It’s a tough market out there at the moment, not just in journalism but in any industry. As a legion of graduates prepare to scrap like never before for jobs with contracting companies, it must feel horrible to have started your studies in 2006 when the economy was stable, optomism was high and journalism was starting out on its adventure into a multimedia future.
Now it’s a different story. I read Kyle Christie’s post with interest, particularly about whether you should take a ‘non-journalism’ job to pay the rent or whether you should risk debt and starvation on a basic trainee salary.
There’s no easy answer. But I wouldn’t rail against anyone who took the non-journalism route, as that’s what I ended up doing.
My first job was actually a journalism job (and a few other things besides). It was running the student media at the University of Central Lancashire Students’ Union and I’d thoroughly recommend the opportunity to any students reading this. If you get the chance to stand for election, or apply for the position as it is in some places, do it. You learn a lot in a short space of time and you learn how to manage a team. You’re the editor, it’s on your head. It’s a great experience and it’s a real experience.
But, as I came to the end of my tenure as editor it was time find a job. I applied, citing my experience, showing my skills, pointing to my excellent degree. But nothing came of it, interviews came and went and I was staring unemployment in the eye. I landed a job where I had been working but on a short-term contract, it was a mix of different roles but ultimately a web-based role. It needed some journalism skills.
The advantage to doing a journalism degree is that you learn so many transferable skills. You learn how to tell stories, create content, edit, it’s not hard to make the jump into some other industries. You have to be organised, confident and a good communicator - and be able to work as part of a team. You’re ticking a lot of person spec boxes in many jobs that require less work/effort and command a better salary than those trainee positions.
But, as Kyle alluded to. You’ve got to keep your hand in. Once I had my reasonable salary and regular hours, I found I had some spare time. I set up a hyper-local blog for where I live. I wrote content, I blagged content from people. I got into my community, put on events, took pictures. Now I have 150 unique visitors a day, on average, and I might be able to apply for some funding.
So, if you do find yourself in a ‘non-journalism’ job, just remember it’s not the end. You can still be a journalist, you just might have to do it as a hobby to start off with and then see when the break comes. When it comes, take it with both hands.
It’s taken three months, but I’ve finally got above that damn Robert Peston. Preston Blog is now coming up as number one on Google. No tricks, just damn good content:
In January 2009 I decided as a new year’s resolution to set up a blog for where I live. Inspired by St Albans Blog, run by Robin Hamman, I boldy registered Preston Blog. I decided to go with a wordpress.com account as I wasn’t sure how much time I could commit and I was also a little short of cash so a domain and hosting were out of the question.
Since January 2009 I’ve been amazed at what the blog has achieved. It’s now just a few unique visitors away from having 10,000 in three months. No mean feat for something that I try to update as and when.
What’s the point in having a community journalism blog for Preston, Lancashire? Well, simple really: people want it. The sheer number of emails I’ve had and twitter messages saying “thanks for the blog/post, keep it up”.
I thought I’d take the chance, just over three months on since launch, to reflect on how the blog is going and pass on some advice for anyone thinking of doing something similar for where they live.
It will take up your time, a lot of your time
I started off just posting here and there. I thought no one would read what I wrote, then I saw the stats. 100 unique visitors a day, holy shit, people are reading what I write and they are commenting too. I started pulling hours getting content. You need to be prepared for the commitment of it, for talking about it, going to random events, getting lost down dead-end roads because Google Maps told you that’s where the venue was.
You will get involved in your community
People love publicity, they like to let you know they are doing stuff. Make sure you’ve got your optimistic people-loving mindset on as you’ll meet some weird, amazing and wonderful people. I’ve already met a Subbuteo enthusiast, a man who loves Open Street Maps and a bunch of rather kooky authors at a live literature night. But I love that, I love the diversity of it all.
Twitter is your friend
Twitter has been brilliant. Without it then I don’t think I’d have found half of the content I currently have on my blog. I post all my content to it, I thank guest writers, I debate things with people. Twitter is my living breathing news feed from the people of Preston. I use a great little application called Twitter Local, or the ’stalking thing’ as it was referred to by my ex-girlfriend, to find anyone who is twittering in Preston, Lancashire. I follow them to see what they are saying, and if they like what I’m about they can follow me back.
