nfptweetup

We’re busy preparing for tonight’s NFPtweetup event but thought we’d take a short break to share our next session preview from Scott Mullins, Digital Media Officer at The British Heart Foundation:

Every year in the UK, 27,000 people die from an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. That means a population roughly equal to that of Gibraltar collapses, stops breathing normally and dies because their heart has stopped working properly. More worryingly, only 1 in 10 survive a cardiac arrest when they’re out of hospital.

Part of the problem is not enough bystanders are stepping in to help. Our survey found have-a-go heroes were put off because they didn’t know anything about CPR; they were worried about getting sued; and were anxious about giving the kiss of life.

So how did we go about solving a problem like out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival rates?

Well, sometimes to go forwards you have to take two steps back. We stripped the life-saving message back to its simplest form: hands-only CPR. We then built a funny, relevant and shareable campaign with Hands-only at its core and released it to our audiences before it was on TV.

Join me and couple of chums and we’ll endeavour to tell you a little bit about how Vinnie Jones and our campaign managed to clock up one million YouTube views in 5 days and two million YouTube views in just over a month.

And why it’s already making a difference and saving people’s lives.

Tweet

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

Tweet

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

Tweet