Understanding place sentiment - July webinar for the High Street Task Force

Foreign. We are here to talk about understanding place sentiment. We'd love to hear from you in chat. We tend to use the Q and A because it makes a more manageable experience for everybody, because we're getting more and more people on these webinars. So if you've got any questions for us, please put them on the Q and A and Sarah and I will manage it as we go through. So, without further ado, let's get cracking. Sarah's in charge of driving the slides today, so if I scratched my nose, it's because I wanted to change the slides. So without further ado, let's get going.

Why is it not letting me. Oh, there we go. Dreadful driving, but it'll be fine. We'll be fine.

It's normally like this, people. Sorry, if you're new, this is normally. This is normally how it goes. So. So what are you going to see today? We're going to look today at. About understanding the role of social enterprises in economic growth. We're going to specifically look at how local business support can play a significant role with social enterprises. And we've got a number of really exciting case studies to share with you. I think we probably skipped intro a bit. I'm the CEO of maybe and Sarah is Head of Growth and in charge of all things local authority related. Just to give you a bit of background, we'll talk about what Mabey does on the next few slides. And as part of what we do, we have been working on a number of significant projects across the UK, delivering local business support. So we talk from a sort of position of insight and knowledge. One of the key things we do a lot of is helping businesses get better at social media management. And we're just going to talk a little bit about why that's so important. So, globally, There are about 3.8 billion people using social media on a near hourly basis. It's something that we do all day, every day. But there's an extraordinary thing happening right now, which is that there's a huge gap between how businesses use social media and how consumers use it. So, Sarah, I'm scratching my nose hard right now.

Say that again, sorry.

Scratching my nose. Can you press?

Oh, sorry, sorry. Move on. Move on, Bassett.

So consumers use social media for all sorts of different activities, but 75% use social media to find out about products and services before they buy something. 74% of us use social media to search for what to buy and 78% share their separate shopping experiences on social media. We listen to about 3.8 million businesses on social media every day. And we know that only 16% of them are spending over 100 pounds on social media a day. And only 27% of businesses who use social media measure impact. There are so many gaps in the way that businesses use social media and we look at, we look at how it impacts social enterprise in particular today. But this is the sort of, this is the macro picture and then we're going to project it down to social enterprise as well. So we know that today only 19% of 3.9 million businesses have a social media account are active on social media. And of those, only 25% are spending more than five hours a week managing their social media. This number never ceases to amaze me. Only 9% of businesses post at the weekend. So that's the macro picture and we're going to take that down and look at what that looks like with social enterprises across the UK as we go through this webinar. But just to recap, the gap is that consumers have run away with social media, everyday part of life, but businesses really struggling to keep up. And this data is looking at the top 10 locations across the UK by the number of businesses that are active on social media. And what you can see here is take Westminster, 32% of businesses have a social media account and that's 19% of them. But the percentage active on social media, you see, it's floating about 11%, 11%, 5%, 11%, 10.8%. Now, these are the best performing business areas across the uk. So see column there. Sarah just highlights it. The businesses with social media, you've got 37, 31, 35. And then the next column along, you've got active on social media, so you see how big the gap is and it is all the way across the uk. It's not specific in any particular areas. This is what, this is good. There are many places that much worse. So this data is used in the High Street Task Force dashboard. So any of you that have access to the dashboard and you can all have access to the dashboard and also you have access to, maybe you can see the digital sentiment in the place and you can switch that between local and national businesses so you can understand what our business is talking about, you can look at their digital participation. This really highlights how national businesses tend to use social media more. But what's interesting from a place perspective is they never talk about places. And so you've got all these national brands talking about websites now talking about your locality. Very small percentage of local businesses using social Media. And in the digging we've done around social enterprise, the same picture emerges and there's a big gap between the potential voice and what's actually being said today. You can all measure your digital activity gets footfall. And we know from the work we've done for a wide range of clients that where you increase digital activity, you increase footfall. And we've got a case study on that later today and digital engagement. This is looking at the breakdown between Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. This is an example that came from early days of Taskforce. I'd be fascinated to see how Twitter is faring in each of the places right now. We had our Twitter account blocked at the weekend while we were participating in Indie Day and we then had to pay Twitter money to be able to engage with that content. So I think watch out for the changing winds of Twitter. I'm sure you've all seen that Meta is about to release threads. I think Twitter is an interesting space, shall we say, right now. I think that's a politically correct way of discussing it moving forward. What we want to talk to today about is how social enterprises are their businesses, but they, as we all know, have a social or environmental purpose at their heart. Interestingly, before I run, maybe I run a social enterprise and it's something that's very close to my heart. They have a triple bottom line. It's not just about the money you make, it's about the impact you have. And I think they're the best businesses out there, but economically they're huge. They generate 60 billion in chat, GPT in the brain GDP. They create 2 million jobs across the UK and that's from 100,000 social enterprises in the UK. So they're a large part of our economy, but they deliver a disproportionate amount of value in their locality. So I think, Sarah, you've got some really interesting stats to talk through now. So not only have you got to press the slides at the right time, you have to talk about them as well. Okay, challenge Bassett.