Other people will write far better than you
I have a wide and far-reaching network of guest writers. They are great and without them the blog wouldn’t work. I have someone who is an expert on the built environment, so whenever there’s a story about a ‘new development’ in Preston he knows what is actually going on. I have students climbing over each other to write stuff and get it in their published portfolios, although whether I’m a ‘real’ media outlet will be up to their tutors to decide. I want the blog to be a variety of voices writing about what they are passionate about, people will always read passionate writing. It’d be boring if it was just me all the time. One of the best and most viewed pages on the blog is ‘Get Involved‘. I count getting involved as anything from subscribing by RSS, commenting on a post to writing a guest post.
Look online and you will find
I’ve found some great content on Flickr, I have a feed of photos that comes in and is updated nearly daily with people snapping ‘Preston’ on flickr. Some of the shots are incredible. I don’t need a photo crew, I’ve got a whole photo community. The same with video, there’s plenty out there.
Don’t just sit online
Because my phone bill would be huge, I have to get off my laptop and go and speak to people. I phone people and arrange to meet them face-to-face. It’s great, the interview is so much better and you learn so much more about what’s going on. Preston Blog also inspired the Preston Tweetup that was fantastic. Just over 40 people came together, with a live-twitter feed, and discussed how the web could be used for Preston Guild in 2012. Local council’s should be doing this stuff, but they don’t, so we will instead. The ideas were ace, the people were ace and we’ll do it again sometime soon. But it was offline, it was great publicity for the blog and it made for some great content.
There’s a few thoughts about the blog and how it’s gone. I’m enjoying it and now it’s the time to get serious with it. The local newspaper has no rival, and it’s getting a bit lazy. Preston Blog has shown there is a demand for quality, local, community reporting. Preston has no newspaper, and I’d never open a newspaper, but it can have a great and virbant community journalism resource.
Over the coming months we’ll hopefully be shifting Preston Blog to a domain name, getting a new design with a proper Wordpress template. We’ll be bidding for some funding, registering as a nonprofit, and building some great content. We’ve got plans to live-cover some events over the summer, with full multimedia coverage. But, although we’ll get bigger, we will never forget what the blog is about. It’s about Preston, it’s about the people that live there, the places you can go, the things you can do, and the stories that it all holds.
Thank you to everyone who has read, writter for, commented on, twittered about or spoken about Preston Blog. We appreciate your support.
I thought I’d take the question above as a starting point. A Tweetup is a new concept and it’s something that is really starting to catch-on in some places.
I organised and hosted Preston’s first Tweetup just over a week ago and it was a roaring success. We had nearly 40 people in the room, many of them with wireless enabled laptops and mobiles, all contributing to a discussion on one topic.
The idea for a Tweetup is that instead of having a networking event or discussion where the conversation is completely physical you also have a virtual conversation going on. Bear with me, it does make sense. The structure of the event is an opening preamble and then a topic is discussed by the people in the room - often splitting off into separate groups. This makes it easier to manage.
For example, at the Preston Tweetup we were discussing the Preston Guild in 2012 and how the web can be used in it.
The discussions were flowing around the tables but also on twitter, take a look at the #prestontweetup hashtag feed and you can see all the good stuff that was coming out of people chatting about the topic. Yes, some of it went off on tangents - but that happens with any discussions.
The best thing about the Tweetup was that as an organiser I was getting instant feedback. If there was a problem with something I could pick up on it straight away by watching the tweets. I could also easily collect information after the event and condense it.
This backchannel conversation was incredibly useful and exciting. It also allowed some great interaction between the groups, so that people might take a question asked by one group and explore it and the then fling some more questions back out into the twitter stream for other groups to consider. There was a fantastic collaborative environment at the event.
So, I would really suggest giving a Tweetup a try. You don’t need 40 people there, maybe just 5, but get going with it and see what happens. And if you’re in the education or conference/networking sectors, you need to be on this. Doing it. Making it happen.
