The Charity Place

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.)

Twitter - how are you finding it so far?

So, did you set up a Twitter profile and start following a few people?

I know there will be a few people reading this that have been using Twitter for some time now, and have got the hang of it. But I know that Twitter can also be a bit difficult to make sense of initially, too, and you might need a few more pointers.

Things to do next to get a sense of what Twitter can do, and why it is so powerful:

• Follow a good few people you don't know

Really, if you haven't done so yet, you have to try this, even if it does seem a little bit strange in principle.

Yes, if you added people as 'friends' on Facebook and they didn't know you, they would most likely think you were spamming them.  Twitter is different.  You can follow anyone, and provided your profile description looks relatively normal, they won't have a problem with it.

Try to pick people that have something in common with you, who might want to follow you back.  You can use a directory like Twellow for this.  If you're a nonprofit professional, you might like to follow a few people in the NFPtweetup Flock, and even join it yourself.

If you still don't believe me, listen to what Stephen Fry says about Twitter in this video on the BBC News site, and get a sense of why you might want to connect with a load of people you've never met before.  Still, you won't really understand what this is really like until you try it - so try it.

I suggest following at least 20 people, but more like 50 is likely to give you the best insight.  Don't worry about reading every message, or 'keeping up' - that just wouldn't be possible and you're under absolutely no obligation to read every message posted by everyone you follow.

Just have a look at your Twitter stream every now and again and see what people are tweeting about.  You'll start to find some people are more interesting and/ or relevant to you, and you'll probably find you tend to look at what they are saying more often as time goes on.  Equally, you'll find the inverse.  And you'll see that some people tweet an awful lot, and others hardly at all - because Twitter is something different to everyone.  You just need to discover what it is to you.

• Use a Twitter 'client'

There is an enormous range of Twitter-related applications and tools to pick from, but the most useful of all surely must be the Twitter 'client'.

These are interfaces that integrate Twitter with your mobile or desktop, so you don't have to visit your Twitter page to read tweets from the people you're following your (AKA your Twitter stream).  My favourite desktop Twitter client is Twhirl, but just as many people I know like TweetDeck.  If you want to have a look at some of the other applications available for to download to your desktop or mobile, Twitter has kindly listed some of the most popular of them here.

One of the great things about using a Twitter client is that it makes it easier to keep track of any direct messages you are sent by other Twitter users you are following, and any public messages addressed to you, by separating them from the main stream of tweets from the people you are following, so you can see them easily (if you use Twhirl, you hear a nice little 'bling' sound when any come through, so you don't have to keep checking for them).

I should probably just explain the difference between direct messages and public messages:

Direct messages (usually known as DMs)
You can send these only to people that are following you. From their home page on Twitter, you just click on the 'message' link under 'Actions' in the right hand column of the person's profile  page or a Twitter client.

If you are using a Twitter client, it's much easier to send direct messages.  It will depend on which application you're using as to how you do this, but you can do it directly from any 'tweet' from that person that you can see in your Twitter stream or in reply to a DM or public message from them.

Public messages addressed, or referring, to you (known as @Replies)
You can send an @reply to anyone, whether they are following you or not.

You might do this if you are following someone and you want to say something to them but they are not following you, or you may 'overhear' an @conversation between someone you are following and another Twitter user that you may or may not know, and want to comment in reference to it - in a way that is clearly linked and that they can see.

So, using @ is not even strictly a reply, as you can send one to anybody at any time (I'm not encouraging you to spam people with irrelevant stuff, as they won't be impressed and it won't help you any either).

If the person you send an @message to is not following you, they may not necessarily reply, but they often do, too (it might be the first time they've ever come across you, for instance, and you might have said something interesting that they like the sound of, or they may think you look relevant to them from your profile biog).

You can also send @replies from Twitter clients, in very much the same way as you can send DMs. You can also send an @message to anyone at any time, simply by typing an @ in front of their Twitter user name (if you were going to send me a public message you would type @rachelbeer) in your tweet.

That's probably quite enough for now.

Do try following a few more people and using your @ and DM options to start a few conversations, if you feel happy doing so.

If you know a few friendly people on Twitter, start with them - most people in the NFPtweetup Flock will be happy to engage with you on Twitter if you mention how you found them and/ or your biog mentions that you work for a charity, or with charities. And, don't think the NFPtweetup Flock is exclusive in anyway - anyone with a professional link is welcome to join.

How do I find people to follow on Twitter?

So, you've set your Twitter profile up, but you still can't see what all the fuss is about?  You need to start 'following' and connecting with some other Twitter users to understand what it can do and why people are so evangelistic about it.

What is 'following'?

When you follow another Twitter user, you are adding their updates (usually known as 'tweets') to the information you see on your Twitter home page - the page you see when you log into Twitter.  This is known as your 'Twitter stream'.  So you know what I mean, here's a shot of the top part of mine, where you can see tweets from five of the people I'm following:



How do I follow someone?

Easy - just go to their profile page and click on the 'Follow' button under their picture on the top left.

When you do this, they will receive an email letting them know that you have followed them, and this gives them the opportunity to check your profile out and decide whether to follow you back or not (whether they decide to reciprocate or not, you will still be able to follow them).

How do I find people I might want to follow?

Here are a few of the ways you can find people to follow that are either interesting or relevant to you:

• Search by name for people you already know, people you have heard of, or who are well-known and respected in your space, using the Find on Twitter option, featured in the Find People tab along the top right menu on your Twitter home page.  This tab also contains options to find people you know that are using Twitter through your Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail or MSN account.
  
• Search for subjects that people are 'tweeting' about, using Twitter Search or Twitter Monitter. When you see interesting tweets, just click on the name of the person that tweeted in the stream of messages, look at their profile and follow them if they look interesting.
• Follow Mr Tweet - a service that, among other things, will identify and recommend new people you might like to follow by referencing people you already follow against the range of Twitter users out there.  This service comes into its own when you have been using Twitter for a while and are following a few people, as Mr Tweet's recommendations become more accurate the more data he has to go on.
• Once you start following a someone you find interesting, see who they are following, check out those people's profiles and follow them too (if they look like they might be relevant to you).
  
• Use directories, like Twellow (here's a search for 'nonprofit' on Twellow to get you started, or you can search on any number of other keywords) or Just Tweet It (here's their 'non-profits' category), to find people listed under areas of interest and/ or specialism.
  

A couple more tips:

• Try to following around 20 people first of all (or as many as you feel comfortable with).  You'll find many of them will follow you back, provided you have included enough information in your profile for them to see whether you might be relevant or interesting to them, and you'll begin to discover how Twitter can connect you with people and ideas you may never have come into contact with otherwise.

• Make sure your profile represents you accurately, to give people a good idea of who you are, what you do, and what you're interested in - as this will help people connect and engage with you.  You can personalise your profile in a number of ways using the options in the Settings tab in the top right menu when you are logged into Twitter, including selecting a background theme or uploading your own design, and adding a photo of yourself (which makes your profile more friendly and human). Note that you have just 160 characters to describe yourself in your Twitter profile (so make each one count!), but you can also add a link to another of your online profiles, such as LinkedIn or Facebook, to help people find out more about you.

• You can protect your updates, so they cannot be viewed at all by anyone, and cannot be followed, without your express permission.  This is also found in the Settings tab, under 'Account'.  I would recommend that you do not opt to do this, simply because it makes it very difficult for anyone to decide whether you are worth following or not, since they can't see what you tend to tweet about, and therefore can't decide whether they will be interested in what you have to say. It also just seems a bit secretive and is not really in the spirit of Twitter, so the vast majority of people leave their updates public.
  