Today, I just want to make a little point on this slide. When we look back at the data we've just looked at around the huge disconnect between consumer activity and business activity. We apply that same metric of 19% of businesses to 19% of the social enterprises in the UK having a social media account, let alone being regularly active, you know, that's less than 2,000. And this is a hugely growing space. There is some seriously fascinating entrepreneurs, social enterprise entrepreneurs, and I'm going to take you through Some data from Social Enterprise uk, which really gives quite a striking flavor of what an important space in our economy and in our communities social enterprise is and the enormous potential impact it can have on pride in place. So I'm going to go on to the next slide. Just to recap, what is a social enterprise? Well, social enterprises are businesses that, as Polly says, have a social or environmental purpose, but that they reinvest or donate at least 5, 50% of the profits and in a lot of cases considerably more to help them achieve their stated mission. So it's all about creating positive social chain and unlike businesses, social enterprises, their mission is embedded in their business model and governing documents. So I hope that's clear. I'm sure lots of you know what they are, but I, I just found it really interesting reading through this data from social enterprise. So I'm going to take you through a few really interesting slides around the data that they've gathered. Really quite a big survey they conducted at the end of last year. So economy, what's the impact of social enterprises on the economy? Well, as I've said, this is a massive growth sector. 47% of social enterprises are under five years old. You think there's 100,000 plus, that's 50,000 thereabouts that are under five years old. They're new, they're growing, they've got people behind them, are hugely entrepreneurial and communities are engaging with them. 44% of enterprises grew their turnover over the last 12 months. That's extraordinary, especially, you know, with the cost of living crisis and people, you know, reining in their expenditure really interestingly, sort of aligns quite nicely with, you know, I talked about this before and we talked about it before Christmas. You know, it was really interesting trying to understand how brands and how consumers were going to make purchasing decisions over Christmas, in particular with the cost of living crisis and all the things that have been going on. And it really was about consumers were driven much more by social value than they were by price. So they wanted to engage with businesses and organizations, buy from people that gave something back. And this is where social enterprises are really winning as far as driving economic growth. 74% made a profit or broke even last year. Now, those that reinvest their profit and their purpose be interesting to see. I mean, this is about reinvesting to create jobs, to bring something back to the community. And I've got some really nice examples of some social enterprises that are doing just that to show you in a minute.

So I've just a couple of questions I'VE seen. Come in. Can I just. Can I ask you before we go on?

Yeah, of course you can.

I think they're worth. Interesting. So one here from Anne. How can social enterprise measure its social impact? That's a really good question. So I don't know about you, Sarah, but I'd say that social enterprises can sort of use various methods to measure their social impact, both qualitative and quantitative. And that can include tracking the number of beneficiaries reached, the changes in social or environmental conditions, stakeholder feedback and specific sort of impact metrics related to their vision. That already comes back to that documentation around how social enterprises are set up, which is, you know, if, for example, there's another question here about can a business become a social enterprise? And I think that goes back to your point, Sarah, doesn't it? Which is that it's all to do with how the business is set up. It's about. It's in their mem. So absolutely, business can become a social enterprise, but they have to change their memo knots and how you measure impact then go directly back to the Memon Arts and how you're set up. I alluded early to the fact that I used to run one and in our Memon Arts it said that for every pound we raise, we get 50p to charity. And that sort of. That goes back to that whole social value piece. It's got to be like a stick of rock. Whichever way you cut them, they are a social enterprise. You can't get away from it. There's no fudge here. They've got to stick their coming up next slide.