I’m a graduate of Common Purpose. I attended their Frontrunner programme in the summer of 2008. I met some really interesting people, talked about some big issues and learned a lot about leadership.
I wasn’t brainwashed during my time there and there was no specific agenda pushed on us - especially not any sort of ‘pro-European’ agenda as the BBC article alledges. The only agenda we had pushed on us was that we could be a positive force for change in society. I don’t think that’s a bad thing to be discussing?
The work that Common Purpose does is very beneficial. Yes, the courses are not cheap but that’s because of the quality of speakers they get at the events and they are also very well run - you get what you pay for with most training and conference events. The people I met were drawn from every walk of life, some from business, some from charities, some still studying and the debates were very interesting and fun.
The ‘Chatham House’ rules are necessary because in some of the sessions people are very frank about what they are discussing or guest speakers are revealing some very delicate details about situations they’ve had to deal with.
Perhaps Common Purpose has more work to do to make its mission clearer and to try not to come off as ‘elitist’? Certainly without my time at the Frontrunner programme I wouldn’t have the confidence to work on some of the projects I currently am working on or put myself forward to become a trustee for Mencap Liverpool.
So, Common Purpose - a ’secret society?’. I think not. But if they ever send me a cloak and a secret handshake in the post I’ll let you know.
Online fundraising is becoming more and more popular, replacing old style fundraising, but can Twitter play a part?
Attended the second Not For Profit Tweetup (#NFPTweetup) last night at Christian Aid’s head office in Waterloo. It was excellent, although the lack of free wi-fi access was disappointing (it being a tweetup and all).
The night started with Rachel Beer chairing a presentation where slides were presented about what Twitter meant to some of the people in attendance from the third sector and also some of those who weren’t in the audience but who had contributed virtually.
The general theme was that Twitter was a very useful tool, a conversation tool and a way to ‘humanise’ the organisation and not just hide behind a corporate shield.
We then broke off into groups and my group was charged with the title of ‘How can twitter be used for fundraising?’.
Here’s our key findings and ideas, and the below is some of the discussion that took place:
- Use Twitter to tell stories and then link off to a chance to donate
- ‘Friendraising’ and asking for favours on Twitter is often more powerful than asking for money or ask for content for existing media (photos, videos, guest blog posts, expert comment, ideas etc)
- Feature your community fundraisers and their efforts via your Twitter feed (this can act as a reward for those who go the extra mile), but only feature the more unusual or large-scale efforts rather than every Tom, Dick and Harriet
- Teach community fundraisers about how to use Twitter and other social media tools, as well as sites such as Justgiving and Bmycharity, to increase their donations and online awareness of fundraising effort
- Don’t abuse your Twitter following by always asking for donations
- Measurement will be needed to prove ROT (Return on Tweeting) in relation to fundraising efforts
- Setup up specific Twitter accounts for certain appeals and use these to promote the appeal, rather than featuring them all on your charity’s main Twitter account
- Twitter itself needs to fundraise to ensure long-term survival
Our first question to everyone around the table was ‘Have you used twitter for fundraising?’ and the answer was a resounding, ‘Not yet, but we’d quite like to know how and whether anyone else is doing it.’
One person in the group then contributed that they felt it would be a good way of raising small amounts of money for a specific cause, but this was countered by another group member who felt that the success of Twestival showed that large amounts could be gathered via Twitter and events organised around it.
We then discussed why it was that big charities and big appeals didn’t seem to be using Twitter as a fundraising tool but that individuals and smaller charities were. Everyone felt this was because it was easier for an individual and smaller organisations to adapt and use a tool such as Twitter where as larger organisations felt there were too many hoops and risks with using it.
We had Alex from Dogs Trust in our group and she contributed about how the charity had been using Twitter heaving. They now had around 2,200 followers and that they hadn’t actively fundraised for their appeals through Twitter but that they had promoted some of the fundraising activities of their supporters via their Twitter feed.