What next?

If you haven't done so already, you might want to post your first update or 'tweet'.

You have just 140 characters for each message, and the option to include a URL within that, should you wish to link to something elsewhere online.

Just type your message into the box underneath 'What are you doing?' and hit 'Update'.  And, before you post your first tweet, it's worth noting that it's going to end up being listed here, so try to make it something more interesting than mine was!

Don't worry, if you don't like what you've posted, you do have the option to delete it afterwards, by clicking on the little dustbin icon at the bottom right of your tweet (you will see this when you mouse over that area).

Twitter - Creating an account and a profile

When you create an account on Twitter - or any online platform - there are several things to consider.  Among them:

• Should the profile be set up in your real name, a nickname, or a pseudonym that masks your identity?
• Should you mix professional and personal information in your biog - mentioning your employer's name and how much you like clubbing in the same paragraph?
• What kind of profile picture should you use - something rather corporate and proper, a picture of you on the beach on holiday last year, a picture a friend took of you at a 70s fancy dress party, a photograph of yourself looking cute, aged 5, or a manga-style avatar?
• Should you restrict who can, and cannot, view your profile and updates?
• Should you be honest and open about all your views on life the universe and everything, talk about how drunk you got last night, post embarrassing pictures of your friends, and share your plans for the weekend - do other people even really want to know about all of that - or will you keep some things to yourself and your close circle?
  

When you are setting up a profile for professional reasons, this all becomes a little bit more complicated still, since you also have to consider whether you:

• Should you set up the profile as an individual or under your organisation's brand, or even a combination of the two?
• Should use your organisation's brand as the profile picture, a photograph of yourself, or something entirely different, and do you need your organisation's 'brand guardian' to approve this?
  
• Should use the 'corporate voice' of your organisation, your own, or a combination of the two?  Will you say 'we' and 'I' or 'the charity/ organisation' or 'charity name'?
  
• Should leave your organisation's profile open to anyone to follow or view, or restrict it?
  
• Can update the profile with any interesting things that you know your organisation is planning or currently working on, or whether you need to get approval from your line manager, the comms team or another internal department first? What's your organisation's policy on who can, and cannot, speak to the media, for instance, and is training given first to those that are approved to do so?
  

There are books and companies specifically created to deal with what's now commonly known as online 'reputation management', which just goes to show that these decisions, and the ramifications of them, are not to be taken lightly and how difficult they can sometimes be to make.  There is certainly a lot to think about, and to worry about getting wrong.

Generally speaking, I think there is much more to think about when considering setting up a profile that represents the charity or nonprofit you work for than there is when setting up a personal profile.  For a start, it's less likely at the moment that the public at large will search to see whether you, personally, have set up a Twitter account (unless you are particularly famous!), but you may not be able to set up a corporate Twitter account without it attracting attention - and followers - and you may not feel quite confident about that yet.

And, as soon as your organisation does have a Twitter profile, and starts to attract followers, you do then have a whole load more things to consider than the points listed above - but that's for another time.  For now, let's just focus on...

Getting started

If you're not already using Twitter in any capacity, I highly recommend you get started by creating a personal Twitter profile, rather than one linked to your organisation or using your organisation's brand in any way.

This will give you the chance to experiment and learn, without the pressure of having to worry that you'll make any blunders that might have a negative impact on how your organisation is perceived via Twitter, or how your organisation might perceive using Twitter.  It also means that, when you do come to set up a profile for your organisation, you can do so confidently, from an informed perspective, and will have a much clearer idea from the off about how you're going to use it - based on personal experience, rather than on theory.

Creating an account & profile

You can access Twitter from a mobile device, or a PC.

Most people start by trying Twitter on a PC, so I would suggest you try starting there, too.  To do this, all you will need is:

• A PC with Internet access
  
• An email account

Simply go to www.twitter.com/signup and you will see the following screen:

From here, setting up your Twitter account is very much like setting up a web-based email account, like Googlemail, where you choose your user name and you will be told whether it is still available.

If somebody else already has an account in the name you wanted, you will have to keep trying alternatives until you find something you like as - unlike Facebook - Twitter does not support multiple accounts with the same name (sorry John Smith).  This has not been too problematic to date, since Twitter was not that well-known until quite recently, but you may well find now that your name has been taken and have to think creatively to find something you like (or just go the fairly standard 'JohnSmith1975' route).

Some things to note:

• The user name you choose will become part of the URL of your home page on Twitter, where your profile information, the messages that you post, and the messages of anyone you follow, can all be found.  It will look like this: http://twitter.com/JohnSmith1975 (or whatever name you choose), and will be the name that identifies you to the Twitter community and anyone outside it - so choose it carefully!
  
• You can have CAPITAL letters in your name, as in the example above, which will show in your profile, and your updates, but your profile's unique URL will always all be in lower case.  Typing it into a browser with upper or lower will work regardless, and will not affect whether people can find you or not when they search for you.
• You can change your Twitter user name/ profile name at any time without affecting the record of your updates, replies or direct messages to others, but you will need to let your followers on Twitter know so you'll continue receiving messages from them.  Probably best not to do this, as it's a bit confusing for others, and it's worth remembering that you might not be able to change back again to the name you had before, as someone else might nab it!
  

Once you have entered your information, Twitter will send you an email to verify your identity - that it was really you setting up your account - and you'll be able to activate your account and create your profile.

You can fill in as much or as little of your profile as you like, and add a photo or not, so you can start to play around with Twitter initially without really needing to identify yourself - and you can make your updates private while you're doing this, if you like.

However, I would recommend being transparent about who you are - and including a picture of yourself if you have one - as people can be suspicious of anonymous profiles and, if they don't know you are a 'real' person, or know anything about you, they'll have no reason to engage with you.  Engaging with others is the point of Twitter, too, so unless you are super-nervous about it, I would also recommend that you don't make your updates private.  After all, if people don't know what you have to say, how do they know whether it might be interesting to connect with you?

Problems?

If you are going to be accessing Twitter from a work computer, you may also need to check that the site has not been blocked by your IT department (as many social networking sites often are) and that emails from Twitter will get through to your work email address and not blocked by a super-efficient spam filter.

You may find you need to make a case to your IT department to allow you to explore and use Twitter for work purposes, and to help create the circumstances for that to be possible.  If you followed the advice in my earlier post in this series, you will already have discussed this with your line manager - and got their buy in before starting to set up the profile - so they will be able to support you in this if you need it, and you will be able to rest assured that everyone is clear that you will be using Twitter as part of your role and that you have permission to do so.

If all of this is really a problem, or you feel you need to be sure that Twitter is worth all the effort before you bother speaking to your line manager, you can - of course - set up a profile from your computer at home and have a play with it out of work hours first.

So, happy tweeting (which is what posting messages on Twitter is usually called) and I look forward to connecting with you on Twitter!  It's best when you start following a few like-minded people, so why not start by following me and I'll post tomorrow with a few ways to find more people you might want to follow.

If you have any questions on this post, you think I've forgotten something important, or you want to ask me to include something specific in future 'how to' posts, please leave a comment.  Thanks!

Twitter - in the news again

I was reading the London Lite on the way home late yesterday and was surprised to read this:

''Microblogging' website Twitter has increased its traffic tenfold in a year.
The site ... hit headlines last month when Jonathan Ross used it to discuss his BBC suspension.  Its traffic has increased 974 per cent.'

