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.

Sadly, I was also reminded of it by the university where I did my degree as X Factor reject Frankie Cocozza came to perform at the student night club.

Lots of excited youngsters queued to see Mr Cocozza and one young lady decided to ask for her ass to be signed by the man himself. She found herself on the Daily Mail and quickly saw tweets and Facebook messages about the offending incident, and a Facebook photo album, which was completely public, became a hunting ground for people to leave downright abusive comments about some of the people having their photo taken with Cocozza (Interestingly, the photo Daniel Bentley tweeted, which drew nearly 400 comments about a certain girl, has now been removed.

The comments were, as Dave Lee has previously pointed out in his post about YouTube comments, rude, abusive and wouldn’t be tolerated anywhere else (see terms and conditions etc). So why do we unleash and let forth a torrent of “what we really think” online?

To me it is all about education. There’s not many who can say they’ve grown up with social media, for my generation (growing up around the turn of the century) it was MSN, AOL, ICQ and chatrooms when we were teens – oh and email. But these tended to be 1-2-1 chats, usually not able for use afterwards unless someone saved the chat and printed it out.

For the generation after it was MySpace, Faceparty and Bebo. But these weren’t discussed in school, there was no how to, we were being trained in Excel, Word and Access. The curriculum was Microsoft and how to “do things” on computers.

Journalists are nearly always early adopters, we worked out how to do things with mobile phones earlier than most, same with the internet and computers. We might not be the best, but we know how to make technology do what we want it to do in very creative ways. And it is the same with social media, around 2009 there was always the complaint that the only person you’ll find on Twitter is a journalist.

But as the population have mainly taught themselves how to use social media, and used it as something akin to a hobby, they perhaps don’t think too carefully about the real-life implications.

The amount of personal information available on Facebook is stunning, and yet these people might be X-Directory because they don’t want their home phone number being found. A quick search can reveal nearly the exact location you live in, who all your family are, your phone number, numerous photos of you (which are often dated and located), and very quickly a back story can be found on who you are.

Twitter acts as an archive of what you say. They aren’t deleted after a certain time, there are thousands of tweets stretching back, with their conversations available so context can be placed.

Journalists have been quick to the party, the number of “and he said on Twitter” stories has been growing. Especially as more and more people with authority or celeb status take to the service to use it as a communication channel. If it happens on Twitter, it will be on the mainstream media websites within hours and in the papers the next morning, and the magazines within a couple of days. The media amplifies the Facebook and Twitter spats, announcements and stupidity to whole new levels.

Before if you did something stupid, your friends knew it and would (most of the time) never let you forget. Now if you’re filmed naked and running into a window on holiday you are that bloke off the YouTube clip, forever and on your CV.

So, why is this so great for journalists? Because it is real. It’s moments we just wouldn’t get to see otherwise, it’s the angry opinions of someone unleashed directly and it’s an insight into what people really think and do. It’s lifting the lid off life itself, and that’s what shifts page views and sells papers.

Until the right education on social media privacy is given at an early age to the masses, this boom time will continue. I guess it will be anything you tweet may be given as evidence, and as we’ve seen with the Facebook riot inciters – it rightly can be.

Image credit to charlessc

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.

Approaching the Fitzhammon Embankment there were groups of people looking at the River Taff. There was some police presence and search boats going up and down. “What’s going on?” I asked a group of Asian lads. “There’s a body in the river mate!” they said. I personally couldn’t see the body. I made my way to the police cordon, flashed my press card but couldn’t find out anything more from them.

A quick call to newsdesk and late reporter Simon Gaskell was on his way to the scene. I quickly grabbed quotes from by-standers and neighbours about what they’d seen and been told by the Police. I also started snapping some photos of the scene in general, the police cordon tape, the search boats. I joined Gaskell on the bridge overlooking the Taff and we discussed what we knew so far – there was a body, police had shut down the area. We had our suspicions over who it could be as a young lad had disappeared the previous week while walking home from a night out. (Note: The day after the incident we had it confirmed it was unfortunately the body of 19-year-old Bryn Warren)

South Wales Police press office weren’t confirming anything at that stage and officers at the scene were less than helpful. We had some hassle over taking photos, an officer approached us and asked us to stop. We politely declined, stating public interest but he continued to ask us to stop. We said he could only stop us taking photos if it was suspected terrorist activity and he backed off.

While we were at the scene, I’d been tweeting a photo or two and basic information from what we knew. There was bound to be lots of interest as the River Taff flows directly through the centre of Cardiff and many people would be going past the area at that time. Looking back through the stats on our bit.ly account, our stats showed over a fifth of all traffic generated to the story was through social media and there were lots of re-tweets of the information we were sending. This helped establish yourCardiff as a feed for breaking news and information. It also shows your audience is instant and you have to be accurate.

We nipped back to the office and filed basic copy online. The photos weren’t brilliant and we couldn’t get a photographer down to the river. I returned to the scene with my N95 camera and using a local contact I’d built up through my community reporting I was able to access a house just opposite the cordon to get a stronger image of the green screen the Police had setup around the area.

Image taken on N95 from contacts window showing green screen area put up by Police

Finally to give the story an extra edge and to dispel some myths that were flying around Twitter, we added a google map of the area and added key places and photos to it to illustrate what was happening. The map below was viewed over 4,000 times in 24 hours, it’s really simple to do, took minutes and added an extra element to the story online.

View River Taff/Fitzhamon Embankment incident area in a larger map

We also included a link to the only official announcement we had at that time from the Police, a tweet from their helicopter about being on the scene at 7.30 PM.

