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In the last of our series of guest posts, Felicity McLean tells us why NFPtweetup makes her happy and shares five key points to take away from last week’s event.

I love a good collaboration, be it a strategic partnership, a skill sharing session or just a group of girls on a Sunday afternoon, there’s something about coming together that makes my heart tingle.

This is exactly the feeling I get at the NFPtweetup – a sense of real camaraderie, skill sharing in a time of restricted resources and an excitement surrounding a burgeoning communications strategy.  Social media has taken off, but it’s gaining speed and recognition from the 100+ sector leaders driving change at the NFPtweetups.

After presentations from keynote speakers, discussion on recent trends in social media (applicable on varying levels to those of varying expertise – again a great aspect of the NFPtweetup collaboration) conversation kept boomeranging back to one point: brand integrity, and the risk or resource that social media brings to this.

I took away 5 brilliant bits of advice from Rachel Beer’s breakout session:

Risk it with user generated content: Should we be giving free reign of our charity website to our service users? This comes down to the question of who we regard to be the ‘expert’, how much we try to protect our brand: Voice, messaging and level of support.  Fiona McLaren’s campaign work surrounding recent activity in Egypt is a fantastic example of value adding UGC: create a Twitter hash-tag surrounding the event and either feed in user content directly from this or compile a shortlist of brilliant, clever and interesting content from your hash-tag as a blog post.  The latter allows you to pick and choose the best bits of input and information and allows editorial control over platform decorated with user generated content.  Brilliant value adding stuff, for free!

Personalise your Twitter avatars: Should we be using the charity logo or a personal photo? A logo encourages credential and standing, but photos offer a personal voice.  It’s a question of restriction on your brand and voice, and many charities opt to use a personal photo with a charity branded Twibbon.

Use Co-Tweet: This is a tool working specifically for charities (or other organizations) with multiple tweeters at one account.  Co-Tweet enables users to attach initials after each tweet, adding a personal touch (or someone to blame!) and dispelling anonymity.

Create a caricature for your social media voice: Archie the Goat for Oxfam is a social media phenomenon – funny, value adding for the reader and seemingly unrelated to Oxfam.  Yes, it appeals to a wider audience but is it a wasted opportunity for direct marketing and fundraising?

Tweet people like people: I have always been a firm believer in communication from a personal level, not a professional level.  Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook do not warrant formal sign offs or corporate jargon, it will only alienate the reader and others reading your stream.  This is why I say Tweet people like people.  Listen, advise, engage.

I come away from each and every NFPtweetup inspired and bursting with ideas, and I don’t doubt the next one will be any different.

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Despite being in full NFPtweetup mode for at least two weeks,  I’m still slightly in shock that the next event is just two days away… and tweeted as much just for good measure.

This Wednesday will be NFPtweetup’s tenth event (!) and will focus on integrated campaigning and fundraising.

Agenda for the night is as follows:

• 17:30 – 18:15  Arriving/registering/networking, drinks and nibbles
• 18:15 – 18:20  Introduction
• 18:20 – 18:45  Adrian Cockle, Head of Online, WWF UK: Tweeting and roaring: joined up campaigning
• 18:45 – 19:10  Fiona McLaren, Online Communities Editor, Amnesty International UK: Examining online activity and social media during the recent protests in Egypt
• 19:10 – 19:50  Break out groups
• 19:50 – 20:20  Panel debate: integrated campaigning and fundraising, including Adrian Cockle, Fiona McLaren, Kate Turner, Head of Communications and Campaigns at Merlin, Jonathan Waddingham, Product Manager at JustGiving and Rachel Beer, founding partner at beautiful world
• 20:20 – 20:30 Wrap up (and off to Bar Music Hall for those who would like to join)

We’ll also have a few NFPtweetup goodies, courtesy of Pixel Philosophy who are co-sponsoring this event. To all those people who were too polite to take mugs last time – these are for you!

Almost counting down the hours now…

See you Wednesday,

Teri

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In our third guest post before our birthday event tomorrow, we hear from Rob Dyson, PR and social web Manager at Whizz Kidz.

Spaces… the final frontier

Are “spaces” the final frontier? Well not exactly, but location-based social media is a growing area where I think charities could be boldly going where few, so far, tread.