This morning, thanks to a tweet, I discovered that this data came from Hitwise, who say,

'As a source of traffic Twitter is still in its infancy, but is becoming more important every day.  A number of news sites, blogs and video and picture websites already rely on Twitter for a significant amount of their traffic.'

This chimes with what I commented on in my post on Monday, under the subtitle 'How is Twitter entering the mainstream?', so it's nice to have some stats now to back up the hypothesis.

What I also discovered yesterday was that Philip Schofield confirmed that it really is him tweeting from this Twitter profile, live on This Morning - at viewers' request.  Somebody has posted a clip on YouTube, and it's well worth a look at what he said, as he describes it rather nicely:

Apparently, there was a bit of a buzz on Twitter as a result of Scholfield's evangelising and, as speculation grows about Twitter getting a mention on Jonathan Ross's show tomorrow night, I now see that Richard and Judy are also preparing a piece on Twitter for their show.

You can't get much more mainstream than that, really, can you?  Twitter traffic is about to surge up again off the back of this, by my reckoning.

Watch out Twittersphere: Here comes everybody!

More from me later on setting up an account, and profile, on Twitter, and joining the conversation...

Twitter - what is it and should we be using it?

So, you're thinking about getting started with Twitter, but what do you need to know about it and what are the sorts of things you're going to have to consider?

Let's go right back to basics, for the uninitiated, to make sure we don't leave anything out (if you know this bit, don't complain - not everyone does - we'll get to more advance stuff in the next few posts):

What is Twitter?

There's no point in me saying what's already been said well by others, so here's the Wikipedia entry for Twitter which is probably the most accurate and succinct explanation I've seen to date.

If pictures are more your thing, you might also find this little film about Twitter by Common Craft a useful illustration.  This film has also been around a while now, and Twitter has changed a lot since it was made, so I don't think it really does Twitter much justice.  It might just give you a flavour though.

However, please just take my word for this for now:

You can't really understand what Twitter is, and why it's good, without trying it out for yourself.  If you haven't actually done so yet, and you haven't followed a few interesting people for a few days, just try keep an open mind for now.  I'll try to explain why...

The Common Craft film refers to this proposition on the Twitter home page,

'Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?'

However, one of the interesting things about Twitter is the way that its users have shaped its evolution, and turned it into so much more than a service that could have been just the 'status update' function from Facebook without all the other bits, into something altogether more engaging, interesting, popular and powerful: a global information network.

The founders of Twitter may have envisaged it as a service you'd use just to let other people know what you are doing, but Twitter users very quickly started using their 140 character messages in far more useful and interesting ways.

As well as sharing information about what they're doing, Twitter users are just as likely to post links to interesting pages they've seen on the web, pictures they've just uploaded to Flickr, a new blog post they've just written or read, details about an event they're organising or attending, something that's just happened, or is about to happen, in their local area, or perhaps a charity initiative they're supporting (that they hope you'll support too).

That's probably enough about what Twitter is, because you'll learn the rest through using it - and you'll hopefully be able to take quite a few shortcuts through that learning process from the rest of the posts yet to come in this series.

In the meantime, it's worth thinking about this:

What are you hoping to get out of using Twitter?

You may not have a clear idea at this stage about this, but it's worth giving some consideration before you dive in and create a profile on Twitter to represent your organistation.

If you can, do a little bit of research beforehand to find out how other organisations in your space have used Twitter, what they have achieved through using it, what they have learned, what kind of resources they needed and so on.  This will give you some idea about what it might be able to do for you, what you need to consider and what to expect.

You should also consider how you think using Twitter will help you to meet the existing objectives of your role and/ or department.  If you can't see how it will, perhaps it isn't the tool for you.

Try using this check list to help you think about this and decide:

• What do we need to achieve?
• How do we think Twitter will help us achieve these goals?
• Which audiences are important?
• How will Twitter help us to engage with those audiences - are those audiences using Twitter?
• Do we have the resources to create engaging content on Twitter?
• If we start using Twitter, can we sustain what we start, whilst still delivering all the other aspects of our role/s?

If you can, go through this exercise with your colleagues and your line manager - because it will be important to get their buy-in from an early stage to help move things forward and for there to be a broader commitment to using Twitter should you decide to do so.

In the next post of the series, we'll move swiftly on to setting up a Twitter account and profile, and start to explore some of the thinks you might need to consider when setting up a 'corporate' Twitter account.

(Apologies for not posting this yesterday as promised. Type Pad seemed to be malfunctioning through yesterday afternoon and evening and I gave up in the end.)

So, what's the big deal about Twitter?

You might have noticed that I quite like Twitter and, if you've been reading some of the posts on this blog or following me on Twitter, you'll probably know that I think it can be a powerful addition to a nonprofit's toolbox - with all manner of uses.

Because of this I'd meant to blog specifically just on Twitter for charities and nonprofits - including an easy 'how to get started' guide - since the spring, but I always ended up feeling like there was already so much information out there that there wasn't any need for more.  Conversely, I'd come across at least one interesting Twitter-related story or service, or gain a new insight, every day and find I almost had too many reasons to blog about Twitter that I got to the point where I didn't know where to start, or what level of detail would be relevant to most people. The result: I didn't write the posts.

So, why write about Twitter now?

I realised over the last few months, partly through organising NFPtweetup in November, that although I may be connected to a number of people in the nonprofit sector that use Twitter and who are pretty Twitter literate (twitterate?), there are still many more who have never heard of it, are not sure what it is, don't know how to use it, or understand how it might be relevant to them, to their professional role or their organisation.

At around the same time (the latter part of 2008), I also became aware that Twitter was about to become more important; that its reach was about to extend beyond the somewhat niche audience of techies, bloggers, entrepreneurs and media types that had been the early adopters of Twitter, and into the mainstream.

How is Twitter entering the mainstream?

Celebrities and politicians started to use Twitter, which sparked interest from outside the Twitter community and from the traditional media (not just tech journalists); from gossip columns, tabloid press and broadsheets - and, most recently, even international television news.

The US election really started to put Twitter on the map - both John McCain and Barack Obama had Twitter profiles hard at work as part of their campaigns, and Obama's use of social media, in particular, was dissected across the web, by bloggers, marketers, fundraisers and clued up journalists.  Not long after that, our national treasure, Stephen Fry, started tweeting, followed by various celebrities, including Britney Spears (you can't get much more mainstream than Britney Spears), John Cleese and, most recently, Jonathan Ross.

Ross (who tweets as 'wossy') has been getting a fair bit of media attention recently, too, in the wake of the 'Sachsgate' controversy, so the press have been very keen to report on how he has been filling his time during his enforced sabbatical, by following his Twitter stream. In fact, over the last month or so, barely a day has gone by without Metro running a Twitter-based story in their new column, 'The Ridiculant', Jonathan Ross or otherwise.

And when Britney Spears started tweeting, it was covered by all the usual celebrity columns and magazines, which meant that readers of 'Now' magazine heard about Britney's house move via Twitter.

According to a recent report from The Telegraph, even the Church of England's Bishop of Buckingham, The Rt Rev Alan Wilson has become a fan of Twitter and has been enjoying following @wossy's tweets.

I'm betting that Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry will mention Twitter on @wossy's show, when he returns to our screens this Friday (perhaps they'll even tweet live?).  If they do, it's bound to mean that Twitter becomes even more widely adopted.