This led to a discussion about who you should follow and Alex commented that they were selective about who they followed and followed back. They don’t auto-follow back, preferring to weed out the spammers themselves. It was felt that asking for money via Twitter wouldn’t be right yet as they were still building their community but they had successfully used Twitter to ask for non-financial related activities - re-homing a dog, voluntary acts and time from supporters.
This led to a discussion about whether Twitter was a fundraising tool or whether it was ‘friendraising’. A tool to raise awareness of what you do and connect with supporters and then push them off somewhere else to donate, rather than potentially contaminate your Twitter following by asking them for donations to an appeal.
Many also felt it would be worthwhile if Twitter was to be used for fundraising that a profile on Twitter be setup for specific appeals e.g. twitter.com/savethewhiterhinoappeal and then people would know what to expect from this Twitter feed and it helped make people’s expectations clear. The issue of brand protection was also raised, charities even if they aren’t planning to use Twitter for an appeal should register the Twitter URL for their appeal just in case someone else does and pretends to be them!
Fundraising guru Howard Lake was also in our group and he added some insight into how Twestival had raised money for charity:water and the charity hadn’t actually asked to be involved - they were selected.
We were lucky enough to have Ben from Bmycharity in our group and the discussion led us on to how sites such as Bmycharity and Justgiving were experiencing surges in traffic (albeit from a small base to start with) from Twitter to their fundraising profile pages. He also commented that they were very interested in Twitter and its growing popularity and were looking at ways of incorporating more Twitter related activity and feeds into their profile pages.
We then discussed that perhaps Twitter was more of a tool for community fundraisers than for charities themselves, but charities could play a part by promoting the most interesting fundraising events/profiles through twitter to generate traffic and donations on profile pages. An interesting point was raised that charities had to be careful not to over-promote their fundraisers and this was the online equivalent of someone shaking a tin in your face and asking for 50p every 2 minutes.
Ben from Bmycharity chipped in at this point with a great example of how they had used Twitter to promote the more ‘unusual’ of their fundraisers. He spoke about how a woman was going from Lands End to John O’Groats in a powered wheelchair, but as a twist was offering the chance for two able-bodied people to join her on her trip. They found that by using Twitter to promote this the traffic to the profile page increased and potentially the donations increased.
This led to a debate about how the impact of Twitter on fundraisers could be measured. Someone needs to come up with a measurement for ‘Return on Tweet (ROT)’. It would be handy if there was a bit of code added to links put into a Tweet that tracked if a user went through to a specific page and then carried on to donate to the appeal/fundraising effort. This could then help charities say ‘we tweeted 20 times about this appeal and 46 people clicked through and 27 people donated a total of £256.70′.
We then discussed how charities need to do more to educate their community fundraisers about how to use online tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Justgiving, Bmycharity and others to maximise their fundraising efforts. This could be through running drop-in sessions (real or virtual) for community fundraisers and creating an online resource in a community fundraiser community site or on the charities own website (something like the Get Involve section) to teach people about the tools.
Finally, we discussed Twitter’s growing popularity and usage levels. Everyone was very excited about the potential for it and the growing uptake but there were notes of caution about whether it could survive long-term on just venture capital alone. Twitter needs to fundraise to ensure that it survives and this could be done through advertising (adverts that respond to what you’re tweeting about down the side of the twitter feed) or levying a charge at premium users.
There were more ideas and discussions than this but hopefully this is a useful snapshot of what our group discussed and I’d like to thank all those who took part it was great to hear everyone’s comments and find out what their charities were up to online.
I’d be interested to know what you think, can Twitter be used for fundraising? Is it mainstream enough to be counted as a viable marketing tool?
He gave an insight into how the BBC is beginning to use CRM and how it is changing the way the organisation works in the digital age.
Kelleher started by saying that using CRM in a non-commercial organisation is more difficult than for commercial ones, as CRM systems are traditionally based around converting leads into sales and building a relationship with the customer.
The BBC in the analogue age had a policy of not using direct marketing, after all they didn’t need to as there were only up to five channels and limited radio stations, 30 odd million used to watch the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special.
However, recognising that the corporation has moved into the digital age they set up about working out how CRM could be used to target and deliver to an audience that was fragmenting, changing its behaviours, becoming less loyal and changing their methods of consumption.
