Earlier this year I was at a journalism conference in Perugia and on one of the panels was a chap from the Huffington Post. He described how during the 2008 Presidential campaign they’d had a massive scoop when one of their contributors caught a candidate gaffe on video, it was uploaded and within hours it was leading most international news sites and the talk of the day on Twitter, Facebook and more.
Our panel discussed the implications of this on the media, and I said we’re living in a golden age of social media stupidity. Why? Because at the moment you can find copious amounts of information on people, their activities, and much more – but you can also find it very quickly.
I was reminded of this by Alison Gow’s excellent post on How to (Not) kill Journalism and how the web represents such an opportunity, particularly being able to crowdsource direct with your followers. Read the rest of this entry »
Tuesday 10th August was unremarkable. A normal day at the office in a month that is traditionally quiet, although we’d had South Wales Police doing a press conference as they hunted another suspect in the Aamir Siddiqi murder case.
That all changed around 7 PM when the police helicopter was hovering above my flat. I thought it might have something to do with the hunt for Siddiqi suspect and the sound was deafening so I went to have a look and I thought I’d reflect into what turned out to be an evening full of reporting. Read the rest of this entry »
Journalists have always had contacts, those people who we can go to for comment and stories. They might be professional people, police officers, nurses or the local cleaner at the comprehensive who overhears gossip when he’s having a ciggie round the back of the head’s office.
Now, though, through social media and the web we’ve got a pool of intelligent, connected and helpful people at our finger-tips. Here’s how to leverage it: Read the rest of this entry »
Last month I volunteered at the Machynlleth Comedy Festival. It was the first year it had been held, it was in the middle of nowhere, but it was a cracking idea. Put a load of great comedians in a small Welsh town and let the madness unfold – plus a fair amount of laughter.
I volunteered to help with press & marketing for the event. With it being voluntary, we had people, passion and a bit of time. But zero cash. What could we do? Enter stage right – social media.
Twitter has been invaluable as we were able to build a following relatively quickly, make lists of people involved in the festival and performing at it. Plus use the location based functionality of Twitter to find nearby people who were on the service and might be interested.
The real benefit of Twitter was felt during the event itself. We had the official Mach Comedy Fest account under the stewardship of the brilliant Beth Charlesworth (of A Little Bird Told Me), tweeting updates, changes to event times, photos from events. I was tweeting in with updates from my personal account and we had the hashtag #machfest buzzing with tweets from comedians and fans alike.
So, why bother tweeting during the festival? Surely we were too busy running around like mad people trying to make sure everything was done. Yes, we were running around but also we wanted to show people who hadn’t come, or who on the Friday night were thinking of coming that they were missing out. Twitter allows people to follow and stake out the action – and it might just sway them to dive in and get involved.
Machynlleth Comedy Festival was great, and I’ve no doubt that Twitter helped make it that little bit more social and great.
How have you used Twitter for festivals/events? How did you find it? Did people take to using the hashtag? I’d be interested to know your thoughts in the comments below.
In early 2010 I moved to Cardiff, Wales. A completely new city, a new country and a new language. Everything was new. My job meant I had to get up to speed on what was happening, know the back story to things and get to know the communities, locations and people that make up the capital of Wales.
This post attempts to explore how the web has changed getting to know about a place. Let’s rewind 20 years and imagine having to do the same thing, uprooting from where you are, trying to find out about somewhere new – what would you have done?
What it would have been like?
The printed word would have been god. I would have got myself a guide book, no doubt filled with useful information but potentially out of date as soon as it’s published. I would have got an A-Z, in fact I own a Cardiff A-Z at the moment and it’s invaluable when I end up getting lost in the mean streets of Ely.
Going on a guided tour of the city, or at least the historical bits of it, would have been a good idea. I might have popped along to the tourist information office, rented books on Cardiff from the library – but nearly everything would have been backwards looking rather than perhaps the here and now.
Of course there would be the local newspapers and these would be able to provide some background information and an insight into current affairs, but to access the archives would have been either a costly (ordering them) or time-intensive exercise (sitting in the local library and reading them).
Very little of this research would be done before arriving in my destination, other than perhaps getting hold of a guidebook and an A-Z. My biggest source of information would be people, through meeting them, asking questions and relying on their memories.
Using the web to get local knowledge faster
Before I even came for a job interview in Cardiff I was able to research it. I was trawling the web for articles about Cardff’s history, looking at Google maps to make sense of where my potential new home would be and looking at flats and houses on property websites. CF10, the dispute over Bute Park and the opening times of the Castle were all at my finger tips. This really is the wonder of the web, accessing all that local information before I even arrived.
However, there were a few extra tools I could use to get that local insight.
The first was Flickr. There is a strong Cardiff group on Flickr and this allowed me to put pictures to places that I was reading about. The best thing about the group is that it often captures unusual places around the city, from interesting angles and this gave me a chance to see a different side to the city. A few times when driving around, or walking along, I’ve sen something and thought “that was on the Cardiff flickr group” and the connection had fizzed in my brain.