Regardless of whether they do or do not, Twitter hit the International headlines, including a spot on BBC News, last week when the pilot of US Air, Flight 1549 had to make an emergency landing on the Hudson River. You would have had to have been living in a cave to have missed the story of how 'citizen journalist' Janis Krums, took the first picture of the remarkable scene with his iPhone, posting it to Twitter, from where it spread across the world before the traditional news networks had even picked the story up (not the first time Twitter has been credited with this power).

Why is all of this important and relevant to charities and nonprofit organisations?

Twitter has 'come of age'.  It has enough users now that it's become an established part of the landscape, it adds so much value to so many people and organisations, it is permeating the offline world more and more now and it has already outlived one of it's competitors.  It feels to me that it has either reached, or is fast approaching, a tipping point - and a point at which those that have dismissed it up until now as a fad or a 'niche network for geeks' should consider being more open-minded about its potential.

So, my advice is, if your organisation hasn't genned up about Twitter yet, or you have just tinkered around the edges with it, 2009 is the year to reconsider it seriously as part of your strategy. At the very least, you should be starting to explore and learn about how it might be able to help you achieve your objectives, so you are closer to being able to leverage what it has to offer you in the future.

According to data from Nielson Online, Twitter was the fastest growing social networking site in the US between September 2007 and September 2008, achieving a 343% growth rate (Facebook came in at the number six spot, growing 116% over the same time period).  Although, Twitter has only a tiny percentage of the users that Facebook has globally, the Nielsen data shows the potential for that to change, which means it's conceiveable that Twitter might prove to be a much more important and valuable channel through which to engage with supporters and stakeholders in the not too distant future.

Don't get left behind!

Whether you are already using Twitter, or thinking about trying it, there is a whole range of things you could be doing in this first quarter of 2009 to move your organisation forward.

To help you do that, I'm going to write a series of Twitter posts, specifically for nonprofits, that cover everything from getting started with setting up a Twitter profile, to building a community, and leveraging your networks to produce value for your organisation.

Much of this will be informed by real questions that charities and nonprofits have asked me, or posted on Twitter or at The Charity Place, over the last few months, including the feedback received from the first NFPtweetup.

I won't be reinventing the wheel, as there are already plenty of great resources about how to use Twitter all over the place online and it would be daft to duplicate them where they already exist. Rather, I will pull as many of them as possible together in one place for easy reference, and attempt to do so in as logical a progression as possible - adding insights and stories from my experiences, and the experiences of other nonprofit professionals, along the way to keep it as fresh, accessible and useful as possible.

How you can help

As I post, it would be great if you could add your thoughts, experiences and anything you think I've missed, in the comments on each post.  That should mean we end up with a really thorough set of crowd-sourced resources for the sector.

Look out for the first post, tomorrow, on getting started with Twitter...  If there are any burning questions you have on this, do post them now so I can build them in.

NFPtweetup - during and after

I'm delighted to report that the first NFPtweetup, held last night (4.30-8.30pm, GMT), seemed to be enjoyed by those that took part, and provided a useful forum to bring people together and start exploring all things Twitter for nonprofits.

To think that it started out as a casual, off-the-cuff, remark in a conversation between two not-for-profit tweeters...

... but evolved to be so much more - just like so many things do, wherever social media enables like-minded people to come together.  You can see most of this by looking through tweets mentioning NFPtweetup here and checking out the wiki here.

In all, 35-40 tweeters participated - either in person and/ or online - to share ideas, insights and thoughts, and discuss some of the issues and opportunities for charities and nonprofits using, or thinking of using, Twitter.

(I should say that, although Twitter was the focus of the event, one of the main objectives that emerged as the idea for the event evolved was to engage around the topic of social media in general, using Twitter as an entry point for the conversation - since many of the challenges, considerations and opportunities are the same across the many social platforms.)

To get as much value from this gathering of minds, and allow it to be shared as widely as possible, I put a shout out to everyone before the event to submit one slide capturing an idea, a thought, an observation, a question or an example related to nonprofits' use of Twitter.  This was the result:

NFPtweetup Collaborative Slideshow

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: collaboration socialmedia)

Brilliantly, this collaborative effort was even featured as Top Presentation of the Day on Slideshare which took it to an even wider audience than that for the event itself.

As you might expect of a gathering of nonprofit geeks, there was also plenty of content generated during the event that we've shared across the web.  Here are some links for those interested:

You can access much of the content via this search of hashtags.org.

Tweets including NFPtweetup can all be seen here, too (this would usually be the case at hashtags.org, but the service was down for development when the tweets for NFPtweetup started, and the team at hashtags.org say they are not intending to backdate to aggregate what they missed during this time, because it would take them too long!).

Blog posts (known at time of writing):

• Post by Damien Austin-Walker, from Timebank

• Post by Amy Sample Ward, from NetSquared

• Post by Howard Lake, at UK Fundraising
  (Howard says this was the UK's first NFPtweetup. I think that's true...)

• Post by Ed Walker, from UCLAN

Photos:

• Photos on Twitter tagged NFPtweetup.

Videos and more are being listed here on the wiki as they are created and shared.

With content still being posted, and conversations - having been started on Twitter - moving to other social sites, including The Charity Place, I hope that this event has acted as a catalyst to open up the area of social media a bit more, make it more accessible and unleash its potential for charities and nonprofits.

Thanks again to Just Giving for supporting this event, and to everyone that attended, contributed and participated.

So, should we have another one in a couple of months? Perhaps to explore the burning issues that came up this time that we only had chance to scratch the surface of? Any feedback greatly appreciated...

NFPtweetup - sponsored by The Charity Place and Just Giving

This is primarily a heads up for anyone reading this blog who may not have heard about NFPtweetup yet.

This event is taking place between 4.30-8.30pm (GMT) on Monday, 24 November and is open to anyone working in the not-for-profit space who either uses Twitter or has an interest in the applications of Twitter, and other social media, for charities and nonprofit organisations.

There are more details here on the wiki, and you can participate in the event either by attending it physically at the Coach & Horses, Greek Street, Soho, London, or by participating online (if you attend in person, you'll be able to enjoy a drink or two with the compliments of those nice people at Just Giving, who are kindly supporting this event).

All details and information are on the wiki so, if you are interested, please have a look.

You don't need to register for the event, although it would be nice if we knew to expect you - either in person or online - so we can do our best to include everyone in the conversation; and signing up to the wiki is probably the best way to make sure that happens.

If you're reading this, don't be a lurker - join the flock!

A disclaimer

I've been trying to turn more charities onto the possibilities of social media for a while, because of the enormous power they have to enable organisations to meet their objectives - if used strategically.

I'm saying that again, because it's key and it concerns me that it's a point that many people keep missing.

I'm not advocating using Twitter, or any other social media, for the sake of it (or because it is cutting edge, 'cool', new or exciting).  I am keen to develop a deeper understanding that social media are a powerful set of tools that can help charities and nonprofits achieve important objectives that contribute towards their corporate/ organisational plans, and their missions.  This means activities like building awareness of their work, raising funds, delivering support, scoping and understanding need, communicating important messages to supporters and stakeholders, recruiting donors, campaigners, volunteers, staff, advocates, growing a greater voice to influence policy and provision of local and national services, developing better solutions and so on.

I'm also very aware that there are some very practical barriers for a lot of organisations - whether they are rooted in resources (time, money, people power, structure), knowledge, understanding, experience or a combination of these - factors can make it very difficult to put together a business case, or create a culture, for testing these tools.