He then showed a rather wacky diagram with all the ‘social media’ and other tools that could be put into the direct marketing mix and asked ‘how much of this stuff is going to add value?’. That is the question that all organisations need to be asking themselves.
To respond to the changes in audience then the BBC is adopting some principles for how to engage with the audience:
- Personalise. Make content relevant to the person.
- Customer insight. Use data to understand what the audience likes
- Self-help. Provide resources for the audience to get help there and then, not wait to speak to a person
- Accountability. New media tools can be used to show transparency and explain why decisions are made
- Online channels. Explore new ways of delivering content to the audience.
- Brand experience. Ensuring that through a distributed strategy the brand is not diluted and the BBC is still respected as an institution
- Data drive decision making. Data will be available at all levels of the organisation to inform decision makers, rather than relying on assumptions about the audience.
Kelleher then made an interesting point about CRM. The systems will produce endless amounts of data and reports but it’s knowing how to interpret these reports - you can produce reports until you’re blue in the face but if your non-data geek decision makers can’t understand them or are overwhelmed then this defeats the whole purpose of having the system.
In the new digital world it’s all about relevancy. The content needs to be tailored to fit the audience member, not the audience, the audience member. Mr Smith likes very different things to Mrs Jones, even though they might be the same age, live next door to each other and work in the same industry. The digital world should offer personalised interactions wherever possible for the audience and give users the chance to set preferences, more of what they want more of the time.
We were shown an example of an SMS pilot that the BBC had run using Radio 1. They had been unsure of how to use SMS as a marketing tool and they decided to pilot it with the Scott Mills show on Radio 1. This was because a lot of the listenership are under-25 and SMS is embedded in their lifestyle. They tried various different styles and tones for the texts and found that the more informal texts that matched the celebrity (Scott Mills) were most popular and prompted the best response rate.
However, it’s easy to get carried away with SMS marketing and bombard your audience - instead organisations should focus on adding value for the audience wherever possible.
Kelleher then briefly touched on the iPlayer - a huge success for the corporation - and how direct marketing was being used there. There was a subtle recruitment button in the bottom corner of the iPlayer frontpage (can’t say I’d ever noticed) that pushed users to a simple sign-up form. From this customised updates were produced to inform them of new content that they would be interested in.
The BBC is in the process of refining it’s data collection touchpoints as they have hundreds, if not thousands, of them. They send out 110 different email newsletters and 30 million are sent every month. The most popular is the BBC Food email newsletter.
Kelleher briefly touched on a new project that the BBC is running around its Darwin campaign. This is TV, radio, online and offline events all related to the theme of Charles Darwin. The website features a very simple ‘Sign up’ plug and all the user has to do is enter their email address - nothing else. This is then cross-referenced with the main CRM database and added to a list of ‘They like Darwin’. A personalised email with call to actions are then sent out related to Darwin content on different media. The open rate for the emails is a phenomenal 80% and the click through rate was 20-25%. Not bad for a campaign I’d never heard of.
Ultimately thought content is king, and I agree completely with Kelleher on this. He used the analogy of a first date. You meet a girl and you find out she likes guinea pigs, France and red wine. After two years worth of dates you’re still discussing guinea pigs, France and red wine. You never learn more. You are eventually going to get bored of discussing the same things and go off and find something new. This works with direct marketing and CRM, you need to be constantly offering up something new, something different and something that makes people say ‘Yes! I’d like to know more about that!’. You can’t afford to be static, because it’s easier now than ever before for someone to disappear off and find new and fresh content with the touch of a button.
Finally, Kelleher finished with the new rules for CRM and direct marketing in the digital age:
1. Research the audience’s propensity. Ensure you’re using the right approach and technology for the audience you’re targeting
2. Go where the audience are. If the audience all use Facebook, you need to use Facebook to get to them.
3. Make the user’s recruitment journey easy. Simple sign up forms.
4. Make interaction relevant. Don’t ask for data about whether they have a pet, and then never use it. The user will be expecting something related to guinea pigs they’ve put in that they have guinea pigs.