Actually we'll cover a little bit more of that because it's all about this sort of social impact and environmental impact, which is really interesting. I just want to touch lastly on this one piece, which is something that UKSPF interventions are really keen to see, that businesses and entrepreneurs and enterprises introducing new products or services and social enterprises, you know, even pre this support have 66% of them have introduced new products or service in the last year. I just think that's extraordinary.

Really great innovation, isn't it?

Really exciting. Really exciting. So I'm going to go to the next slide. So this is the society data around central social enterprises. Now I just loved this because again, you know, we've got such culturally diverse communities around the UK, you know, across the whole of the UK and 47% of social enterprises are led by women. Exciting. 72% of social enterprises say they were a living wage employer. That is so impactful on our local Economy and our communities and, you know, even. Even driving down to the mental health of employees, all of those different things, with everything that we've got going around in society, to go and work for a social enterprise and be paid living wage is fantastic. 72% and then 31% of social enterprises have directors from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. This BAME community has a huge representation in this space and one of the sectors that I know that we're all really keen to support and the deprived areas, you know, we need to be supporting in our businesses and our social enterprises and our communities in particular. In some of the most deprived areas, 22% of them operate there. Amazing metrics. What about the environment? Now, lots of social enterprises have environmental agendas at their heart and that I really believe is in response to the consumer, because actually the consumer, 80% of social enterprises are saying they believe that buying products that are socially responsible, environmentally friendly is as important, if not more important, than cost. And I can tell you that that's a very, very similar metric that we saw in the research that we did last year around what is driving people's purchasing decisions. So it's socially responsible, environmentally friendly. And of course, last month we talked about social value and the importance of businesses delivering social value and us delivering our social value and local authorities delivering social value. So this really comes in nicely. It's about addressing climate change or core social environmental mission and tackling climate change, climate emergency, all of those different things, all factors. So this is just. I just, I think as a. As a growth opportunity for all of our economies, it's a really exciting space and we need to think about how we can support these enterprises to drive further growth, to engage with our communities to raise those profits and to create more jobs and to reinvest in the social elements that matter to us and our communities. So I've had a little scoot around social media. I mean, let's show some examples of some amazing social enterprises and how they're communicating on social media, how they're engaging their communities and the different ways in which they're doing that. So locavore, I think that's how it's. It's pronounced in Glasgow. Amazing. So these guys started, I think, in 2011 about something like 14 and a half thousand followers on social media. These guys are really nailing it. They've set up three organic supermarkets locally and they employ local people. As you can see, we're recruiting, they're talking about the ideal candidate, so on and so forth, and that they want People that are engaged in their mission of sustainability and organic produce. And you know that when you read more into it, they're really into supporting local producers. Again, great for the local supply chain and that circular economy that is so valuable. And then they're using localized hashtags, they're really gaining impact and engaging and reaching the right people to speak to. And of course that resonates again, not only with those people that might want to be recruited into working with them, but to the consumer, because actually this is something the consumer is becoming more and more passionate about. So I thought this is a really interesting example of a really, a really successful social enterprise.

I think what's really interesting, if we go to their social account as well, which is that you've done a great piece of research here with a number of social enterprises to share and they're all extraordinary in what they're delivering and you can see how they're really impacting pride in place. You can see how they're improving people's lives. But there is a really common theme with these that you found that successful, which is they are all doing it and telling their story beautifully. So hats off to them because they are successful social enterprises in the same way that we see with successful businesses, they've also mastered how to talk to their audience.

And actually, do you know what, that's not easy, is it?

No, it's not.

We all think it's terribly easy. It takes, you know, beneath the tools and the training and the understanding of the how and the why and what to talk about and how to resonate. And in fact, it's not, you know, social media, so many businesses and organizations think it's about selling a thing. You know, I'm going to put a picture up of this thing and sell it. It's not, it's about sharing, you know, your story, it's about being sociable, it's about engaging in relevant conversation, it's about encouraging consumers and communities to engage in your story. And, and that's really what it's all about because it's, it's, it's telling the story of the mission rather than selling a thing, even though they're all generating income by selling a thing, if that makes sense. Sounds a bit round the bend, doesn't it? But it, it's just, I just. Can you tell I'm passionate about it? I, this is just something I find really interesting.

