How will you reach your audience?

With all the effort of producing the information, sometimes the act of getting it to the intended audience is overlooked. Boxes of excellent leaflets are sometimes left to gather dust in warehouses or cause trip hazards in small offices. Similarly, excellent information and innovative interactive games go undiscovered and unvisited on websites. So, it's crucial to plan and budget for dissemination.

Through your organisation

If your organisation works directly with clients, perhaps through an advice service or local groups, you may have a ready-made distribution network.

Ensure that everyone in your organisation who has contact with users knows about your information and can access it.

The same should go for staff in any partner organisations. Given most people's high-pressured working environments, it is usually worth telling them about it a second time a few months later.

Through intermediaries

Intermediaries (other professionals who encounter your target group as a part of their work) are ideal people to promote or distribute your information.

GP practices, advice centres, hospitals, schools, social services, registrars, youth workers, libraries, community groups, and countless other organisations can enable you to reach people you wouldn't otherwise be able to reach. They will often be happy to display or distribute your information if it is related to their work, or if it covers a problem that their clients encounter.

The value of using intermediaries in this way shouldn't be underestimated. It also has the added benefit of increasing the visibility and credibility of your organisation amongst professionals.

Consider making fliers and/or posters to advertise your information.

Intermediaries will often be happy to put these up or hand them out to relevant clients. This is particularly helpful if your information is provided on the web, rather than paper copies.

(See 'Ask intermediaries' in What is the issue? for more information on working with intermediaries.)