. This is important to The Social Deck because it aligns with our mission to help engage more people in ideas, activities and causes that make a positive difference to communities, the environment, and individuals.

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Designing quality online surveys

Well-designed surveys are easy and satisfying for respondents to complete. They accurately measure the constructs they are intended to measure, and generate reliable data that is transparent and easy to interpret.

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How our accessible workplace benefits us all - Autism Awareness Day 2021 Vlog

There’s a saying I quite like that says if you’ve met one person with autism, then you’ve met one person with autism.

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#ChooseToChallenge this International Women’s Day

Everyday our team are helping to shape a more equitable future and one of the most important issues to us is ensuring women have equality in opportunity, income, safety, welfare and individuality.

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International Women’s Day 2021 feature: Vikki’s story - Starting a new career in my fifties

At the age of 54 I found myself pursuing a change in career for the first time in over 20 years and discovered the struggle and uncertainty that faces a woman in her fifties.

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A positive impact in business is more important than ever

The Social Deck’s 2020 annual snapshot is out. Despite the year of turmoil that was, we’re proud to have had such a positive impact again over the past 12 months.

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Engagement in the time of Covid-19

While we missed the human connection in the communities, we were able to get the insights and information needed to help government improve its communication to these communities, at a time when communication and being informed was everything.

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Queensland Cycling Strategy  Video Suite Production Diary

In 2019 we produced a video and photography package as part of the Queensland State of Cycling Report, and this is how we did it!

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Comms for Kids: Dos and don’ts when communicating to children and young people

Children and young people aren’t necessarily an easy audience. They are discerning and kind of ruthless! But that’s what makes them such a rewarding audience to communicate to.

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Making the most of your DIY videos

Phones take ridiculously good video, high quality cameras seem to be everywhere, and powerful editing software is available for free. If making a video isn’t something you do regularly, this is our guide to making it the best video it can be.

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Celebrating Volunteer Week and our commitment to pro bono work

As a team we provide our skills and expertise on a volunteer basis through range of projects with community and not-for-profit organisations. Individually we are also supported by The Social Deck to contribute to projects and initiatives we are passionate about.

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Behaviour change frameworks in practice.

At the Social Deck, we have been working with governments, councils and organisations for over 7 years to develop programs and strategies designed to tackle social, health and environmental issues.

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Young Social Deck scholars embrace learning from home

Our own primary-aged children are loving learning in different ways and with more control over what they learn, and when. And at least for this time, that control and more individualised learning could provide big advantages down the track.

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Making workshops and engagement more accessible to people with autism

This World Autism Day, our engagement and data specialist, Alix Harrigan, shares her insights into what makes engagement more accessible to people on the autism spectrum.

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Open for business, from a physical distance.

After the health of our families, our priority is to keep our passionate team in place. So when all this is over we’re prepared to help in what will likely be a very busy time in public policy engagement and communication.

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3 great methods to hear more from young people

We are loving working with and hearing more from young people. They take such an interesting view and energetic approach to public policy.

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An equal world is an enabled world

International Women’s Day #IWD2020 is today, It’s a time to celebrate achievements of women and to call out continuing gender inequalities.

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2019 annual snapshot

2019 was a great year for the growth of our business and our impact. In particular, we took on some exciting and important projects to engage with people all over the country on things we know are very important to all of society. And we continued to help communicate about important government policy and programs, and to engage people to think and act in ways that will have a positive impact.

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How to build supportive Facebook communities for better health behaviours

Over the past five years, we’ve been working on how we can leverage the approaches of community-based social marketing, online. Here’s what we’ve learnt.

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Asking the right questions

As practitioners working in the field of social marketing or behaviour change most of us are highly aware of the cognitive biases that influence behaviour – and most importantly those biases that can be utilised to enable positive change.

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Change before your eyes: Documentary as a tool for impact and behaviour change

When the aim is to change behaviour, storytelling should be part of the plan – and it’s certainly something we call upon at The Social Deck. Stories can be delivered in all sorts of packages. For social issues, one impactful technique is documentary.

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Engagement and behaviour change are getting together

The practices in engagement and behaviour change are getting together, and it’s not hard to understand why.

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Business is growing: with heart and purpose

Five years in and The Social Deck is growing. We’re growing in size, in projects and in purpose. Most importantly, we’re growing our impact.

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Three key insights from the Tackling Indigenous Smoking (TIS) preliminary evaluation

Local, place-based and culturally relevant social marketing campaigns resonated much better with communities than mainstream campaigns. Many had local faces and places at the centre of the campaigns, making them more relevant for their communities.

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Storytelling and behaviour change

From the time we’re born, parents are encouraged to read their children stories. As we grow, much of our education is based on storytelling – we learn about our past and other cultures through stories, we learn to read, write and speak by telling stories, and we very often learn about science through fictional stories.

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Don’t Waste Our Forests: Mountain bikes, wombat poo & working together for community-driven change

We used a combination of design thinking and community-based social marketing techniques to better understand the specific barriers, ‘pain points’ and motivators for dumpers, as well as the extent of the problem and local conditions facilitating illegal dumping in the forest.

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Cycle for life

Our work on the new cycling strategy for Queensland saw us engaging with cycling stakeholders, as well as telling the stories of everyday Queenslanders who love to cycle, for a whole range of reasons.

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The Social Deck is now a certified B Corp

The Social Deck team is proud to announce we’ve been awarded B-Corp certification.

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Learnings and preliminary case study on youth smoking behaviours

We were involved in designing a social marketing campaign to help prevent the uptake of smoking by young Aboriginal people in Adelaide. It has been an excellent opportunity to work with our partners Winangali for local Aboriginal organisation – Nunkuwarrin Yunti of South Australia – who are doing great work bringing positive change for healthy lifestyles to their community.

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8 tips for good science communication

I’ve been studying and practicing science communication for the last six years. Here’s what you would have learned if you did the same thing (you can thank me for saving you 6 years later!). Some of these tips are fairly general, as a good communicator is a good science communicator.