I, I like, I think they're just really nice to shout these guys out because of all the feeds you've created of all the ones you found, actually, these guys are probably knocking out the plus most. And you can see that very simply, they're telling their story visually. They've got a lovely simple description. Local organic grocer and veg box delivery food from my local land grow. Local growers and producers. Look at their stories, you know, they just check out. And I think, you know, that that is so simple, but it's so good. And if we can get every social enterprise to do that, the impact will be huge. So let's move on with your case studies of social enterprises, because I think it's. In order to achieve that level of quality, somebody's had a lot of support there. So it's really, really great.

It's fascinating. And I'll tell you, one of the things you'll see as we go through, which I found particularly interesting is that actually the imagery, these aren't professional photos, these are photos taken with an iPhone. These are real, they're human, they, you can relate to them. You don't feel like it's sort of staged. And actually all of the examples I'm going to show you is pretty much a similar. Follow a similar theme. I think it feels really honest. So this was an. Another one, which I just thought was really fascinating. This is Echo, is the economy of hours. And this is a newly launched grassroots project in Hackney in East London. And it's a really fabulous idea in that it's about getting businesses and people together to sort of swap skills. So it's a sort of bartering way. You know, you teach me how to do this and I'll teach you how to do this. And they're helping each other's businesses to grow, helping each other's employees to gain new skills just by sharing, by communicating with each other and being a collaborative. And that knowledge share piece, which we all know is so valuable when we're supporting our local economies and they're particularly engaged in equality and there's a high proportion of BAME members, but it's, it's, it's really, really clever and their new website's well worth going and having a look at. And it's, it's only recently launched, but they too have, you know, they, they've got 2,000 followers going and that's a really niche local community space. There's a lot of people following this, so they're doing workshops, they're helping each other learn new skills. This is slightly more formal, their imagery. But yeah, I think it's really interesting idea. Now I'm going to Go back to Scotland, funnily enough, music broth. Look at these people, they're extraordinary. So what they do is that they're, you know, in a nutshell is they go and they get donated with, but they also go and buy musical instruments and consumers, you know, people can subscribe to their. And they do lessons with them, but people can borrow or hire musical instruments, they can go into jamming sessions and they can. It's all about bringing the community together through music. And they're using social media to crowdfund because actually, quite rightly, the people that are likely to be interested in crowdfunding are likely to be digitally savvy and likely to be hanging out on social media. So they've come here to find their right audience to bring their community together. They're even demonstrating how they brought in, you know, stakeholders, the creative Scots, basically saying, you know, they will match fund anybody that crowdfunds towards what they're doing. So they're driving income in several different ways, both through getting buy in from their local community and their local stakeholders, but also then selling these subscriptions to their, to their lessons. And they're all sorts of different things. Again, worth going have a look. So really interesting, I think, Sarah, what's.

Really key here is that they are doing a massive thing locally, delivering to their social enterprise model. But the way that they're fundraising, it means that they're using the tools of business to crowdfund locally as well. So from a, you know, as a, as a, I mean, interesting, we work with crowdfunder and help them teach businesses how to use social media to crowdfund because again, this helps the social enterprise be sustainable locally and to source funding from the Internet, which is really smart. It's really, really smart.

I just love it. And I just think they're so human and that's what we're seeing, aren't we? Even when, you know, with the independent businesses and retailers that we support, so many of, you know, what, 20 plus thousand of them, the more human they are, the more honest they are, the more values and the more they share their story, the more successful they are in increasing their reach and gaining followers and getting that engagement and, you know, that sort of whole community feel. I just, I think it's brilliant. So Scotland's musical instrument and equipment library, social enterprise and charity, improving access to music, making for all again, 17,000 1700 followers and, you know, really honest content. Yeah, great community, but great for the environment, great for, you know, so recycling and, you know, reuse of musical instruments and Then great for the local economy. And then I just. These guys are just amazing happy smiles. These are in Whitby, I think. No, wig and Wigan. Wig and Wigan. Not Whitby. Wigan. I knew it was a W and I've been reminded by that because they've cleverly used hashtag Wigan. This is an extraordinary business that's been set up by an entrepreneur with disabilities to employ people with disabilities to promote positive social change and inclusion. And they drive their income through supporting corporate businesses and going in and training their employees around how to engage with, you know, empower disabled and positive social chain and, and how to be inclusive and diversity and all those different things. And everybody they employ has a disability. I just think it's wonderful. It's just. Yeah, it gives me a happy smile. But again, you know, they're. They're talking about, you know, Feedback Friday, so they're engaging in national days and we know how powerful that can be as part of the, you know, program that we look at and helping businesses to engage with initiatives like Mental Health Awareness Week and so on. Although tomorrow I noticed this national kissing day, which I thought was rather nice. So I don't know. I know, I know. But, you know, there's always something that people can engage with and make relevant to their communities. But I just thought these guys were extraordinary. So there's a few examples of how social enterprise are using social media. Well, and here's their social media posts. Look at these. Wonderful. Look.