You’ll have heard of the ‘big three’; Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places. All three – and many more – are smart-phone based platforms that encourage us to ‘check in’ to real places (restaurants, bars, museums, offices, and so on), using our phone’s inbuilt GPS. We can choose to tell our friends where we are – maybe a pal is in the area to join us for a cuppa? And what’s really smart is increasingly the proprietors of these places are using the tools to recognise and reward loyal customers. Checked-in 10 times to your favourite bar? Here’s a free cocktail (for example).

As well as this, Foursquare offers an in-game incentive in the form of ‘badges’ and ‘mayorships’ – so you could be the Foursquare ‘Mayor’ of YourLocalPub because you check-in every day (not advisable)!

Charities such as Action For Children, British Red Cross, and Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research are all using Foursquare – the latter has been using the network in the same way as Twitter to post updates to followers. However, I’d suggest Card Aid are ahead of the pack right now; adding ‘tips’ in the service around the City, so that when you check-in somewhere, you are alerted to a nearby outlet where you can pop in and buy charity cards. Nice.

Where I see some really nice innovation in location-based media is in the US, where Republican politicians adopted a special toolkit put together by Gowalla. By checking-in to political rally venues, supporters win candidate-branded “passport stamps” – using competitive game-play (how many stamps can you collect?) as a way of encouraging turn-out.

Foursquare meanwhile rewards users for gathering fellow game-users in one location. So back in October, the Jewel bar in London was the first place in England to hold a special event to get over 250 people all ‘checking in’ at the same time and in the same place. Users were all rewarded with a “Superswarm” badge. This badge is ‘worn’ on your profile, and gives your kudos among the game community. Foursquare has now created “Superduper Swarm” and “Epic Swarm” badges, open to unlock if you check in with 500 or 1,000 other gameplayers respectively!

I think the challenge to charities then, is how to harness these location games in creative ways to motivate and inspire our supporters.

Perhaps location-media might be used to encourage people to a fundraising event, or a campaign day? Or maybe, like Card Aid, you could leave ‘virtual crumbs’ around towns and cities. How about rewarding followers for ‘checking-in’ to charity shops, or when they take part in local volunteering? These are all viral tools too – in so far as they alert and update your friends to your activity in their newsfeeds. Your friends not using location-media? Rest assured you can sync your Facebook and Twitter profiles to them, so when you check-in to a fundraiser (London Marathon anyone?), your pals can see you’re there, and maybe they’ll come along too – or comment on your check-in (which their friends will see, and so on, and so on).

So if the world’s our oyster – where will check-in? And who will join you? Until Wednesday, this is Rob, ‘checking-out’.

Rob will be joined by Roberto Kusabbi, Communities and Social Media Exec at the British Heart Foundation. Looking forward to hearing more from Rob and Roberto tomorrow.

For those that can’t make it in person tomorrow night, you can participate online by following the event hashtag #NFPtweetup.

See you soon!

Teri

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With less than a week to go to NFPtweetup’s 2nd Birthday event, on 24 November, we will be previewing what we’ll be hearing about from the people who will be presenting and sharing insights on the night, by publishing a range of guest blog posts.

Today, Matt Collins at Chance UK gives an introduction to what he’ll be sharing with everyone next week:

Social media is a powerful leveller. It brings the little charities who have just one member of staff with a passing interest in Twitter up to the top table to sit with the big boys; those with dedicated digital departments, whole teams tasked with utilising this powerful social force.

Then how come the digital world so often reflects the offline world? Often, it’s still the household charity names who attract the most followers, gain the biggest number of retweets, and the command the biggest influence. As in real life, so online.

So how do the little boys, the small organisations that make the vast majority of registered charities, run a social media campaign with next to no resources? How do you use what is undoubtedly a cost-effective medium when used properly to attract supporters? How do you make an impact with just goodwill and a bit of time?

We at Chance UK wondered the same thing a few months, and decided to try and find out for ourselves. We knew our main objective (to recruit volunteers to a very specific child focused role), we worked out a way we thought might get them interested in what it was we had to offer (tug at their heart strings and link their own personal, positive experiences to our cause) and via which of the plethora of social websites we wanted to do it (Twitter, Facebook and YouTube).

Our Big influence campaign started in October and was an attempt to get a place at that top table. We engaged our supporters, our followers and even a few celebrities. It didn’t quite work out as we’d hoped, but it taught us things we would otherwise never have learned.

Thanks to Matt for this little teaser.  We’ll look forward to hearing about how the campaign went, and what the team at Chance UK learned, next Thursday.

Look out for tomorrow’s post from Damien Clarke at KnowHow NonProfit.