So, where was I? Oh yes, that's right:

NFPtweetup is all about coming together with others to explore these (and any other) burning issues, share thoughts and ideas, meet new people and maybe even collaborate.  I hope that it turns out to be a great forum for people not using Twitter or any other social media yet in their organisations to consider what might work for them.

Twitter: Where did Obama go?

Over a week ago now, I noticed a post on, Valleywag pointing out that, after having tweeted throughout his campaign for the Presidency, Barack Obama's Twitter account had since gone surprisingly quiet.

The article suggested that his 'followers have been pumped and dumped — Twittered into contributing money and time, and then passed over for more presidential means of communication'.

I can understand why they might feel that, too.

A few days earlier, this was one of the things I was careful to draw attention to in the article I wrote (annoyingly, the link always shows 'Page not found' on first click through and needs to be reloaded before you can see the article) for the CharityComms website, which ended:

'If you actively engage people anywhere through a social platform, you will have become an important part of their online world and your absence will be noticed and commented on if you suddenly disappear from the landscape.'

The 'radio silence' of the Obama Twitter account has provided the perfect case in point to prove this and, because it has such a high profile, we can see how people have responded and learn from the insights this provides.

There are important lessons to consider carefully here if you already using social media or considering dipping your toe in.

Social media offers huge opportunities to genuinely connect with your supporters in a way that most other media is not able to replicate. As a user of Twitter, I know that it really feels like being part of a community: If you ask for help or advice, it's unusually forthcoming, people are very supportive of each other, and — once you've built relationships with like-minded others — you are missed if you don't tweet for a while, and even asked if you're okay when you haven't been around for a day or two. 

Most other social platforms have similar cultures.

For charities, it is important to understand that the connections you are making with your supporters using social media are with real people — not just user names or avatars — and real people have feelings.

One of the reasons social media is so powerful for charities is its ability to bring supporters closer to your organisation and your work, but with this comes a degree of accountability.  This is particularly true if you have asked something of them — money, time, attention, engagement — and they have given it.

Another thing to bear in mind is that social media create a culture of meritocracy, where you connect and engage with others based on how much you give, mutually respect and share.  Those that only use their Twitter profiles to promote themselves, don't engage and don't give anything back, don't get too much of a positive response, quickly find that they are 'unfollowed' and and can even be considered 'spammers'.  It's important that you keep adding value to the environment.

There will be many that will continue to follow Barack Obama regardless of whether he tweets regularly again or not, simply because he's the President elect and because they're interested to see what he'll do next — many, because they'll be looking for an opportunity to criticise.

If you're a charity, this is not as likely to be the case.  If you do not stay active in your social communities, you are more likely to lose followers and connections than Obama is.  However, like him, you will also undoubtedly lose some of the goodwill and engagement that you spent time and energy building up; all of which will diminish your opportunities to generate income, awareness and greater support of your work.

Social media is a great leveller, and individuals can make a lot of noise now — positive and negative — using them.  For charities and nonprofits, the challenge is to make sure you give your supporters the information and motivation to create as much of that positive noise as possible.  Don't let fear of negative buzz inhibit you either: If you concentrate your efforts on filling the space with positive buzz, there generally isn't the space or the appetite for anything else.

The Obama effect

While browsing on Kiva earlier on, I couldn't believe my eyes at first when I noticed that someone created a 'Team Obama' in the communities section.

Not only that, the Team Obama community - set up on 4 September - has already loaned a total of $107,625 to date, to a variety of entrepreneurs all over the world (before you reach for your calculator, that's an average of $73.71 per person).

I was even more interested to note that this community of 1,460 individuals has made 3,806 loans.  That means, the average member has given 2.6 times - in just over two months.

There are a lot of charities that would be extremely happy to have donors as committed, and giving as frequently, as that.  Of course, these are not strictly donations, but loans, and the lenders will get their money back in time (although many will then loan it to another entrepreneur).  I would doubt, however, that the motivation is any different between the two.

From what I can tell, this community was set up not by the Obama campaign, but by an individual supporter, or supporters - just normal people who have been inspired and motivated by Obama's vision for change and have bought into the shared responsibility of achieving it.  It's all summed up in their statement:

'Everyone, everywhere who understands that Barack Obama combined with our individual efforts through Kiva will help make this world a much better place!'

I found myself reflecting on how often charities succeed in creating the kind of passion and conviction that Barack Obama manages to stir up in people, and how much more they could achieve if they followed his example and made people feel excited, empowered and united in the way that he has done.  It's even more remarkable when you consider that he has motivated people to do good to the point that they are proactively seeking out ways to do that - right across the world.

Why charities need to use social media

Here's a link to an article I wrote for CharityComms on this subject, to accompany the presentation I made at their event on 22 October.

(For some reason I can't fathom, clicking the link to the article brings up 'Page not found' and you have to refresh or reload the page to bring the article up. If you still have trouble, here's the URL: http://www.charitycomms.org.uk/articles/insider_secrets/why_charities_need_to_use_social_media)

And here are the slides that I used for the presentation:

Social Media for Change - prepared for Charitycomms, 22 Oct 08

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: communications fundraising)

It feels like it might be somewhat lacking without the narrative I gave on the day (one of the side-effects of abandoning boring bullet points in favour of something slightly less tedious is that the Powerpoint doesn't stand up quite so well on its own afterwards).  The article should go some way towards plugging the gap though.

I'd seen several great presentations that focus more on social media as a concept - and talk more hypothetically about how they can be used - and had also spoken to quite a number people who work at charities who had even attended social media presentations and were still a bit bewildered about what they should actually do.

Because of this, I wanted to illustrate, as simply and clearly as possible, using real examples, what some of the platforms do, what some charities are actually using them for, and what they are achieving, with some clear take outs at the end on next steps.

I had some very positive feedback afterwards, and a couple of people even told me they had joined up to Twitter as a result (if you're on Twitter, you can follow them here and here), so I think it worked.

If you're interested, here's a podcast from the event created by those nice people at Sound Delivery (this features interviews with speakers and attendees, as opposed to recordings of the presentations themselves).

As soon as I post this, it should get tweeted automatically via Friendfeed.  How about that for having your presence on several channels covered?  There's a tip in there somewhere.

What non-profits can learn from the Obama campaign

I couldn't let the day end without commenting on the excellent, strategic mobilisation of social media tools as used by the Obama campaign.

Fundraising by politicians and political parties isn't something that would usually inspire or interest me, but what Obama's team achieved is so relevant to charities who may still be wondering whether there's anything in this social media thing, aside from a load of buzzwords - by which I mean, can it be used to generate income, and will they get a worthwhile return on investment for time and money directed towards this still somewhat unproven area?

Well, the Google Alerts I have for 'fundraising' have produced pages of listings for the Obama campaign to the point that it's virtually eclipsed any other fundraising news for the past year, so that was the first heads up. There was story after story about the online activity, in particular, that the campaign was deploying to engage with groups that had not previously voted, or had previously voted Republican, to create what they called a 'national coalition of voters' - a movement, if you will.

The campaign got Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook, on board, made a lot of noise using a dedicated Barack Obama channel on YouTube and even utilised the noisy and increasingly less niche platform, Twitter.  All of this helped to ensure that Obama was right at the cutting edge, being seen and heard in all the right places, and was considered relevant by younger voters (who played a huge part in providing the extra votes he needed to win the election).