Next up was Twitter. It’s like walking into a pub and shouting ‘What’s good to do round here?’ – I did just that via this blog – and got a great response. Now, whenever I have some spare time, or some bored time, I can go and do something. It’s a great list of things to see and do, recommended by local people or people who know their stuff about Cardiff. Not experts, but certainly people who can vouch for things they’ve done and enjoyed. It’s certainly an eclectic mix and it’s a great way of learning what the locals like to do.
Twitter also allows you to make connections with people in the city before you even arrive. These might be informal connections but this makes meeting people easier, and certainly in my case it was great to connect with a few colleagues before even arriving in the office. Opening that conversation with them allowed me to quickly feel at home and crack on with what I needed to do.
Using RSS is a good way of building up your local knowledge. If local blogs or websites offer RSS feeds, subscribe to them. I set up a folder called ‘Cardiff’ in my Google reader and in it I’ve got news feeds from news websites, blogs and loads of other Cardiff websites that keep me abreast of things that are happening in Cardiff. Often I don’t get chance to look at it for a few days, but it’s always great to have a skim through and I’ll pick out two or three good things that I did not know about. The nice thing as well is having a variety of sources, it means I get different viewpoints often on the same issues, helping me to be better informed about issues or things that are happening in the city.
Google maps. Where would we be without it? Lost I reckon. Google maps has been one of the biggest tools I’ve used since moving here. Everything has a postcode and I’ve been able to understand where I am in relation to other parts of the city. I can quickly find routes, find buildings and find things that are near me. It gives me a knowledge of road names, of road numbers and before I even got to Cardiff I had an idea of what was in the North, East, South and West of the city just from Google maps. While an A-Z is handy, Google maps is interactive and allows me to quickly plan my routes.
What else could I be doing?
Some of the offline things I’ve found really useful are:
Visit a local museum. I’m lucky that Cardiff has a rich history but there is nothing like a museum for organising and displaying historical information in an easy to understand way. It gives you a sense of the traditions and values of a place, but gives you an understanding of where the place has come from.
Visit local pubs. The conversations you hear, the notices you see and the characters you meet will soon allow you to get a feel for the city, plus you can get to know the local ales. Never a bad thing.
Join a leisure centre. Even if it’s just for a swim every now and again, or a quick dash in the gym or if you’re more adventurous a spinning class – it will give you the chance to overhear conversations, see local notices (I’ve found Maindy Swimming Pool in Cardiff has a gigantic noticeboard and a huge swathe of leaflets as you come through the front door).
Take a different route home. Instead of hot-footing it, or blasting the accelerator, try going 10 minutes out of the way and take a different route home. You’ll be amazed at what you come across.
Summing up
Above all, there is no substitute for getting off your computer and getting out there. Meeting people, speaking to them and finding out what they think and know is one of the best ways of expanding your knowledge. I’ve heard some great stories already, met more people than I could name and all of that helps you to understand the passions, concerns and interests of the people who live in different communities.
So, the web definitely allows us to accelerate our learning about a place. I have no doubt that in the short time I’ve been in Cardiff I’ve learned a lot more through using the web than I would without it – but is this accelerate knowledge a good thing? Will I just be skimming the surface and not getting enough in-depth knowledge? How long does it take to become a ‘local’?
Creating content is one of the toughest bits about running a blog. Waking up, hitting the start button and then realising you’ve got nothing to write about. Here’s a few ways to ensure you’ve always got content flowing through your blog and keeping your finger on the pulse of your local community.
Use RSS
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It’s a great way to get feeds from websites that offer them and this will keep you up to date with websites – without having to keep visiting them! Win. You can use sites like Bloglines or Google Reader
Use email alerts
Don’t rely on RSS. A lot of websites do email newsletters or allow you to subscribe to email updates. You’ve got an email account, so get email alerts dropping into it regularly. They’ll often give you a lead.
Your local paper
They still exist and they generally aren’t going away. Subscribe to the RSS feed of your local newspaper(s) and take a read of this every morning. This will give you a clue as to what is on the agenda at the moment. You will also find they often just do snippets on community stories that you could make much bigger. Take one of their stories and see if it could go further, is there a new angle? Could you do an in-depth interview with someone featured? Whatever you do, don’t just copy and paste what the local paper writes as you’ll end up in hot water and you’re not adding value to your blog.
Your local council
They are always doing stuff. Events, taxes, councillors, elections, new projects. Local authorities are busy places and there are lots of people to speak to. Subscribe to the RSS feed if its authored, or email the press office and get on their distribution list for press releases.
Other local blogs
There will be other local bloggers. Someone will be extolling the virtues of your local river, or something like that. Find them and connect with them. Subscribe to their blogs RSS feed. Their two line post might lead to a series of posts for you about a subject, or they might even guest post on your blog. There’s a few ways to find them:
Go to blogger.com, find a blogger from your area. Got to their profile and click on the location, it’ll show you all other bloggers in your area.
