Welcome to Around the Table, our look at the work Table Tennis England is doing to promote and support table tennis around the country.

Here, we look at the ways we communicate with people inside and outside the sport – and there are more ways than you might imagine!

Who do you communicate with?

People directly involved in our sport, such as our staff, governance (the Board and National Councillors, for example), clubs, officials, volunteers and our registered members – plus those indirectly involved such as schools, County Sports Partnerships and Sport England.

On top of that, we also need to talk to the media on occasions – and provide information for the general public.

That’s a pretty wide cross-section – how do you make sure you reach them all?

Gone are the days when communication can only be done by phone or letter – we have a whole series of ways we can get in touch with people.

Our biggest communication tools are our website and email. The website is visited by more than 2,000 people a day on average, looking for anything from the latest rankings and competition entry forms to news items, Team England reports and information about our work. It’s a one-stop shop for everything about table tennis in England! Complementing it is the Ping! website at www.pingengland.co.uk which tells you all about the popular summer festival.

Our email reach is even bigger. We can get direct emails out to more than 22,000 members at a time, or target a particular geographical area or type of member. We don’t want to bombard you with emails though – we send out a Chair’s Newsletter every month and an occasional message on top of that – and it is possible to opt out.

We also send dedicated newsletters to PremierClubs and Licensed Coaches, helping them to develop individually and therefore help the sport as a whole to stay vibrant.

Social media? We’ve got it covered. As well as our official Table Tennis England Twitter account (@TableTennisEng), we run @DeveloPING_TT which is aimed at helping to get new players into the sport. Our four Area teams also have Twitter accounts so we can communicate on a local basis, and the Ping! project can be followed at @ping_tweets – and finally, the British League can also be found on Twitter (@BritishLeague).

We’re on Facebook too – and check out our video content on YouTube, including the major finals from this year’s Senior National Championships in full! Completing the set is Flickr, where we and the photographers we work with post hundreds of pictures every month from tournaments up and down the land.

That’s not all – we produce a Directory and an Annual Report in printed and online versions. And we do still use phones and good old-fashioned letters now and then!

What about press releases?

We do them too – recent examples include the opening of two new Talent Development Centres, the decision of Sport England to restore our full funding and the naming of our European Games team. Our releases are all targeted to relevant media at national and local level. This helps us to raise the profile of the sport and improve the perception of it as a sport for all for life.

Can we get touch with you?

Absolutely – we welcome feedback, suggestions and, yes, even criticism if it helps us to better serve our sport!

All our staff have their own email addresses following the convention [email protected]

Our switchboard number 01908 208860 is staffed during normal office hours and we have a dedicated email address for general inquiries – [email protected]

It is also possible to contact us via our Twitter and Facebook accounts.

We promise to deal with all inquiries within certain time periods, as specified in our Customer Care & Complaints Policy, which can be seen by clicking here.

What can we expect in future?

We will soon be re-designing our website in order to make it more user-friendly, more accessible and better suited to mobile and tablet devices as well as PCs.

We keep up to date with the latest communication platforms and will introduce any which we feel will improve the ways in which we let members and potential members know about what we do.

However we communicate, we promise to be open and accurate; consistent, relevant and timely; cost-effective; and that we will continually seek and listen to feedback from those we communicate with.

May 7, 2015

Do you have any questions you would like us to answer in our Around the Table feature? Email [email protected]