But I think what's the founder. I think what's interesting here, Sarah, is that when you look at the output from these ranges, social media, this range of social enterprises, they're all using social media. They might be doing different levels, but they're all social enterprises who are hitting headlines. They're making huge impact locally. They are all using the tools that are available to them. And I think the point that we want to make here is this is painting a picture of the successful ones, but the value that these enterprises can deliver is huge. And the point that we want to bring out is that local support, business support for these types of businesses delivers so much value because the more you can help these guys get better, the more impact they believe. Yeah.

And actually every single one of these examples have within the last 12 months won extraordinary awards, national awards, local awards. These guys are disability power 101. Of the other ones are just the guys that do the organic supermarkets just won a huge award with NatWest and so on. So there are a lot of interest from big corporates around supporting social enterprise. And promoting it and telling the story, something that they're very much engaging with as part of their social value policy. So what we're really saying is, we think back, we've got 100,000 plus social enterprises in the UK. If we apply the metric we have, which is 19% of UK organisations have a social media presence, that means that less than 2,000 of those 100,000 have a social media account. That can't be right. Is that right? Or is it 20,000? 20,000. Less than 20,000 I've got made it really low. But even so, there is a massive need, given that our consumers and our communities of all ages are hanging out on social media and that's where we're going for inspiration and information. So these organisations need support and local business support should play a significant role in doing that. In fact, government recognised this in their levelling up agenda. They're levelling up rapport and they wanted to consider how they could encourage social organisations and entrepreneurship to flourish in left behind places. So in those places that we've already shown you the data around the deprived areas, places perhaps with a high level of BAME led organisations, female led organisations, organisations led with people with disabilities, we need to really see what we can do to support them. And in fact, they've got a UKSPF intervention specifically aimed at that purpose. But what we're going to talk about is a couple of examples here, Polly's going to go through, of how we work with some other local businesses. Just a couple of case studies. Oh, community organisations. And then we're going to have a look at how you can support your local businesses to use social media to drive that engagement. That's so important.

Thank you, Sarah. So, as you said at the beginning, businesses, social enterprises have a very, very firm structure as to how they're set up. And we actually delivered quite a large project in Herfordshire last year where we supported about 15,000, 1500 basic one businesses and trained them in using social media better. Part of that project was also to measure the impact locally. And we did a really interesting project where we measured the footfall from these 1500 businesses across Herefordshire. And something extraordinary happened. We saw that the footfall for participating businesses was 15% up than those that didn't participate. And so the local business support there had a massive impact on all of the businesses. But the story that for me really came out, and we'll play this video maybe in a moment, is that the Ledbury, which is a bliss business, is not a social enterprise, but they have A social heart. They have a sort of social. They have a social approach to doing business. They have a cafe and they have a fashion store. And they saw the, the. Through the training and the business support they're receiving through Heritage Council, how much their business was improving. And so they said, right, we're going to get Ledbury Trade association to come here. And they got 140 members, I think, and we train them, train them at scale. And I believe that the football in Nebras was disproportionately higher than 20 US in heritage. And it's because everybody jumped on the bandwagon. And I think this is the real magic. If you can make happen around local business support, which is how can you empower a neighborhood, empower a town with the tools to collectively get better, that then impacts the entire place. Sarah, have we got time and will that play? Would it be good things to play the videos to do that, see whether it'll play?

Oh, no, it's a screenshot. It won't play. I haven't got. I haven't linked it.