It transpires that the Obama campaign raised over $600 million to fund the media activity that would create the swell of public opinion he needed to win.  The real suprise here is that this impressive total was achieved, in large part, by the campaign's effectiveness in engaging individuals and cultivating their support to generate millions of small donations (well, small by traditional political fundraising standards, anyway).  According to this article in the New York Times, the average donation was less than $100 - which equates to just over £63.

I read an interesting article from Marketing Direct on Brand Republic, which provides some insights into the approach the campaign took, some of which chime very much with my own views on how charities should use social media to cultivate support - essentially that engagement needs to come first, the ask, and the donation, later.

Specifically, the article refers to the experience of George Nimeh, joint MD of Iris, who registered on an Obama campaign website. Nimeh is quoted as saying, "The first emails I received were about engagement ... The emails asking for cash were the last step in a well thought-out eCRM process." Quite right too.

Marketing Direct points out that there are 'lessons for UK politicians' to be taken from the example of the Obama campaign.  I would say there are also powerful lessons for charities.

Social media are a great leveller, as Barack Obama and his team have proven.  You don't have to be a heavy-weight, establishment brand to get results using them.  Small, nimble charities are already proving that having a presence on social platforms gives them a voice, a credibility and opportunities to generate support that they could only have dreamt of without these tools.  In his victory speech, Obama was honest and humble enough to point out that he didn't start out as the front-runner - quite the contrary - and that he had only been able to achieve what he did with the help of millions of Americans, who supported him through word of mouth and donations.  Who's to say whether he would have been making quite the same rousing speech if it hadn't been for the role that social media had played in his campaign?

Internet Trends 2008

This presentation comes courtesy of Morgan Stanley, and TechCrunch - who posted it on their SlideShare profile.  It may be about seven months old now, but it's still extremely relevant and well worth a look.   There are some compelling statistics in here to convince anyone who thinks social media isn't big and important...

Internet Trends031808meeker

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: trends internet)

SlideShare Link

'TripAdvisor Causes'

I've been neglecting my blog of late, and there are all sorts of things stacking up in my head that I've been wanting to post about.  For now, here's something that caught my eye this morning.

I noticed that TripAdvisor is donating $1 million to charity and has nominated five organisations that it will split the amount between, 'as determined by the percentage of total votes that each charity receives' from visitors to its site.

You can vote for either, Save the Children, Medecins Sans Frontieres, National Geographic Society, The Nature Conservancy or Conservation International.

Incidentally, their rationale is that they are offsetting some of the effects of the global tourism industry that they've become such a popular part of, through their 'More Than Footprints™ Campaign' or, in their words:

'With over 15 million reviews and opinions from real travellers, TripAdvisor believes in the power of the collective voice.  We also believe that by helping us support these great causes, you can make a difference in your community and the places you visit.'

Once you have voted, if you log back in, you can go back and check TripAdvisor Causes to get an update on what percentage of the overall vote each charity has received -- A nice touch.

You also get the opportunity to invite others to add their vote by using a neat little dashboard with links to Delicious, StumbleUpon, Facebook, and a function that allows you to pull up to 50 of your contacts in from whichever web-based email you use.  Easy!

I couldn't help thinking how clever TripAdvisor is to come up with a CSR offering so well aligned with their user-generated model, and was impressed at how straightforward they have made it for people to share the message (which, of course, is in their interests, since it drives traffic to their site).  Still, it's something a lot of non-profit organisations could learn from.

When I last looked, this was how the vote was panning out, which won't surprise those of you who know about the relative popularity of different types of cause (i.e. environment, children etc):

I think it's a bit of a shame that there aren't clear links from TripAdvisor to any of the charities' home pages -- in some cases no links at all! -- which you would have thought Tripadvisor might have been kind enough to promote and those organisations would have pushed for.  It smacks a little of self-interest on TripAdvisor's part; wanting to keep traffic within their site, or perhaps it's just an oversight?

A truly unusual proposition

I just received an email from Oxfam with the most unusual ask I think I can ever remember getting from a charity: To knit a square for a giant, knitted petition.

I read on to find out 'How a giant, knitted petition could make a big difference to mums in poor countries'.

Now, I can't even knit, but I'm so taken with this campaign that I requested a guide without giving it much more thought.  Let's just hope it's simple -- and can succeed to teach me the basics of knitting where my so many members of my family previously failed -- because Oxfam want me to take a photo of it and upload it to the Flickr group they've created for the campaign.

Brilliant.

If that wasn't enough, they have provided a selection of banners for supporters to use on their websites and blogs.

Oxfam have come up with something really different here -- that stands out from so many of the other asks made by charities.  It also lends itself to sharing of content on and offline (the Flickr site shows people getting together to knit), and provides the tools to do this.  All of this gives the campaign real impact, and turns it into an experience, by injecting elements of community and fun alongside a serious message.

Who knows, as well as helping to reduce mortality rates in pregnancy and childbirth safer for women in poor countries, I might finally even learn to knit.  Sounds like a win-win to me.

Experience the problem and be part of the solution

Thanks to this article in the Independent today, I was introduced today to Save the Children's Kroo Bay project, and the fantastically engaging content on their website that puts supporters and potential supporters in touch with their work there -- including these webinars.

I can't remember having seen a better illustration of a charity bringing people closer to it's work at grass roots level, whilst also educating them about the bigger picture, by including everything from individual profiles (where supporters can leave messages for workers and residents in Kroo Bay) to an overview of the Save the Children's 'big plan'.  It makes the work the charity does highly tangible, without artificially simplifying the issues -- and has a refreshing honesty and integrity about it.

You only need to take a look at some of the comments supporters have posted to see what they have achieved here in terms of engagement.  I was really struck by this one, from Sarah in Kent (which is full of insights):

‘I could see myself signing up to a 'save a Kroo Bay child' action plan which lists the key areas where money is needed to give that child his or her maximum chances of reaching adulthood in health and safety. I and others could put money into the pot until collectively we had brought it to completion. It would be like an individual child fund, albeit one of the thousands of other child funds that Kroo Bay needs support for.. but we may move one obstacle at a time. There could and should, of course, be a general pot as well as not eveyone would want to donat in the same way, and you STC would want some unrestricted funds (just remember to tell us why you want them?).

One the one hand, we the community would be able to see the chances of one child's life being safeguarded as within our reach, and we would know clearly what it takes to achieve that within an area such as Kroo Bay, or any other. On the other, we would be acting together, pooling our money but also connecting our thoughts, feelings and perhaps our dialogue in unity and collaboration.

The STC challenge is 'we save the children, will you?' and my answer is oh yes please let me save just one child, and then another, and then another. Please make it seem real to me that my donations have the chance of safeguarding one young human life to the point of adulthood.’

It's interesting to note that, given a social media element in the site, supporters are quick to engage not only with the charity and it's work, but also with each other -- seeing the oppportunity to collaborate and achieve more together as a result.

The Independent article finishes by saying:

'NGOs are throwing themselves with gusto behind the many tools Web 2.0 has brought, but it is difficult to ascertain which ones are having a direct impact on donations ... clever elements of multimedia can do much to draw in potential supporters and educate them about the relevant issues and individual campaigns. How and when that might translate into an actual donation, however, is more difficult to track.'

Of course, tracking itself is not really the issue here, since web analytics are sophisticated enough to enable this.  However, the question of whether and/ or when investment in creating this kind of rich, online experience will result in more financial support, is the one on most charities' minds, and is far more difficult to answer.