5. Make the interaction timely. If an event has just happened, hit the user with some content about what happened. If an event is upcoming, allow enough time for them to register and attend.
6. Provide value. This is key, you need to make your content stand out from everyone else.
7. Be clear about what you want the audience to do. Is it a call to action? Are you asking them for money? Do you want them to watch a video?
Overall it was a great keynote from Kelleher and gave a real insight into what the BBC are up to and his new rules for CRM and direct marketing in the digital age will no doubt be banded around the industry for a few months to come until someone events the newer new rules.
What do you think, are the BBC using CRM well? Could they be using it better? What do you think of the new rules for CRM and direct marketing in the digital age?
After a 5.30 AM start I arrived in York a little bit fuggy but ready for an interesting and thought-provoking day. I wasn’t disappointed. In the surroundings of the National Railway Museum (ace place for a conference, big trains!) I mingled with fellow third sector professionals to discuss the impact that the web, email and social media was having on fundraising and charities in general.
Speaker 1: The story so far: Charity websites & the email - the good, the bad and just don’t go there!
The day kicked off with Howard Lake from UK Fundraising taking a look at where the third sector currently stood in relation to using the web. Howard was a great speaker, opening up the subject and explaining the basics of things such as RSS, web design, where to place your donate button.
From a Union perspective it was great that we are already doing a lot of what he talked about, but it was great to be refreshed about the basics and to remember what we should be doing on a web 1.0 level before trying to run on the web 2.0 level.
There’s a few things I’m going to put into practice on our site. The first is to instead of having a ‘donate now’ button on every page to re-focus the site to have a ‘get involved’ button on every page that allows students to quickly find out how they can get involved in the Union.
Speaker 2: Developing your online fundraising - the opportunities to be used
There was a shuffle around to the programme as Jonathan Waddingham took to the stage from Justgiving. Unfortunately Nick from Mission Fish hadn’t tuned up for this slot (or as we learned later, he wasn’t actually due until the afternoon) so Jon was bumped up the programme! He gave a great presentation that showed the huge increase in community fundraising seen on Justgiving over the past 12 months.
Jon also spoke about the success of their Facebook application that allows users to plug it into their profile and use it to help reach their total. This was a really clever idea, allowing features such as a little bar that sits on your profile and shows how much of the total has been raised so far and most important how your friends can help YOU reach the total.
From a Union perspective I think there’s a lot more that the organisation can do to support students in their personal fundraising exploits. We could point them in the direction of great tools such as the Justgiving facebook application, show them how to use the web to fundraise and explain about using secure tools such as Justgiving and Bmycharity.
Speaker 3 - Web 2.0 - where are we heading? An introduction to social media
I consider myself to know a fair bit about social media (blogs, twitter, facebook etc) but it’s always good to be reminded of their power and what they can achieve. Steve Bridger took to the stage and with a very flashy presentation (he uses a mac, so no powerpoint here!) he really opened everyone’s eyes to what social media can achieve for nonprofit organisations.
Steve opened by re-telling his days as a campaigner for Oxfam and as a student. He pulled out his ‘telephone tree’, now I’m far too young to remember one of these but apparently they were all the rage during the 80s for student activists. Remarkably though they are very similar to Facebook, you have a number of connections that you ‘touch base’ with regularly. Just with Facebook it’s easier, quicker, cheaper and the number of connections can be much larger. This demonstrated the reach that social media can give charities.
We were then shown how a blog can be a powerful, and fast-moving, vehicle for change. Steve showed us After Wilma, a blog he setup to help cover the devestating of Hurricane Wilma in Mexico. The tourism board didn’t want people to see what was happening, it was ‘business as usual’ according to the tourism board. The blog combined user generated content, images, blogs, videos and reports to showcase what was happening.
Flickr and Twitter were shown to the audience next and Flickr in particular was a very effective way of showing what the charity can do. Steve was really hammering home that charities can use social media to tell their stories. Flickr in particular is a great way to tell stories, as images are far more powerful than reams of text.