We might. We might send it round afterwards. It was a really lovely video of Jess, who's the lady that runs the library, talking about the impact that the local business support had on them, both for their business, but more importantly for all the businesses locally. And we still speak to her now. And it's really interesting how you've managed to change behavior for both social enterprise, but business as a whole. But fundamentally, I think the theme here is that local business support can bring about change and that has massive impact on pride and place. So, moving on to the next slide, there's another project that I think is also very similar in the fact of how it's creating change, particularly environmental change. And that's a project that we're working on with Green street and with Starbucks. It's in Bradford at the moment. I think we're going to potentially launch it in other places all around. Reuse. And again, so we've helped provide the technology to track the reuse of cups and we're providing training to Green street retailers to help them to be more environmentally aware. But in both cases, what you're doing is bringing together groups of businesses to collectively improve their skills, but also improve the way they trade, to be more environmentally friendly and be more digital, which is all, I think, incredibly positive, but it's enabled through centrally managed local business support, in this case funded by Starbucks, which is a real privilege to be working with them. So watch out for a project called Borrow, and that Greenstreet have created and it's powered by Mabee, and we're delighted to be part of delivering training for that as well. So, moving on.

I'm going to be sharing something very exciting, but actually using an account that is sponsored by this Green street project that basically support the community interest company and they support social enterprise. So it'll bring that relevance back as to how different types of businesses you can pull together, whether social enterprise or independent or national, whatever that might be, and all come together, like you say, as a collective, as a street, as a conversation on social media.

Absolutely. So, live demo. Normally I get to do the live demos, but this time Sarah's got it, so heaven knows what's going to happen. So, just to bring this back, the reason we keep banging on about this is that we know that whilst we all think that social media is something everybody's doing, truth is we do it all at an individual level, but businesses really struggle with it. And from a local business support perspective, if you take some of your budget and help local businesses get better at social media, the output is that more people turn up. You apply that same logic to local, to social enterprise and you just get more good. Basically, if you've got a great message but being delivered wider, you're doing more good. And so I think it's well worth looking at local business support. I'm going to talk you through our learnings about delivering local business support all across the UK and say, if you're going to do it, then by all means ask us for some advice, because I think we trained just over 25,000 businesses last year. Our expertise is around social media. We know that getting it right is hard. Our job is to make it easy and we invest significantly in the platform and the training. We've got a whole raft of on demand training and we're now integrating AI with all of our data and some of the results are just out of this world. I think Sarah is itching to show you a demo, so I'll keep talking until she takes the screen away from me. But, you know, we deliver a blend of technology and content. This is example of Hot50 hot topics to expire social media content in June. We know from all the training we've done, one of the hardest things is people go, I don't want to post. So, you know, we make it really easy to discover what you should be posting and our AI that Sarah's going to show you in a moment makes it incredibly easy because it actually writes content for you. At heart of maybe is a calendar that lets you see what you're posting and importantly lets you see what other people are posting. So if you're a social enterprise, you can look at what the other social enterprises are doing. And what we've learned is the fastest way for businesses to get better at this is to see what works. We've integrated within the calendar things like all the awareness days so they can see what's coming up and how to get in front of it, basically giving them the tools to punch way above their weight. So whatever local business support you're looking at investing, you just need to make sure you've got a blend of tools, training experts and most importantly, outreach. We'll come on to that more in a moment. So when did you demo you can do it now?

Yes, I think I can do it now.

Okay, so Sarah's going to do her demo now. What we we literally been releasing over the last couple of months, an integration with ChatGPT into the mobi platform, which means that all the great things, which I'm sure you will experience with GPT is now available within MOBI as well. But one of the really big differences is that it means that we've personalized it so that every business has now got the opportunity to use GPT, but based upon their own data. Now, what that means is that we can help them create content that is relevant to them. We can help them reply to content in any language. And we have a number of local authority clients, for example, who one of the biggest challenges they have was responding to comments, you know, people moaning about bins and parking and counter attacks in multiple languages. And what Sarah's about to demonstrate to you is how you can deal with all of that through the useless platform. Sarah, over to you.