Just remember that, once, not so long ago, many people probably asked the same question about direct mail.  In fact, come to think of it, some of them still do...

Integration, integration, integration

I can't tell you how much it warms my heart to see that the Instiute of Fundraising is hosting a one-day conference about integrating fundraising and campaigning.

It says, 'By recognising the supporter as a central part of your campaign and fundraising initiatives you can develop an integrated approach which will benefit your whole organisation in the long term.'

I don't understand why more charities haven't been open to this in the past, but attitutes really seem to be changing now -- with phrases like 'the 360 degree supporter' becoming increasingly commonplace (although I tend to be sceptical when buzzwords are bandied around, if they help to create behavioural change, it can only be a good thing for charities and their supporters).

Whenever I have worked on campaigns or communications that combined campaigning and fundraising around a particular issue, the results have been nothing but positive.  It just seems so obvious to expose your supporters to the range of your work and provide them with opportunities to engage with, and support, it in a number of ways.  Why would you not ask them to get involved in a campaign if they already support financially or vice versa?  What fantastic added value for supporters that they can do even more to help the charity they support achieve its mission, by adding weight to its campaigning voice too -- and they can often do this by taking only the smallest action, like adding their name to a petition.

It seems to me that, just as we recognise that charities need to take a 360 degree view of supporters, that it would seem only logical for supporters to expect the charities they support to be equallly multi-faceted -- and that they will be utilising a sophisticated mix of skills and expertise to affect change.  So why don't we treat them as intelligent human beings and share more with them?

Turning the issue on it's head for a moment, I wonder what supporters would think if they realised that there was campaigning work going on that they were not being actively informed about, petitions they could be signing, or that they could have joined the 'campaign network' with other supporters if they only knew it existed?  It would probably strike them as at least a little bit odd.

Oxfam is doing a fantastic job of joining up the dots. Sign up here if you want to experience their approach to offering an integrated supporter experience...

Mohammed is free!

Earlier in the month, I logged into Facebook - as I seldom seem to do these days - and was delighted to see this message:

If you read my post back in May, or saw the story elsewhere, you'll know that Mohammed had been missing since the 13th of April, after he was arrested by the Egyptian authorities during a public protest.

It's wonderful news that Mohammed's whereabouts is now known - although it has been reported that he was subject to beatings and electric shocks whilst in detention, so I hope that he is safe from any further repercussions.

I can't help wondering whether James Buck's efforts to publicise Mohammed's plight helped to secure his release?

There is no doubt that, through his clever use of social media, he managed to mobilise a huge amount of support and - most effective of all in this case - make some considerable noise about the issue.

And now, apparently, Twitter has been in discussions with James about developing an emergency network, linked to their service, that could be used by activists and in crisis situations.

When you consider how quickly news about the earthquake in China spread via Twitter earlier in the year, it makes absolute sense to promote the ability it has to spread messages, globally, in 'real time'. Although, as users know only too well, Twitter will have to become a lot more stable to cope with the increased traffic for this to be the really powerful tool it has the potential to be - otherwise, another of the up and coming social media channels will simply pick it up and run with it.

Is this the tipping point for UK charities’ adoption of social media?

I had planned to attend, and to tweet from, this year’s Institute of Fundraising National Convention.  How brilliant it would have been to be the first to do it...

However, as things turned out, I was needed at my desk more and I was pipped to the post by Jon Waddingham from Just Giving.  The considerable upside of this was that I was able to keep track of some of the buzz from this year’s Convention by following Jon's tweets, even though I wasn’t able to be there.  It was the next best thing – thanks again, Jon.

What I was really interested in – if you hadn’t guessed – was whether the speakers this year would be tuned into social media, whether the charities and agencies would be presenting any useful insights into how they are using them, what they have learned and what’s been working for them.

I gathered from Jon’s tweets that quite a few people were waxing lyrical about social media over the three-day event – and rightly so – including:

• Joe Saxton, presenting a session entitled, 'Will online fundraising ever be better than paper-based DM?'

• Sue Fidler, of Sue Fidler Ltd, and Richard Brooks, Director of Marketing from Compassion in World Farming, presenting 'Online fundraising - How to make it work'
• Tom Mansel-Pleydell, head of client services at Just Giving, whose session was entitled, 'Social Media: Join in or miss out'.

Here’s a couple of Jon Waddingham’s tweets sent during that session:

You can visit Jon's profile for more. And you can compare and contrast with this piece published shortly afterwards on the Guardian website.  Both provide some very useful insights.

I’m only hoping that enough charities will have attended at least one seminar where social media was on the agenda during the Convention, and that this will have opened the UK sector’s eyes up to the potential of these platforms and removed some of the barriers in people’s minds about giving them a try.  In the words of Tom Mansel-Pleydell, tweeted by Jon Waddingham (!):

1.       Assign resource

2.       Get out there

3.       Observe

4.       Take part

5.       Review and measure.

And I hope it’s not lost on those who are still reluctant, that this post would not exist without social media, and people using them to connect around a common interest.

How can your organisation capture supporters' attention with social media?

It's been a while since I've posted, and there's a list of things brewing up that I haven't got around to writing about - yet.

However, there's one organisation that can grab my attention at the moment, however busy I am (which, let's face it, is the challenge all of us face when trying to get our marketing messages through these days).  It's Mara Triangle.

While I was sitting, working at my desk today, I suddenly had a flurry of tweets from Mara Triangle pop up in Twhirl (my Twitter client of choice).  This was the first:

And, following hot on its heels was, this:

Then this:

The story continued to unfold at breathtaking speed - live, in real time - and Mara Triangle were answering questions from Twitter users throughout; providing donors and prospective donors with unique insights into the challenges they face and the incredible work they do.

Here's the entire thread from their twitter profile:

 Brilliantly, they didn't miss the opportunity to make a direct ask.  Perfect timing.

And, yes, I donated.  Wouldn't you?

Another social media and sharing 'how to'

There are some interesting insights into how UNICEF have been using a host of social media and sharing platforms to engage with supporters and prospective supporters here, on Joanne Fritz's blog.

It's a shame there's no measurement of the financial impact of the activity - or information on how they might be considering tracking and analysing this.

Regardless, it will undoubtedly have a positive influence on fundraising, because it's:

• Getting messages out to new audiences, and creating a pool of interested, engaged people - who'll be more likely to become financial supporters as a result
• Offering new ways for existing supporters to engage with UNICEF and providing them with a richer, more meaningful experience.

As time goes on, we'll see more in depth analysis and evidence that this kind of activity is paying off; it is direct, highly personal and trackable, so it's also highly measurable.

For now, just know that your organisation needs to be part of the conversation so you can experiment, find out and learn about how it will work for you - just like UNICEF are doing.

Connecting your supporters directly with your work has never been easier

Yesterday, I posted about how charities need to make the most direct connections possible between their supporters and the work they do.

There just really isn’t any good excuse not to be doing this anymore because there are so many accessible, inexpensive tools at our disposal now.

For a lesson in using social media to do connect people and causes, you couldn’t get a much better example than Mara Triangle, who have integrated content on Facebook, Flickr, and Vimeo, and are microblogging updates reguarly using Twitter.

It’s just about as close as you can get to the Masai Mara, looking at the wildlife yourself, without actually being there in person (although, when you watch some of the video, you sometimes almost forget you’re still just sitting in front of your PC).

Male Lions Fighting from Joseph Kimojino on Vimeo.