The key point that I picked out from Steve’s presentation was when he said “social media is messy, that’s just the way it is”. This is really true. You can plan and create strategy after strategy for social media but the best way is to just do it! And it will be messy, difficult, tricky but also brilliant, engaging and connecting.
Speaker 4 - The power of social networks for online fundraising
We were joined live via web link by Beth Kanter from San Francisco. The connection wasn’t brilliant so I couldn’t hear some of what Beth said but she gave an overview of how she’d used social media to raise money.
She’d used blogs and twitter mainly to raise money and awareness for various causes. I think the figure was something like $210,000 from just online fundraising. Imagine how cheap it must have been to do, not in terms of time, but in terms of overheads, no print/paper costs. I think Beth’s brief web chat showed how social media can be used to make a real tangible difference.
Speaker 5 - A case study - Dogs Trust
The next session was a real eye-opener. Dogs Trust took to the stage and after all the theory we’d heard and examples, they showed us how they had used social media to create a community and also achieve their goal - to re-home dogs.
They’d used Facebook to create a network where they had 35,000 fans (that’s the equivalent of the Union’s membership) and this gives them a base to push out messages to those fans and get them involved. Not content with being on Facebook the Dogs Trust showed off DoggySnaps - summed up as Facebook for dogs. This is a brilliant idea and they’ve created a network for dog owners to show off their pets, connect with each other and the Dogs Trust sell advertising off the back of it to fund it.
Their use of twitter was also eye-opening. They had a full-time staff presence who looked after their social media presences and being on twitter was an important part of it. They gave an example of how they’d managed to re-home a dog through twitter, and just being there to respond to people was important.
This got me thinking about how the Union can use twitter. We have an account but don’t actively use it to engage with our membership (don’t know how many of our membership are active on it, but students tend to be early-adopters!). The key for using twitter seems to be to engage people by asking questions and be a ‘real person’ where possible on twitter - not just an automated post/response drone.
Speaker 6 - eBay for charity: buzz-building, special auctions and social networks
Nick Aldridge from MissionFish had arrived after the programme cock-up took to the stage to explain how eBay and MissionFish could be an excellent way for charities to raise money.
He also appeared to sound a note of caution about social media and the web, and rightly so. While the numbers with social media appear big and impressive, they are still a small % of a charities audience and potential donors. It’s easy to get carried away with new media and forget that 3 million odd people still read The Sun every day! However, something that starts online/social media can often help lead to ‘old media’ coverage because the old guard like anything that is new - hence why Twestival got very good coverage.
Nick also went through five key trends about online fundraising that he’d picked out during a joint research exercise with the Institute of Fundraising:
Stories, not annual reports
Engage and explain, then fundraise
From walled garden to public park, beyond your own website
Integrate the online work to fit your overall message
Use partners to reach new audiences
Speaker 7 - To blog or not to blog? That is the question
Chris Garrett rounded off the day with a top session about blogging. He got a little sidetracked when speaking about twitter, but it was great that he put his twitter screen up and talked everyone through what it actually was and what it could do.
He had a great little summary of why charities should blog:
That hit the nail on the head. Great stuff. He also spoke a little about SEO and explained how using a content management system such as wordpress, or anything with tags, makes your web presences infinitely more findable by Google and other search engines.
Summing up
Overall it was a great day and while some of it was stuff I already knew, there were some fantastic examples of how social media and the web can be used. The main idea I came away with was that the Union can use the web to engage students a lot more and connect them with opportunities and ideas that they want to be involved with.
Credit has to go to Graham Richards from the Institute of Fundraising North for his excellent organisation of the event and for being adventurous with twitter to find speakers!
I’m getting up at the arse crack of dawn tomorrow to travel on the 6:54 from Preston to York. Why? Because I’m going to meet fellow marketers/communicators working in the third sector who want to know more about using the internet, email and social media.
It’s hosted by the Institute of Fundraising North and there’s a great line-up of speakers. The agenda seems very web 2.0 heavy and social media heavy and I’m looking forward to seeing what some respected experts have to say. We’ve even got someone joining us live via web link from San Francisco to speak about the power of social networks in online fundraising!