Rachel

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I’m very excited about tomorrow night’s event, as it looks like it could be the biggest yet (with 142 people registered to attend) and hopefully the best.  In all honesty, though, I’d be hard pushed to name the ‘best’, NFPtweetup, or even my favourite, as they’ve all been so different and all good in their own way – partly because we change the format slightly each time, to keep them fresh and interesting, and partly because the people that come each time make each one different.

We put the finishing touches to the agenda this afternoon, confirming what promises to be a really interesting presentation from Yvonne Struthers at RAFBF on the charity’s current 1940 Chronicle campaign, which utilises a number of different Twitter profiles to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain and reconstruct it as though it is happening today in real time.  It reminds me very much of the Twitter profiles created by fans of the cult TV show, Mad Men, which is also very relevant to the last session…

A debate, entitled, ‘Fragmenting your brand online or tailoring your messages to your audiences – Are there times when having multiple social media profiles for your organisation makes sense?’

This has been coming onto my radar so much lately in various guises that it seemed ripe to explore in more detail.  If you haven’t already, it’s well worth taking a look at Steve Bridger’s blog post on Saturday which definitely touches on this, and Rob Dyson’s post in response to a post from Reuben Turner (hope you’re still with me?!) on the subject of whether multiple Twitter accounts are a good idea.  I’ve also come across a couple of charities with multiple profiles on Twitter recently, as well as had a several conversations about whether to create a new Facebook or Twitter page for an event or campaign or use your core account and, since we’ll be hearing from RAFBF about one such campaign already tomorrow night, this debate should follow on nicely.  We’re lucky enough to have Steve Bridger on hand to expand on his point of view, as well Rob Dyson from Whizz-Kidz to tell us more about why the charity recently decided to focus on just one Twitter profile yet also opted to create a separate Facebook page for their just-launched Blue Peter Go Cardz appeal, so I think it should be a useful and enjoyable exploration of quite a contentious area and I’m hoping we can get right into the nitty gritty and have fun with it at the same time

So, see you tomorrow, if you’re coming to the event in London, or if you’re following on Twitter and choose to take part in the conversation.

@rachelbeer

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Those who came to the last NFPtweetup on 4 March are sure to remember Rob Dyson‘s presentation on the first steps he had taken to monitor and measure the impact of Whizz-Kidz social media engagement. If you missed it, you missed out on Rob’s uniquely engaging and humourous delivery, but you can still see his slides on slideshare:

In our fifth blog post in the run up to NFPtweetup on Thursday, we hear from Rob, Pam and Jess from Whizz-Kidz with a preview of the update they will be giving us on Whizz-Kidz social media journey, including some of the tactics they use to engage with events fundraisers:

At youth mobility charity Whizz-Kidz we’ve been steadily increasing our social media and real-time web use over the last 18 months; trying and testing different platforms for different communications with our supporters and users.

However it’s only recently that we’ve really begun to evaluate and measure the reach of this experimentation. Pleasingly, the feedback and engagement levels kind of shows that, erm, we’re not experimenting anymore; we’re actually getting rather good at it.

There’s no room for complacency though, and there is constant demand for innovation in terms of how we harness our supporters, and importantly, how we subscribe more people to our bottom line: donating or fundraising so we can support more young disabled people year on year.

At the NFPtweetup on 10 June, we’ll be giving a brief overview of what works for us (it may not work for you).

Specifically:

Having a Facebook profile as a person – “Jess Whizz Kidz”, has proven an incredibly popular way to engage with our London Marathon runners. Participants may not always pick up the phone, but they do like using Facebook: you’re on their turf and building great relationships. Plus it’s on a Facebook wall (not stuck in an email) so can be shared, added to, and built upon by other runners.

Twitter is a fantastic viral tool, so we use it when we want to get messages out quickly and to a wide audience – we have loyal ambassadors who retweet us. We also talk a lot – chat, converse, ask questions and have discussions. We make friends.

YouTube (promoted via Facebook and Twitter) is the bees knees when wanting to paint a picture of the impact of our work. We have a growing portfolio of videos made by our young people telling their own stories, in their own words.

We hope you get some ideas from our short session, and we’re looking forward to hearing your successes to! We’re all learning.

Rob Dyson, PR & social media Manager – @robmdyson & @whizzkidz;
Pam O’Brien, Events Fundraising Manager;
Jess Leigh, London Marathon Project Manager and Events Fundraiser – @whizzkidzevents
Whizz-Kidz

Originally posted:

June 7, 2010 on the beautiful world blog

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