Engage and Connect with Social Media

LVSC Cascade Conference, 13 January 2010 Engage and Connect with Social Media

Who uses social media?

What are social media?
Why use social media?
Who uses them?
What can we use them for?
What can we expect?
Where should we start?

Is this really important?

Print media are dying

ABC figures 2000-2009 Source Guardian.co.uk/media

Digital media are diversifying and thriving

What are social media?

Tools to communicate with

Why are they different?

The old way: Broadcast media = Monologues One to many

The new: Social media = Dialogues Many to many

What aren’t they?

Marketing channels Somewhere to press release to All about you

What different types of social media are there?
Photo sharing Flickr, Picasaweb
Video sharing Vimeo, YouTube, Flickr
Social networks Facebook, Bebo, MySpace
Professional LinkedIn, Naymz, Plaxo
Aggregators Friendfeed, Socialthing!
Bookmarking StumbledUpon, Digg, Delicious
Microblogs Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku, Brightkite
Blogs Typepad, Wordpress, Blogger
Charity Just Giving, Ammado
White label Ning and many others
Wikis Wikipedia, PBwiki
Bespoke build Buddypress, Plone, Drupal
Other sharing Amazon, Trip Advisor

What do they allow us to do?
Connect
Communicate
Create
Co-create
Collaborate
Categorise
Share
Have conversations Reach out Build communities Crowd-source – collect information and wisdom Be heard

Why are they important?

Look at what happened when Just Giving launched their Facebook app:

… and that trend has continued:

More compelling figures...
70% of households in UK with Internet access
18.3 million homes
Around 26 million users in UK
350 million users internationally
Half of Global Top 100 websites have implemented Facebook Connect
Over 14.6 million unique users in the UK alone
Sources: National Statistics, CommScore global, YouTube & Facebook

Source: Hitwise,com/uk, Alexa.com Top 20 Websites in the UK Top 20 Websites internationally
Google.com
Facebook
YouTube
Yahoo.com
Windows Live
Wikipedia
Blogger.com
Baidu.com
MSN
Yahoo.co.jp
QQ.com
Google.co.in
Twitter
MySpace
Google.cn
Sina.com.cn
Google.de
Amazon.com
Wordpress.com
Microsoft.com

We have more choice, and are more empowered, than ever before
We chose which brands we engage with, how and where that happens
And they have to fight for our attention

This is the age of
the individual

We have multi-channel lives [email_address] [email_address] www.facebook.com/me www.lifestream.com/me www.photos.com/me www.MyBlog.com Mobile: 07970 543321

The point is...
Social media are important – culturally
They have changed:
The online landscape forever
How people behave & communicate
How we relate to brands – inc charities
How we consume media
How we make decisions
Our expectations
And it’s all going to keep changing!

Raising awareness, sharing and spreading important messages
Adding weight to your organisation’s voice – and amplifying your stakeholders voices
Providing peer support and motivation
Involving those affected by issues in developing solutions
Mobilising people and helping them to take action and create positive change
Raising funds
Internal communications
How can charities use social media?

More benefits…
Collecting stories & testimonials
Proof of ‘need’ – e.g. for services and funding
Weight of opinion
Find out what stakeholders and supporters want
Provide support – forums, information, resources, peer-to-peer support
Communicate with existing and new contacts, cost-effectively
Gaining media coverage

100% Free!

Let’s look at some real-life examples:

Take inspiration, and learn, from: Dogs Trust

For a master class in how to achieve a huge amount with next to nothing: Mara Triangle

A national reserve in Kenya
Relied on tourism to fund conservation work
Violence after political elections had detrimental effect on tourism – so they had to start exploring ways to fundraise

Work and issues brought to life on blog
450 unique visitors each day
Used to encourage donations
E.g. $40k raised in March 2008

Used to post videos of the wildlife and the work

Growing base of contacts
Content added regularly

Used for updates on the latest news as well as talking to users directly and encouraging donations
Short, quick, dynamic messages perfect for driving traffic to other URLs

Facebook Cause page
Hall of fame shows the biggest donors and fundraisers as well as the biggest recruiters of new supporters

An aggregator
View content from a variety of platforms in one place
Shows latest activity from Flickr, Facebook, Vimeo, Twitter and blogs
Convenient way for supporters to keep up-to-date with all of their content through one source

Learning from Mara Triangle:
Integration between many social media
Compelling content:
Story telling
Authentic voices
Emotional
The mindset:
Opportunistic
Proactive
The experience:
Authentic
Satisfying
Donors understand why funds are needed & can see the positive effect their support has

New rules of engagement
No ‘us and them’ – now shared ownership with your supporters and stakeholders
No more broadcast – now conversation
No more spin – only transparency
No more push marketing – now you must draw people to you by being interesting
Give to get – you need to add value
Honest dialogue builds relationships

Be part of the evolution!
If you want to remain relevant
To retain and grow your brand awareness
To reach out to those that need your support
Make the most of opportunities
Make sure you don’t fall behind and have to struggle to catch up

Where do we start?
Start experimenting and learning
Need to use to understand tools first
You don’t have to be ‘perfect’ – accept that you will make some mistakes, but that’s all part of learning
No need for fully thought-through communications plans at the start
Be opportunistic and proactive

Three things to do tomorrow
Search to establish where people are talking about your charity, cause/s, relevant issues or subjects
Try samepoint.com or addictomatic.com as well as Google searches
Set up Google Alerts
Check similar or partner organisations
Where do they have a presence?
What are they doing that you like/ don’t like?

Three things to do by Friday
Reserve your profiles wherever you can – e.g. your organisation name, or as close as you can get, on Twitter
Find out whether there is a plan for social media in your organisation
If not, get a date in the diary to brainstorm with colleagues to start developing one – hopefully, inspired by what we’ll cover today!

Think strategically
Start with your objectives
How can social media contribute?
What resources will this require?
If resources are limited, what can you do with the resources you have?
Don’t have to use every tool in the box!
Consider how to integrate with the rest of your (more traditional) activities and channels

Work smarter
You shouldn’t have to do everything you did before and social media in addition
Don’t duplicate effort
Social media might be able to replace some of the other channels you relied on previously

… not harder
Just swap the old ways for the new where that works well for you
And don’t forget that you can deploy many of your existing assets across social media and make even better use of them
E.g. Information from press releases, appeals, campaigns, petitions, news stories etc.

When you’re starting out…
You might want to continue with all of your existing, tried and tested approaches and experiment with social channels alongside, until you understand them and know what you can achieve with them

Yes you can!
Your organisation doesn’t have to be big or wealthy to get great results
You can punch well above your weight with social media
Many of the most visible and successful campaigns over the last 18 months have been powered by individuals, not large organisations
E.g. Rage Against the Machine Christmas No.1

Connect with me...
http://twitter.com/rachelbeer
[email_address]
www.flickr.com/rachelbeer
www.linkedin.com/in/rachelbeer
And most other places!
Images © Rachel Beer/ iStockphoto

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Engage and Connect with Social Media

by Rachel Beer on Jan 23, 2010

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Engage and Connect with Social Media — Presentation Transcript