Social Media: Inspiring and informing @junction49
Making volunteering part of the fabric of everyday life
Volunteer for twestival.com 2009: Over 1,000 volunteers and 10,000 donors raised more than $250,000 for Charity:Water to provide clean and safe drinking water for more than 17,000 people 2010: Over 175 cities participated to raise money for Concern Worldwide. $462,633 Raised to Date $1.2 million within 14 months for 137 nonprofits
What *are* the top social sites ? Youtube ? Facebook ? Twitter ? Flickr ? Linkedin ? vimeo ? Foursquare ? i-volunteer ? Learning outcomes: Identify and understand popular social networks Identify your target audience and their likely social networks Assess value/potential of marketing activity in social media Set yourself achievable goals that will engage your supporters Get your organisation on board Where is best to be?
Identify supporters Volunteers mainly facebook and twitter Partner organizations Twitter and Facebook Sector and Industry Peers Twitter Trustees Twitter
Need to hang out where your target community hangs out.
Goals Increased peer support and networking Get supporters talking about and linking to us Social media as another route for customer service and volunteer support Positioning as thought leader
Listen Take time to listen Don't spread yourself too thin Find out what your volunteers want Links to useful information / support / tips Interesting opportunities Stories / Pictures / Video
Interact Ask questions Ask what they want from you Allow community to lead Crowdsourcing Get others to tell their story Try different things – see what works Support others – they will give back Employees and volunteers greatest asset
Rewards and Incentives The psychological kind Responses Competitions Recognising feedback and participation
FAIL Be prepared to fail That is how you learn But be open and honest if you do
Enable sharing Making it easy for our supporters to spread the word Tweet this Facebook Like Add This or Share this widget - gives a number of options for user to choose
Time and Money? We use lots of free tools Tweetdeck co-tweet bit.ly Checking social spaces Spend 15mins in morning, lunchtime and end of day : o post one or two interesting links or pieces of content o answer or questions Join a free meetup for non-profits NFPtweetup NetTuesdays Free sharing of ideas and advice between peers on Twitter!
All aboard? Social media guidelines to support and empower Give staff the confidence to use social media to generate interest in TimeBank. Protect TimeBank’s reputation. The public must be able to trust the integrity of TimeBank. Not for everyone - identify champions or those already using Blog Group Staff meet every week and each brings a post for review rules: constructive criticism, peer review
Guidelines Paricipate in the conversation, don't broadcast Use sound judgement Don't reveal confidential information Protect other people’s privacy Be interesting, be honest and be yourself
Measure Keep it simple Screen grab messages of support Google Analytics URL Shorteners will measure clickthroughs bit.ly Realtime stats Woopra Measuring "reach", RTs, Mentions, influence Twitter analyzer Klout Large pinch of salt!
Social Visitors pie chart of our social visits (excluding organic search)
Including organic search
Learning Outcomes Initially objective of reaching 200 Followers in 3 months - much easier than we thought. More staff have been encouraged to join twitter and post updates around their areas of work - easier to generate interesting content 40 Christmas page retweets in two days - reach over 100,000 people - it's not follower number that count but who you know Twitter one of the top 20 referrers to website Twitter does not provide complete history of past tweets - so record your stats and messages of support as you go
On Message?
Challenges Finding the right people within the organization Personal account vs organization/brand account Measuring effectiveness and impact
Next Steps Getting more staff on board Share it around - guest staff Tweeters and Facebookers Better synergy between Organization FB Fanpage and Staff personal accounts - making use of existing champions Weekly meetup for staff to discuss tactics and current issues/subjects Build in measurement from the beginning
Damien Austin-Walker