The Charity Place

It's a beautiful world

You might have noticed that it's gone a little bit quiet at this blog lately (quieter than usual even).

The reason?

I've recently launched an agency called Beautiful World.  We do fundraising, marketing and communications for charities and other organisations that want to do the world some good (no surprises there, I'm sure).

I've started Beautiful World with two beautiful business partners, Simon Frank and Adam Waller, both of whom I've done great work with with before at other charity specialist agencies.

Social media is one of our specialisms (naturally).  We've already helped a number of charities get started with Twitter, get better at Facebook, get buy-in across their organisation, develop integrated social media strategies, build communities of support, and begin to leverage them to fundraise, and engage with volunteers, campaigners and other stakeholders.

We're also helping charities integrate their online and offline activities - because giving stakeholders and supporters a genuine, joined-up experience of your brand, across all media channels, is more important than ever now everything (and almost everyone) is joined up online.

We also know a thing or two about how to measure and evaluate your fundraising, marketing and communications activities, and how to use data (the information charities hold on their databases, including how donors were recruited, how many times they've donated, how much they've given, when and how often, what other types of support they have engaged in) and web metrics to improve results and return on investment.

We've just helped one charity more than double their projected income AND halve their mailing costs - which has tripled their return on investment.  I can't tell you how happy and proud we are about that.

Anyway - and returning to my original point, finally - I'll be posting content over at the Beautiful World blog from time to time now, as well as from time to time here, although you'll still mostly find me on Twitter!

Twitter - why use directories?

I found a new Twitter service the other day called We Follow - which calls itself a 'user powered Twitter directory'.

In a previous post on finding people to follow, I shared a link for Twellow, which is a similar thing.

I like the look of WeFollow, just because it's so simple and uncluttered, but you can only add yourself to three categories, which is a bit frustrating.  A lot of individuals, and a lot of charities, are a lot more multifaceted than that.

I've signed up to We Follow anyway though - because directories are a good place for other people to find you, so can help you attract new followers.  And because people find you via a category search, like 'nonprofit', it's likely you'll share a genuine interest with them, so it's a win win.

If you're a charity and followers find you using a directory, the chances are that they are pretty interested in what you do - exactly the sort of people you want to engage with.

At the moment, Twellow is more searchable, because you can add far more categories to your profile, which creates more ways for people to find you.  Twellow also allows you to link to more of your social profiles, which makes it easy for people to engage with you on the platform of their choice.

 
There are plenty of other ways for your supporters to track down your Twitter profile, including promoting and linking it to your Facebook page, your YouTube channel, your website - all of which will help bump the page rank up in searches.

There's also Twitter Search (which has recently added an advanced search, which helps you drill down further into niches and interests).

I would still say it's worth registering with directories though, just so you are covering as many bases as possible and making it really easy for people to find you and engage with you.

Like Twitter search, they'll help people find you based around their interests, rather than by your brand - and that's very powerful.

Come to think of it, Twellow automatically creates a listing/ profile for you when you start using Twitter, which you have the option to claim and amend or add to.  Have you claimed yours yet?

Serious fun from SXSW - the Social Media Nonprofit Poetry Slam

I've just been catching up with this session - run yesterday at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas - via the Twitterstream and the links to various blogs that people have shared in their tweets.

Conducted entirely in rhyme (yes, really), the session was moderated by Beth Kanter, with contributions from:

• Danielle Brigida - National Wildlife Federation
• Wendy Harman - American Red Cross - National Headquarters
• Carie Lewis - The Humane Society of the United States
• David Neff - American Cancer Society [Judge]
• Katie Paine - KDPaine & Partners [Judge]
• Holly Ross - NTEN [Judge]

Unsurprisingly, Twitter is mentioned heavily - along with a range of other social media - in the examples shared by the panel.

Beth has kindly shared a comprehensive range of content from it here, on her blog - including the slides, transcripts of the poems recited by each of the panelists, along with a variety of links to help you get a fuller picture of the nonprofit case studies, experiences and insights that the session pulled together and shared.

And here's a video (via the NTEN blog) of the panelists in action:

Looks like a lot of fun, whilst making a serious point about how charities - and brands in general - are re-evaluating their traditional views on metrics, measurement and ROI to account for a different style of engagement with supporters through social media. 