Why am I going? I want to answer these questions:
How can I put together a social media strategy for the organisation I work for
What should be involved in this social media strategy, what tools should be used
Who in the organisation should be using what tools and just as importantly who shouldn’t!
I’m hoping to find out what other charities and third sector organisations have been doing with social media. Are we ahead of the curve at UCLan or are we lagging behind?
We’re currently working on our communications strategy, this involves implementing CRM and lots of email marketing. I’ll be playing close attention during Howard Lake’s session on ‘The story so far: Charity websites & email - the good, the bad and just don’t go there!’. Hopefully this will give me an idea of what will work and what doesn’t.
While the conference is ultimately about fundraising, coming from a membership I’m going to substitute where possible the ‘fundraising’ aspect for ‘engagement’. A lot of the tools used online involve calls to action, and instead of donating via credit card it might be that signing a petition could be inserted instead.
Hopefully I’ll be able to answer some of the questions I have tomorrow, meet some people who are already doing some of it, or even tell people about what we’re doing!
You can follow the events via twitter by using search.twitter to follow #iofnorth - I for one will be tweeting from ed_walker86 so feel free to follow me as I’ll be tweeting as long as my laptop battery lasts (or I can get a charge).
In December I volunteered myself for the Association of Managers in Students’ Unions (AMSU) web development team - with a healthy shove in the right direction from Jaki Booth (trustee of AMSU). It’s a voluntary position and there’s three of us altogether who will be meeting to help AMSU develop its web presences and putting our plans into action. It’s a voluntary position.
I travelled down to Birmingham on Thursday 29th January not really sure what to expect. I knew there was a rough agenda ahead of us (discuss how crap AMSU’s old website had been, what was happening with the NUS Extranet and AMSU and potentially discuss some new ideas). Arrived at Birmingham City University Students’ Union to join in the #bcutweetup and then my fellow volunteers arrived on the AMSU web development team.
The first is Andy Parsons, chief executive at Loughborough Students’ Union, and the other is John Wordsworth, representation and democracy manager at Exeter Guild. So north, south and centre were combining to see if our collected minds could figure out the best way for AMSU to progress on the web.
The laptops were flipped open, the wireless eventually connected (I was borrowing Jaki’s laptop) and Andy fired up his ace MindMap sofware (John and I massively impressed by this, no wonder Loughboroguh is consistently rated as one of the top Union’s in the UK!).
We started out by describing what we thought AMSU itself should be - a place for all staff in Students’ Unions, not just general managers/chief executives - to find resources and the opportunity to explore new ideas and share best practice.
We discussed what we were up to at our respective unions with respect to the web, and it was amazing all the stuff that’s going on (from John handcoding an elections voting system at Exeter, to me starting work on an elections interactive facebook application and Andy enjoying the benefits of Warwick Union’s MSL system).
andy parsons fires up the mindmap
Down to the nitty gritty and it was decided that we needed to go open source with a lot of AMSU stuff. There are some AMSU gems that we needed to keep from the old web presences, such as the resource library, jobs sections and agenda magazine. But we needed to expand the content around these - for example getting the resource library tagged up to allow easy searching, moving agenda magazine to more of a blog format and making the jobs section easily searchable.
The topic of digital literacy came up again, and we discussed how AMSU could have a role to play in helping Students’ Unions to understand how web 2.0 tools can be used to improve the organisation and how it operates.
We came away buzzing with loads of great ideas to really push AMSU forward and allow it to re-connect with a lot of its members. We’ll be working up our ideas ready for an online meeting (we’re going to try meeting via Skype) in February and then a further meeting in March to investigate the MSL system that now powers the content management system of the new AMSU site.
It was a great experience to bounce ideas around with John and Andy and I’m looking forward to working on the project over the coming months.
Does Your Blog Reflect Your Community? : HyperlocalBlogger Yes, I think Preston Blog probably does reflect the community as a whole, and it could be accused of being too positive - but then I think that's what people want their local media to do, defend, promote and observe what happens in their area, not just slag it off all the time
