Sharing your survey link
Once your project is set up, Kanon Maps gives you a survey link to send out. How you share it depends on whether you already know the people you want to reach. Here are the two most common situations.
1. You know your community
If you're a membership group, a congregation, a club or any community where you can reach people directly, share the link the way you'd normally get in touch — a personal or group email, WhatsApp, a members' newsletter, a text round. Send it to the people you want on your map and let them fill it in whenever suits them.
To keep everyone's responses anonymous, add a couple of friendly ground rules when you send it:
- Please don't tell us you've done it. There's no need to reply or let anyone know you've filled it in. In a group where people know each other, knowing exactly who has and hasn't taken part can make it possible to work out where an individual lives — so the survey works best when nobody's ticking names off a list.
- Please keep the link within the group. Ask people not to forward it on. The link is for the community you're mapping, not for passing further afield.
For the same reason, don't post the link anywhere public — not on a Facebook group about a shared interest, a community noticeboard online, or any open forum. If people from outside your community fill it in, they'll pull your map and figures away from the people you actually set out to represent, and it gets harder to trust what the results are telling you.
2. You're reaching an open group of service users
Sometimes you don't — and can't — know everyone you want to hear from. A council-run leisure centre, a library, a food bank or a drop-in service might serve hundreds of people it has no contact details for. Here the goal is the opposite: put the link in front of everyone who uses the service and invite them to take part.
In that case, make the survey easy to find where people already are:
- A QR code people can scan with their phone — on a poster by the entrance, at reception, or on the noticeboard.
- Leaflets or cards handed out at the desk or tucked into a welcome pack for new users.
- The link or QR code on your own website or in a service email, so it's there whenever someone thinks to respond.
Because these settings are genuinely open, posting the link publicly is exactly what you want — anyone using the service is part of the community you're mapping.
We can help with your campaign
Reaching an open audience well takes good materials. Kanon Maps can put together a design package for your campaign — posters, QR codes, leaflets and welcome-pack inserts, ready to print. If that would help, get in touch and tell us about your service.
Which one are you?
If you have a way to reach your people directly, go with the first approach and keep the link inside the group. If your community is whoever walks through the door, go with the second and make the link as visible as you can. Either way, every response stays anonymous — Kanon Maps turns each postcode into an approximate point and never stores it.