Once you start finding them. Create a page on your blog as a local blog directory, it’ll be popular.
Flickr
Flickr is a photo sharing website. But it also has groups – put your location into the find a group box and you’ll be amazed at how many people are taking photos of your area. Connect with these people, feature their photos with your posts (always remember to give credit to them for the photos) and you’ll find little snippets and stories.
Youtube
People seem to like making videos. There will be some for where you live. Go to Youtube and put your location into their search box. You’ll be amazed at what you find. Feature the videos on your blog, connect with the users and you’ll get even more. You can even get an RSS feed so you don’t have to keep checking for new videos.
Facebook
It’s the biggest social network – Facebook. There will be lots of people in your area on it. There will be groups about your area. Join them and keep in the loop about what local people are saying. Local campaigns will often have Facebook groups and it’s a great way to connect with people involved in local issues.
Twitter
It’s growing quickly, and don’t forget it’s got a handy little ‘Location’ bit on people’s profiles. Download Twitter Local – and put your location in. Then follow those people, some might follow you back, some might not, but you can see the conversations going on in your area. You can also go to http://search.twitter.com put your location in and get real-time results for what people are saying about your location. You’ll find snippets, follow them up, and you might just be able to create some content.
Theyworkforyou.com
Every area has an MP. Go to TheyWorkForYou and put your postcode in, find out who the MP is and then get an RSS feed or email alert everytime they do something. You’ll be amazed what your MP talks about and either how much or how little they talk. You can also get loads of great information about how they’ve voted on big issues.
Openlylocal.com
A new website – OpenlyLocal – it doesn’t have every local authority but it does have a lot, and it gives you lists of councillors, committee dates, new documents etc. Well worth checking out if you’re short of a meeting to cover and get a story.
Whatdotheyknow.com
A brilliant site. Freedom of Information requests can often lead to some juicy requests. It’s worth registering with WhatDoTheyKnow yourself so you can make FOI requests, but you can find all your local authorities and subscribe to RSS/email updates for when items happen relating to them. You can also get an RSS feed for your whole area. I’d recommend signing up to:
- Local council, local police, local primary care trust, local schools, local colleges, local universities, local county council, local fire service
Fixmystreet.com
Get reports on when stuff is wrong in your local area via FixMyStreet and someone needs to fix it. Get an RSS/email alert for a specific location. Follow it up and you’ll have a wealth of short stories that really are about your local community, everything from pot holes to dog dirt.
Help Me Investigate
A new service, launched in Beta – Help Me Investigate. It’s collaborative reporting, you ask a question and people will help you find the answer. You can also join in national questions and then break that down to your local area.
Getting out there
Nothing is a substitute for getting out there. Go to meetings, go to events, meet people, go to the pub and you’ll see posters, hear conversations and find out about things that are happening in your community. Just make sure you’ve got all the online stuff there so on a slow day, you’ll find there’s always plenty to write about in your local area.
If you find any other good websites for sourcing content, or think we’ve missed any then please let me know and I’ll add them. There will always be new website or tips and tricks for finding content, so this list is by now means exhaustive but get setup with these and you’ll never be short of new posts.
I’m off to Birmingham next week, the social media centre of the UK, for an event organised by AMSU about how social media can be used to make Students’ Unions stronger. I like the title, it implies that the Union is already strong but there’s much more we can do. It’s a fitting time really as the Union’s Facebook page has just had it’s 1,000th fan join (good times!) and we need to know how we can improve what we’re doing with social media.
Ahead of the event we’ve been asked to answer the following questions:
the biggest single issue your students’ union is facing and also
one thing you think social media will be most useful for
The biggest single issue UCLan Students’ Union faces:
How to keep doing what we’re doing, but potentially with less, and proving our impact and legitimacy
It’s no secret that in the future there is going to be less money around. Less money means less resources, less people and less time. But, as a Students’ Union how do we keep giving our members best value, innovative opportunities and chances for involvement without comprimising on quality? It’s not going to be easy to keep current services operating the way they are. And at UCLan, it doesn’t seem like student numbers show any sign of slowing down and also the students that we have in our numbers are becoming increasingly diverse and spread out across different campuses. The pressure will also be on to prove what we are providing, show how we measure that and as a lot of Unions become charities – show our impact.
One thing you think social media will be most useful for:
Engaging and mobilising groups of students
Social media can be a driver for getting students involved. Not just in the Union’s business, getting them to vote etc but also by empowering them to use social media themselves to campaign, inform, mobilise other students and make friends/contacts. If we have a membership that is twittering, facebooking, blogging, creating video, posting photos that is an active and engaged membership that will help the Union achieve its goals. At the moment a lot of that activity is lacking and we need to find ways of inspiring and instigating it – but this needs to be balanced with letting students have their own opinions in an increasingly policied space (both by the Union, the University and other organisations).
I’m hoping from the social media course I am able to learn what other Unions are doing, pick up some hints and tips and put together the start of a plan of how the Union can use social media particularly in its membership functions.
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.
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?
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!
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