It's really quite clever to deliver a session on measurement and metrics in such a unusual and engaging way - reflecting how social media enable nonprofits to engage supporters in helping them meet their challenges in new and innovative ways.

Beth also shares some reflections from the session on her blog here.

Twitter - Are you a 'natural born twitterer'?

Yesterday I shared an article from The Chronicle of Philanthropy featuring advice and examples of Twitter for nonprofits, which featured a quote from Jeff Manning of the The Lance Armstrong Foundation. If you missed that post, here's a link to it.

Following on from that, I thought I would share this interview with Lance Armstrong that I came across this afternoon on TechCrunch - declaring him a 'natural born Twitterer' - as it contains a couple of insights that might be useful.

In the interview, Lance says of Twitter,

'140 characters fits my personality well. I’m not much for small talk ... I see long drawn out emails and I delete them. It also brings a certain transparency to my life that others may have never seen or realized. Lastly, it works great for talking about the thing I care about the most (behind my family) and that’s fighting cancer. Twitter builds grassroots movements quicker than anything I’ve ever seen.'

These are useful principles to bear in mind whether you're tweeting as an individual or on behalf of the brand of the charity or nonprofit you work for. Being as transparent as possible and focusing on what's important to you/ your organisation gives your followers a clear idea about who you are and what you stand for - and something honest and real to engage with.  As Lance puts it:

'It has to be 100% authentic... people are smart. They know when they see something real.'

Lance goes on to say he tries to:

'Keep it positive. There are plenty of times I felt like crushing someone for what they say or did but I avoid it.'

Clearly, many charities and nonprofits deal with challenges and issues that are not, in themselves, necessarily positive, and need to be transparent about the realities of this in order to attract support.

However, what he means here is that it's important to respond positively to criticism or negative attention.  And it's just as important, if you're about to start tweeting on behalf of your charity or nonprofit, to set expectations with your director or board about the likelihood that this will happen, because you're bound to encounter it sooner or later.

If you haven't yet started tweeting at your organisation, I think it's worth thinking this through, and discussing it with colleagues in your communications team.  They will be adept at handling negative media coverage, and dealing with common misconceptions, and able to advise on the kinds of issues that generally arise and what your organisation's position is.  You might consider working together to develop some guidelines or general principles, so that you (or other staff tweeting on behalf of your organisation) can feel confident that your tweets are aligned with brand values and key messages.

Remember though, whilst it's good to plan and anticipate scenarios, you should try to avoid over-thinking your approach to Twitter and be led by the character of the medium - which is, by its very nature, fast and informal.

If you are going to tweet on behalf of your nonprofit's brand, it will be totally unworkable if every message you post has to be signed-off internally beforehand, if you adopt too corporate a tone, or if your tweets don't show any personality.  Even if your profile name and picture is your organisation's brand, you'll still only get real engagement with the Twitter community if you let something of the personality of the individual using the account show through (Dogs Trust do this really well).  In fact, it's unrealistic to think that won't happen anyway, unless you only post generic updates - and, believe me, if you do that you won't be getting the most out of using Twitter for all your efforts.

So, if you can, try to be a natural born twitterer - and do what feels right, rather than getting bogged down with policies and rules.

You might want to follow Lance Armstrong on Twitter for a while, and decide what you think about his style of tweeting.  You might find it interesting to compare his tweets to those from The Lance Armstrong Foundation. Do they have the same voice; how does the content and style differ?

I've been following Lance on Twitter for a while now, and I've never really noticed that he tweets as frequently as the article says.  Mind you, as he says, 'Most tweets I send people don't even notice'. That's a useful insight too.  Although your tweets can be read at any time, people have busy lives and aren't going to hang on your every word, or read every tweet.  Another reason not to be too cautious or precious, and just experiment a bit.  And if you post a tweet and have second thoughts about it later, you can always delete it or - better still - be transparent, and correct yourself or invite some positive debate about it.

Twitter - Advice from The Chronicle of Philanthropy

I wanted to share this article entitled, 'When Characters Count: Advice for Charities on Making the Most of Twitter', by Caroline Preston from The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

It contains a variety of examples of nonprofits using Twitter in various ways - which might be useful for those considering starting to use Twitter or wanting to understand more about how to get the most from it - and some useful advice from 'nonprofit social-media experts', including the following list:

Find out where your supporters are. Do some casual research to learn if people who care about your cause are talking about it on the site.