News, photos and footage appear in real time, and the team there engage one-to-one on a daily basis with donors and potential donors all over the world in a way I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

I’m totally hooked.

If you’ve spent five or ten minutes looking at what they do, and the amazing wildlife they’re so bravely protecting – against all the odds – I reckon there’s a good chance you’ll have already signed up to a regular gift.  If you haven’t, take a look at their urgent appeal here and consider giving something.

And, before you go, just think – if Mara Triangle can do this with the scant resources they have, what excuse is there really for your organisation not to be doing something similar?

Not how, but what

The fundraising campaigns and propositions that are the most successful, and the charities that have the most positive, beneficial relationships with their supporters, are those that make the most direct connections between their supporters and their work.

That's why I usually try to cut out as much of the other stuff in between - because I know that what really interests donors is the difference their support makes, not all the steps that the charity is going to take along the way to make that happen.  (If you've ever gone to sleep halfway through a letter about 'capacity building', you'll know what I mean.)

So, when you're working on the direction for your next campaign, or the next time you're looking at some fundraising copy, do what I do and adopt this mantra: Not how, but what.

It helps focus my mind on keeping the right balance between how you're going to use the donor's money to make a difference and what that is going to achieve; what positive difference it will make.  (This can also be re-phrased as, 'what's the net effect?', or 'skip to the end'.)

Try it, and teach it to others.  It will make your fundraising more successful.

And remember, every rule has its exceptions.  There are times when a little more of the detail about how you're going to do it actually makes for a really engaging, inspiring, motivating story.  Just always make sure the what doesn't get lost in the detail.

Social networks take word of mouth to a global level

I’m still totally captivated by the enormous possibilities of social media to share ideas and information, and am inspired to post (yet again) on the subject of how people are using them to come together and do good – because I’ve been motivated to give in the last few days via Twitter.

Just look at what Jeremiah Owyang has started through his blog and his Twitter feed, which Oliver Ding then turned into this presentation on Slideshare...

| View | Upload your own

Through the content that Jeremiah and Oliver have generated, people have been driven to charity sites and give a donation, and/ or to pages like this one.

So far, Oliver Ding’s 24 ways to give presentation has received 1,065 views, and has been nominated ‘slideshow of the day’, which has to make a difference to the amount of money raised.  (I don't need to tell you how to make a donation, because everything you need to know is in the slideshow)...

| View | Upload your own

The Pledgebank campaign has 264 people signed up, and  counting (you can sign up by clicking here).

There are at least 30 people who have indicated they’ve given through Jeremiah’s updates on Twitter, and more – no doubt – who have given privately.

I'm sorry to say that I had previously received an approach from two charities - one via Facebook and the other by email - but hadn't yet made a donation.  However, Jeremiah's Twitter message changed that.

Charities, take note...

What, you mean you don’t give to charity???

I found myself suggesting to a friend recently that supporting good causes was undergoing a huge change; that it's becoming almost fashionable to support a charity and more and more people are doing it because they think everyone else is, and it’s the thing to do.

This was prompted, in part, because a couple of days before another friend had said to me: ‘I feel like I should support a charity, but I’m not sure which one to support.’

I thought that was really insightful –- because they were clearly not motivated by a cause or a need, or something they believed passionately in.  Instead, it felt like they were saying, ‘I’ve got a great career, a nice car, I wear good clothes, I can afford nice wine these days. Everyone else seems to give to a charity, so it must be what one does; like going snowboarding or playing golf.  I don’t want to be the odd one out.’

I think social media is the big lever in this, because it gives people a platform to show others what they’re doing, where they’re going, who with, what they did, how much fun they had doing it; it gives us all a way to share more about ourselves with the people we’ve got a connection with.  You could argue that there’s an element of competitiveness about some of what people share, but it’s also hugely positive -- because it gives us a deeper understanding about the people we know, through this series of windows into their lives and their psyches, to an extent we never had in the past.

We find out that a business associate we’ve known for years takes the most beautiful photographs, that a friend we haven’t seen for a while is backpacking solo in Japan, that one of our old clients is an aficionado of facial hair, that an old house mate now has two gorgeous children and two enormous pedigree cats, that someone we went to school with likes Jon Spencer Blues Explosion too.  And we find out which charities they all support -- because they invite us to join the group or campaign they’ve set up for the cause on Facebook.

There’s something highly tribal about this –- which is effectively what fashion is all about –- and I think the power it has to spread ideas and information is going make charity giving ‘mainstream’ in a way it has never quite been previously.

I realise this could be perceived as a slightly tasteless thing to say, when so many charities are raising money for deeply serious causes, but I’d rather people gave money to charity than spend it on Louis Vuitton handbags any day -– so shoot me.

Is it worth building your own online networks?

You probably had a look at MyActionAid when it was launched by ActionAid last February – perhaps you've even used it?

It’s a brilliant platform for events and community fundraising – a bit like an own-branded version of Just Giving – and you can see how it has the potential to be so much more; a social networking platform for ActionAid to engage with its supporters, for them to engage with each other, to take ActionAid’s messages to their social networks and bring their friends into the fold.

Adding different ways for people to engage aside from fundraising – I'm thinking campaigning in particular – and further integration with other platforms would add value to the experience and make this site a really rich way to engage with ActionAid, its work and its community of supporters.

It’s great to get some insights from their experiences and to find out a little about their future plans, including making widgets available to integrate with supporters on Facebook.

I always want to hear about how this kind of initiative is working, and I’m impressed that they're citing ‘double the giving rate compared to presence on other sites’. That's got to make doing something like this well worth the effort, surely?

Campaign for Mohammed Maree

This captured my imagination this morning.   What a fantastic illustration of how social media can be used to spread a message and affect change.

I've got my fingers crossed for Mohammed Maree.  I also searched and James Karl Buck has set-up a petition page and a facebook group campaigning for him to be returned.

I hope it's quickly and that he's unharmed.  Sign up now.

Social networking - an income generator?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this subject recently, and I saw an article today from the States that has inspired me to post.

It’s always interesting to hear how charities are beginning to tap into the potential of online social networks, because it's such early days yet, and there's still not much evidence around of this type of engagement with charities converting into income on any scale.  However, I think organisations need to change their perceptions about this anyway.

Debates seem to be raging all over the place – particularly online – about whether digital media will replace print media (most people are focusing, as usual, on direct mail), and whether charities should ‘switch their budgets’ from one to the other.  I've also heard budget-holders say that they're considering digital because it’s ‘a cheaper medium to reach more people’ than direct mail. This all seems to be in the context of recruiting financial supporters.

(A bit of an aside: I’m supposing direct mail receives all the focus because it’s more expensive than doordrops and inserts, and that digital media would seem to provide the same direct route to the individual that direct mail does, at a fraction of the cost.)

Well, I think that all of this is missing the point a bit, because:

• Not every charity will have, or be able to develop, propositions that will work across all media

• No approach will work unless it matches the right ask to the right audience and uses the most appropriate media to deliver it

• Social media are relationship-building tools that will help organisations engage with individuals who might support their mission in many ways; not necessarily financial.

Time will tell, but my hunch is that social media offer excellent channels to connect with new audiences, increase awareness, recruit campaigners and advocates (remember that a lot of these people have proactively joined up around your cause – they’re online activists), and create a new kind of self-selecting prospect pool, from which a percentage will convert to financial support if you engage them in the right way.

Mind you, they’ve got to fix this first, or I’m off ;p

Launching soon...

Please check back for updates