Well, yeah, well done for speaking over my rather hopeless which screen am I sharing Piece, but I'm there, I'm in the right place. And here's one I prepared earlier. So this is the Impact Hub, Bradford cic. And these guys do a lot of business support around social enterprise and this is their account, which they have sponsored through our Green street project in Bradford. So it's all about doing good and being green and sharing knowledge and support with other local businesses. And without going through the whole, you know, what does the platform do and all the different features you'll need, you'll see at the top here, use maybe AI2 and there's various different things that you can ask it to do. Now, this is just a very small taste, there are an awful lot more coming, but I'm going to show you a little bit of what I did earlier and then I might even do a little bit of live. So I literally earlier on just clicked in. Inspireman. Inspire me. So you'll see here at the top here it says inspire me and it says tap the message below to get started. So here, here's our what we're asking our AI to do. Give me a minute and I'll come back to you shortly. Looking at your past content, and this is the really exciting bit is that unlike chat gtp for example, which is generic content, they don't know who you are, don't know your tone of voice, they don't know what you're about. RAI has been trained to look at what have you posted before, what's your website say, what are your blogs talking about, how do you explain what you do, who are you, how would you respond or what type of content would you normally create and how we can. And then it's trained to make suggestions on social media content that is based on the most engaging, the most sort of powerful content created by the best of the best across the 3.9 million businesses that we have in the UK in those sectors. So it says here and it's literally taken 30 seconds to come up with this, looking at your past content and be doing a great job. So we've got don't step on a B day. Did you know that bees can play a crucial role? So we're talking about coming up with World Population Day and some different content that Bradford CIC can put into there. But I've noticed this Social Media Giving Day today, I think it is actually. So I've said I'd like four, I'd like ideas for social Media Giving Day, please. Can you write a series of Instagram Facebook posts that align with our support for social enterprise? Absolutely. So it's literally look personalised. Bradford Social Media Giving Day and impact her Bradford is proud to support social enterprise gives them the hashtags, the local hashtags, the Facebook posts. I mean this is game changing for organizations like this that simply don't know what to post. And literally they can come in here, copy this content, go to content, the content page, paste it in and post it. You can even ask it to write you blogs. But these are various social media posts and there's some more in here and it keeps on giving.

Sarah, I think we'll get you cracked out on time. The key point here is that this is not designed to take away people's jobs. It's Designed to help everybody do their best, work faster. And through the experience that we've had with local business support across a wide range of businesses, everybody's got a different set of skills. So what we've done is really make sure that within the AI, not only have you got the fix my problem, but also you've got everything you want. So, Sarah, if you, for example, asked it, how could I create a reel right now, would it give you an answer? One of the biggest challenges that social media has done is it has introduced into every business another whole layer of complexity that's quite challenging to manage. And what we're really keen to ensure is that local business support can get as much value as possible for every plan invested. So we're really keen to see how we can ensure there are tools that help you deliver support fast in a way that delivers great value. Fantastic. Sarah, could I have that in Spanish now? Because I might have some of this. Can I have that?

I know. I just wonder whether people are looking at the bit above and thinking, well, that's a bit weird, actually. That's a blog that I asked it to write about social value and social enterprise in Polish.

Let's have the real. Let's have the real. Have still real in Polish. And this is what we're working with a number of priorities on to help them deliver their responses to social media. Because again, often people asking questions are asking multiple languages and literally this will reply for you in the language you ask it to, or convert content into the language that you ask.

Interestingly, Caerphilly County Borough Council, for example, who. I mean, they just. This has been transformative for them in that every single piece of content they write, they have to deliver it in English and Welsh. So they just ask, can you create Nissan Post in English and Welsh? Can you respond in English and Welsh to every comment, every mention? It's just saved them so much time and, yeah, it's been really valuable, really valuable for them. But equally, you know, when we've got organizations, social enterprises that take the. The guys in Hackney, for example, echo the economy, you know, if they were able to create content in multiple languages that, you know, that. That really demonstrate the ethnicity or the, you know, eth. I can't think of the word that they're looking to engage of their. Of their communities and their audience. That's the word, you know, to be able to deliver content in multiple languages is hugely valuable, very powerful, especially engaging communities.

Absolutely. I think you might just need to say, please translate this, that you might need to Give it a clear instruction. Please translate the post about it too.

It's usually quite good at me being terribly lazy and hopefully.

But just that's a little snapshot of, you know, the changing dynamics of local business support. I think that the use of relevant tech and training in our now virtual world is really important. I think, Sarah, we might be asking to do much while we're streaming as well.

Yes, I think that's exactly what's going on.