Listen to others. If you sign up for Twitter, don't just start blasting information about yourself and your organization. Find out what people are saying about your charity, and what information they're looking for.

Don't be a bore. Readers don't sign up to follow a group's Twitter account because they want a litany of links to press releases. That's what RSS feeds are for. So inject some personality into your messages.

Be professional. While for an animal-rights group blogging about vegan recipes may make sense, posting about how disappointed you were in last night's episode of Lost probably doesn't.

Engage with users. Twitter is a two-way dialogue: You send out messages, and readers and supporters will probably respond with questions and suggestions. Nonprofit officials who use Twitter say they try to respond to some, if not all, of the comments they get. Even Lance Armstrong, who has more than 130,000 followers on the site, sends out general responses to all of his followers if he has been asked the same question again and again, says Jeff Manning, online marketing manager at the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Monitor your account. In a recent tweet, Ken Berger, president of Charity Navigator, compared Twitter to owning a dog: "Among other things, you must walk it a few times a day or you are in trouble." Claire Sale, social-media specialist with the American Red Cross, agrees. She says that charities can risk losing readers and respect, at least among Twitterati, if they let their accounts idle for too long.

Tiptoe into fund raising. Twitter followers cannot replace loyal donors, and charity officials should not neglect the latter while experimenting with one-time campaigns on the networking site.

Develop guidelines. Not every staff member at your charity should be using Twitter in the organization's behalf. Choose one or two people to be in charge of the group's Twitter account.

Avoid taking offense. Because anyone can jot off a quick comment via Twitter, a charity is almost certain to receive a few negative, and even nasty, messages.

Read the full article here.

Twitter - have you got it?

If you've been reading this series of Twitter 'how to' posts, and you have started using Twitter in the process, I'm guessing you will quickly have picked it up and worked out what's so good about it by now.

I know there were a few people in my Twitter Surgery at the Social Media Exchange in January that created Twitter accounts either during or after the session, and they seemed to have the hang of it within a day or two.

So, if it's so simple, why did I start this series on Twitter?

Because so many people were telling me they didn't 'get it', and so many people are still telling me that. In the same breath, though, they are keen to find out why I use it, what I use it for, and why I encourage charities to adopt it - along with other social media. A lot of them are people that run, or work at, PR, fundraising and marketing agencies, too, which I find surprising.

Almost everywhere I go someone is talking about Twitter. At a concert I went to the other night, there was a couple in the seats behind me talking about it during the interval and, on the tube on Friday night, another couple in my carriage were talking about how they'd thought Twitter was a waste of time until recently, when it started to get a lot of press.  Both sets of couples were agency types, talking about how they wanted to understand Twitter more, so they could 'leverage' it for their clients and incorporate it into their digital strategies.

However, it's not surprising that so many people still think using Twitter is pointless.  There is a lot of misinformation around about it and many people prepared to express an opinion about it, profess to use or understand it - not wanting to appear behind the times - that either haven't even set up a profile at all, have posted once or twice and got little from the experience, or have a profile because they think they should be seen to have one, but only post once in a blue moon for appearance's sake.

You might find these articles in the Evening Standard and The Times interesting on that score. I recommend reading the comments for a more informative and representative read than the original pieces.  (It's also worth noting that many people resorted to blogs and Twitter to continue commenting on the article in the Times, since their site would only allow around 20 comments and they didn't publish the ones they really didn't like the look of.  Proof, if any were needed, that you cannot vet and control what people say about your brand anymore; if you don't choose to have dialogue with them, they'll just go somewhere else to continue talking about you, not to you, or with you.)

So, sometimes the best learnings are from watching what not to do

With this in mind, I wanted to share a very entertaining and insightful blog post from Steve Jackson on VSO's first foray into using Twitter.  Steve is the fundraiser and communications officer for COAAP, in Barmenda, Cameroon, and you can follow him on Twitter @ourman.  (By the way, I know his stint at COAAP is up in about six months, so if you're an overseas development charity looking for a full-time blogger and community builder you should get in touch.)