“It’s not about having your face on the frontpage” – UCLan SU’s adventures in web land

Gave a presentation to AMSU (Association of Managers in Students’ Union) North-West meeting this afternoon about what’s nearly been a year journey for our development of the web presences at UCLan Students’ Union.

It was a great chance to reflect on how far we’ve come, particularly in the last six months, and to take stock of some of the big changes that have happened as a result of our new website and approach to the web and social media.

The presentation was only a few slides long but there was plenty of discussion about how Union’s can use the web, and in particular how they can engage the membership through the web. Hence some discussions about online voting, the use of Ning as an issue based social network and the collection of members data to communicate messages properly.

It was useful to show what we’d been doing and hear that others wanted to follow suit, but needed to have a real think through what they wanted to do with their web presences. We also talked about what we’d got planned for the next six months and it looks promising.

links for 11-11-08

Some quality reading today:

• Why charities need to use social media

Good post about charities needing to embrace social media. There’s a lot bandied around about facebook this, twitter that, but it’s sometimes overwhelming. That’s why Rachel Beer’s guide is an excellent starting point.

• Will the web kill the high street?

It hasn’t happened. But the web does provide a way for specialist shops to take hold of a market and dominate it.

• Martyn Lewis campaigns for the nation’s young people

New online only charity that aims to get young people to reflect their views in the media. Seems like a good idea, but as young people are ‘turned off’ from traditional media brands who says they will come back to them to comment?

• 14 reasons to have a web guru on your team

Yeah! Great stuff. Any organisation that isn’t trying to understand, work with, get involved with the web and social media won’t win in the long run.