It was a difficult evening of reporting. Balancing ethical issues with the pressure to get breaking news online, pushing police for identity while trying to get the best story we could.

What’s your experience of reporting breaking news and using multimedia tools? What kit do you use? Have you had problems with the police about taking photos of the incident/scene? Let me know in the comments below

There’s been a lot of talk about funding journalism and how the web can play a part in this, but the web above all for journalists offers an opportunity to create readers+.

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:

Searching Twitter for key topics reveals what your area knows

If you’re using Twitter, learn how to search for key topics and phrases. For example, we’ve recently had an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in the South Wales Valleys. Searching for ‘legionnaires’ will bring up any mention of it on Twitter and you can see who tweeted it. This means you can keep on top of what other news sources are saying about the outbreak and also watch out for anyone tweeting ‘Shit! My gran’s got legionnaires’!’ or ‘Yay! Work closed tomorrow because of legionnaires!’. Bam. A tweet like that and you might have a way in.

Don’t forget the private word…

Using Twitter’s private message function. Using the legionnaires’ example above, if you reply publicly to that tweet you might not get much of a response. If you follow that person, they might follow you back, then you’ll have a chance to private message them on Twitter. This is an easy way to exchange phone numbers/email address’. Also, check if the person has a blog or website addressed listed on their profile as this might give you a way to get in touch.

Asking for help and case studies

Asking for help via social networks. You’ve been landed with a 800-word feature on a topic you don’t know that much about, you need some experts but you also want some real people. A newspaper full of X spokesperson and stuffy academic Y is not much fun. We like reading what Mr Jones from the local action group has to say. Pop a quick post out on Twitter and Facebook saying you’re looking for help ‘finding women over 30 who drink more than 2 glasses of red wine a week’ – or something like that. I’ve been toying with the idea of setting up a ‘We’re looking for…’ page on WalesOnline where we list every type of person/expert etc we’re trying to speak to and the reporter dealing with the story. Make sure you get whoever deals with the main media twitter/facebook accounts to syndicate your requests.

Making yourself available

Get your email address on stories (both offline and online). People like email. It’s often more convenient than a phone call, and let’s face it calling a journalist can be a scary thing to do – especially if you catch them on deadline and you’re trying to get a notice out about a village fete.

Contacts should be searchable

Setup a Google Doc with all your contacts. I have a google doc contacts book (as well as a downloaded backup and hard copy print out done every couple of months). Create columns for forename, surname, what they do, what they are good for, the area they relate to, email address, mobile, phone, address, website and twitter account. This then becomes an incredibly powerful database of contacts you can search at a moments notice – without needing to remember the name of the chair of that residents action group you once met at a planning committee. You can search by name, what they do or what area they cover. Once you’ve got a contacts list, it’s worth sending out a quarterly email to those contacts to let them know what stories you’ve been working on and what you will be working on (i.e. what you could use a hand with).

Share the contact love

You can also setup shared contacts lists via Google Docs, so for example in our newsroom we have a shared Cardiff councillors contacts list. This allows all reporters access, is searchable by different fields and can be updated if a reported gets a new or better contact line for councillors.

Facebook will yield super-fans

Finding specialists and super-fans on Facebook. Facebook has groups. These are setup to allow people with similar interests to come together and celebrate the brilliance of, for example, William Shatner. This is searchable via the groups tag in Facebook, and if you look carefully it’ll show you the groups creator. You can then click on this person, view a basic profile and most importantly send them a message. You don’t even need to be a friend to send them a message. It could be your way in to getting in touch with a relevant and useful person.

Bloggers can be local and niche experts

Make a list of bloggers and subscribe to what they do (use an RSS reader to do this, there’s plenty of good ones out there like Google Reader. RSS allows you to read blog posts without having to visit lots of different websites all the time!). Monitor local bloggers, both location-orientated ones and topic-specific ones. If a new restaurant is opening in town, the local food blogger might know about it and be able to offer an extra few lines of comment.

More than meets the eye to online photos

Make use of photos. Flickr is a powerful tool for keeping an eye (literally, a visual eye) on your area. Monitor it for new photos and get your own flickr page. When you’re out and about on stories, take photos (don’t be afraid of using your mobile phone for this) of interesting things and post them to the Flickr account. Connect with local photographers. Subscribe to a feed of your local groups photos (search Flickr for your area) and you’ll be able to see, in your RSS reader, all the local photos being taken. You’ll be amazed at the stories which can come from an interesting Flickr photo. Plus, if picture desk are being pissy, you might be able to ask a Flickr photographer to use one of their photos for a story.

Why have readers+?

Readers+ will help you out. They comment on stories, they re-tweet and share your stories. They might even blog about something you’ve written about and carry on the debate. They will stick up for you. They begin to have a personal attachment to your work and style. They are not government officials, PR people or other people paid to speak to you. They are real people. It also increases their attachment to your media brand and who knows, they might buy the paper and visit the website more as a result.

Image credit to mararie

How have you used social media to find out things? Any other tips on using the web to help with your reporting? Let me know in the comments below

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.

Image credit to Ed Moore

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:

Google Blog Search, put your location in and away you go

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.

Image credit to miss_blackbutterfly

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.

Preston Tweetup in action

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?

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.

You can watch Jon’s presentation here:

Justgiving’s Jonathan Waddingham talking in York! from Justgiving on Vimeo.

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:

1. Stories, not annual reports
2. Engage and explain, then fundraise
3. From walled garden to public park, beyond your own website
4. Integrate the online work to fit your overall message
5. 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:

attract, inform, interact, retain, energise, recruit

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!