Should we move back to the slides? If anybody have a try with this, please do let us know. As I say, we are just blown away by what it's enabling businesses to do do, and indeed local authorities as well. So we, if you. If you are. If you are looking at any local business support packages and would like any advice about what we feel is best practice, please do get in touch. And we also know that one of the biggest challenges with delivering local business support is around the outreach piece. And I think we've also created a model that approaches it in a very different way. So, again, if anybody would like any support with any programs they're putting together, please do ask, because we have discovered that getting the outreach piece right is so critical. As I said at the beginning, I used to run a social enterprise. I'm really passionate about this sector. Would be delighted to work with you on ensuring they get the support they need. We have delivered 750,000 phone calls last year and sent an extraordinary amount of email inviting people to start programs. As I said, we've trained over 25,000 businesses. We have match funded these programmes by about £20 million. We take our social value very seriously and our match is to provide licenses to the platform, which you've just seen as part of local business support. So we throw a hat in the ring as well and help you deliver that support by providing free licenses. And all we ask for you is to fund the outreach, which we know is the hardest part to do. We have extensive training and all the tools, as we've shown you, but equally, if you think you know what, you want to do this locally, then we can help you understand what are the pieces you need to put together. Thank you very much for all of the questions. A few more questions coming out here. Somebody's asking about how we measure the football piece, which is actually ironically, graphs that Sarah's just bringing up. Sarah, do you want to just go back to those graphs a minute? So, measuring the impact of local business support and how you demonstrate it in the same way that you need to with local, in the same way that you need to. Social enterprises need to demonstrate their impact. We need to show ours too. And the footfall, the orange line on that graph is the participating business trend for football versus the town trend, which is the blue line. And you can see the gap between the two. And we believe that measuring footfall against local business support is a really key metric as well as activity. And as I said, it's about delivering multi touchpoint support. So we have videos that are five minutes long for pretty much every topic. We have AI to provide instant response to answers and we have all the tools that a business needs to actually start to get to grips with using digital and deliver this in any area of the country just by throwing the boundary around it. And we are totally committed to delivering social value ourselves. For every contract that we do, we deliver the equivalent of £912 per business that is structured really well around the five ketones. I can see quite a lot of questions coming in, Sarah, should we take them a couple around? Do you help people with their USPF applications, Sarah? Do you want to take that question, Sarah?

Yes, yes, absolutely. I think I've done about 60 UK SPF RFQs thus far and absolutely, yes, do. If you've got any open calls around local business support, we'd be more than delighted to help. And yeah, I mean, I know there's been, it's been very frustrating. There's been lots of people running around with their hair on fire because of course it was delayed in being announced and then there were changes with people and skills element that was brought forward and so on and so forth. So it's been a busy time and I know that a lot of people are looking to sort of see how they're going to support businesses in 23, 24 and 24, 25. So that's something we definitely have capacity.

To help with and I'm really committed to as well. I think what's key for us is that, you know, we know how big the gap is both for business and for social enterprises. The impact you can have by helping them, by empowering them digitally is extraordinary. And I believe there are, there are real opportunities to create much greater fighting place by delivering local business support that helps social enterprise and businesses use digital better. Digital is not about online sales, digital is about communication and that has a direct impact on your local communities. There are so many questions coming in that I think what we'll do is we'll take the rest offline. You've been a fabulous audience. As I said, digital activity contributes to finding place and economic growth. These people all have a phone in their pocket and they're all looking at what that phone says. And if your social enterprises and your businesses are not appearing in that feedback, these people are much likely to turn much more likely to turn up somewhere else and not to your place. We'd like to make sure they turn up with you and we'd like to ensure that you have the right tools to be able to deliver local business support in a way that delivers impact for your social enterprises and your local businesses. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you so much. I'm sorry we haven't got through all your questions, but we will respond to them all by email and we'll send this deckground for your colleagues. Sarah, thank you very much. It was a lovely piece of research today. I hope that's been valuable to everybody and we look forward to your feedback and we'll see you the same time, same place, next month, is that right, Sarah?

That is absolutely right, yes. And don't worry, I will make sure, I remind you, nearer the time. And if there's anything I can do to help you in the meantime. I'm Sarah Bassett. My email is very simple. It's Sarah at Mabel, and I'm always happy to chat.

Thank you all very much indeed. Sarah, thank you.